Stroms Hellier

Stroms Hellier (Stroms Heelor) is a steep-sided rocky cove located off the Swartz Geo inlet on Fair Isle in the Scottish Shetland Islands.[1][2]

On 27 September 1588 one of the vessels of the Spanish Armada, El Gran Grifón, foundered here during the night, and many of the ship's crew climbed her masts as she was sinking and made it to shore. According to one account, despite the fact that the Spanish were officially enemies of all of the subject's of Queen Elizabeth, the islanders welcomed them and the Spanish behaved well and stayed for two months.[3] According to another, the arrival of so many Spaniards nearly doubled the population of the island which was already at the subsistence level, and although the Spanish paid well for what they took, competition with the local families for resources became scarce over time, and some soldiers, weakened by lack of food and water, may even have been murdered by the locals.[4]

An archaeological investigation was carried out in the cove in 1970 by Colin Martin and Sydney Wignall.[5]

References
  1. Gould, Richard A. (2011). "Ships of the great age of sail". Archaeology and the Social History of Ships (second ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-521-19492-1.
  2. "El Gran Grifon: Stroms Heelor, Fair Isle, North Sea". Canmore. Archived from the original on 24 September 2016.
  3. "The Wreck of El Gran Grifón". The Scotsman. 14 February 2005. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016.
  4. Ken Douglas (25 September 2009). The Downfall of the Spanish Armada in Ireland: The Grand Armada Lost on the Irish Coast in 1588. Gill Books. ISBN 978-0-7171-5149-3.
  5. Martin, Colin J. M. (1975). Full Fathom Five: Wrecks of the Spanish Armada. New York: Viking. pp. 156–187. ISBN 978-0-670-33193-2.

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