On the 29th July in 1588 (Gregorian/New Style calendar): The Spanish Armada was sighted off the Lizard in Cornwall, and the English fleet under Charles Howard and Francis Drake began to put to sea from Plymouth.... The Spanish fleet (under the Duke of Medina Sidonia) was first sighted by the English off the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. Beacons quickly relayed the warning along the south coast toward London. The main English western squadron was in Plymouth. Lord Charles Howard of Effingham (Lord High Admiral) held overall command, with Sir Francis Drake as vice-admiral (and John Hawkins as rear-admiral). The incoming tide initially trapped many ships in the harbour. As the tide turned, English ships began to work their way out (accounts place the start of departure that day or the following day). Roughly 50–60 English vessels put to sea to gain the weather gage and pursue the Armada, which was sailing eastward in a defensive crescent formation toward a planned rendezvous with the Duke of Parma’s army in the Spanish Netherlands. No major battle occurred on the 29th itself. The first significant engagement came on 31st July (New Style) / 21st July (Old Style) near the Eddystone Rocks off Plymouth. Spanish accounts and later charts (such as the Robert Adams series held by Royal Museums Greenwich) use the New Style dates of 29–31 July for the approach off Cornwall, the English departure, and the first action. The successful harassment of the Armada (combined with storms that devastated the Spanish fleet on its return voyage around Scotland and Ireland) prevented the invasion, boosted English prestige and Protestant confidence, and is widely regarded as a turning point that enhanced England’s naval reputation and contributed to the longer-term rise of English (later British) sea power. England already possessed an effective navy; the campaign demonstrated and enhanced its capabilities. English ships inflicted limited material damage in the Channel actions through long-range gunnery and manoeuvrability; weather and logistical failures caused most Spanish losses.

Twenty five years ago today, a 62 year old man with cancer in his bones walked 2,687 people out of the South Tower, and then he went back inside. Rick Rescorla was born in Hayle, Cornwall in 1939. British Parachute Regiment in Cyprus at 18. Colonial police in Northern Rhodesia. Then he came to America, enlisted in the US Army in 1963, and in November 1965 he went into the Ia Drang Valley as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. Hal Moore called him the best platoon leader he ever saw. His men called him Hard Core. He sang to them in the dark, Wild Colonial Boy in an Australian accent, because he had worked out that men who are singing are not men who are panicking. That is Rescorla on the cover of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, bayonet fixed. Thirty five years later he was head of security for Dean Witter, later Morgan Stanley, in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. In 1990 he brought in his old friend Dan Hill and the two of them walked the basement. He warned the Port Authority that the parking garage was wide open, that somebody could drive in a truck full of explosives, walk out and light it off. Nothing was done. Three years later the 1993 bomb went off about thirty feet from the spot he had flagged. After that he told Morgan Stanley the towers were still a target and the next attack would come out of the sky. He wanted the firm to leave Manhattan. The lease ran to 2006, so they stayed. Twenty two floors of the South Tower, roughly 2,700 people. So he drilled them. Every three months, everyone, no exceptions, down the stairwells two abreast while he stood there with a stopwatch. Traders pulling seven figures resented being marched down concrete stairs by a Cornishman with a clipboard. He kept doing it anyway. 8:46 a.m. The North Tower is hit. Port Authority comes over the South Tower loudspeakers and tells everyone the building is secure and to go back to their desks. Rescorla picks up a bullhorn and tells his people to get out. He phones Dan Hill. "The dumb sons of bitches told me not to evacuate. They said it's just Building One. I told them I'm getting my people out of here." 9:03 a.m. The second plane hits the South Tower, floors 77 through 85. His people are already in the stairwells, moving exactly the way they had been drilled, and Rescorla is on the bullhorn singing to them. Cornish songs. A version of Men of Harlech he had rewritten for Cornwall. Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming, can't you see their spearpoints gleaming. He called his wife Susan from the stairs. They had been married two and a half years, met jogging in New Jersey. He told her to stop crying, that he had to get these people out safely, and that if something happened to him he wanted her to know he had never been happier, that she made his life. Someone told him to get out. He said, as soon as I make sure everyone else is out. 2,687 Morgan Stanley employees went home that day. Thirteen did not, and four of those were Rescorla and the men who stayed in the building with him: Wesley Mercer, Jorge Velazquez, Godwin Forde. He was last seen on the 10th floor, walking up. The South Tower fell at 9:59. They never found him.

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Expect David Cameron to be there.' This was the main thing I had been told before I went to Four Boys in Rock, Cornwall. As I arrive, it makes sense. This is a Cameron-y sort of place and not just because every man in here looks a bit like David Cameron. Why? Well, Cameron's big idea as leader of the Conservative party was to modernise it. 'We'll get elected if we hug hoodies and manage to not pull a face when we see an avocado.' Four Boys, with its awareness of fashion, is doing something similar. I notice something at the top of the menu when I sit down. 'We recommend sharing our food.' ✍️ Angus Colwell Article | | @AngusColwell