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The Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife was a military operation in the Anglo-Spanish War (1654–1660) in which an English fleet under Admiral Robert Blake attacked a Spanish treasure fleet that had already landed the treasure at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands. Most of the Spanish merchantmen were scuttled and the remainder were burnt by the English. ==Background== England had decided to support France in her war in the Low Countries with the Spanish. War was openly declared in October 1655 and endorsed when the Second Protectorate Parliament assembled the following year. One of the prime enterprises was the blockade of Cadiz, which had not previously been attempted on such a scale. Robert Blake was to be in charge and also to come up with methods that he had used in his previous encounters with the Dutch and Barbary pirates. Blake kept the fleet at sea throughout an entire winter in order to maintain the blockade. A further six ships were sent from England as reinforcements towards the end of 1656, including the ''George'', which became Blake's flagship. In February 1657, Blake received intelligence that the convoy from Mexico was on its way across the Atlantic. Although his captains wanted to search for the Spanish galleons immediately, Blake refused to divide his forces and waited until victualling ships from England arrived to re-provision his fleet at the end of March. In the meantime a Spanish convoy was destroyed by one of Blake's captains: Richard Stayner. After this Blake (with only two ships to watch Cadiz), sailed from Cadiz Bay on 13 April 1657 to attack the plate fleet, which had docked at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands to await an escort to Spain. Blake's fleet arrived off Santa Cruz on 19 April. Santa Cruz lies in a deeply indented bay and the harbour was defended by a castle armed with forty guns and a number of smaller forts connected by a triple line of breastworks to shelter musketeers. In an operation similar to the raid on the Barbary pirates of Porto Farina in Tunisia in 1655, Blake planned to send twelve frigates under the command of (now) Rear-Admiral Stayner in the ''Speaker'' into the harbour to attack the galleons while he followed in the ''George'' with the rest of the fleet to bombard the shore batteries.〔Anderson 1952, p. 145.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1657)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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