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Re:Spain planned to 'invade' Australia in the 1790s with 100... by vacri on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @03:04PM (#8955392)
Sounds like a pipe dream from the outset. 100 ships? Against a small colony on the other side of the world? As a sense of scale, the Spanish Armada, expected to take over England itself if it succeeded (albeit 200 years earlier) was 130 ships strong. And the first colonisation fleet sent by the British was only 11 ships. While not all ships are created equal, 100 ships is still an enormous undertaking, especially at the limits of your supply lines.
Re:Spain planned to 'invade' Australia in the 1790s with 100... by CapitalistCartr on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @03:26PM (#8955561)
Yeah, just to take a tiny colony 100 ships makes no sense. The English colonists were frequently fighting with the Aborigines, so were fairly well armed and defended against them, but not against cannon. I would think at most a dozen frigates, and perhaps a half dozen support ships would be plenty, even carrying a strong contingent of marines. The colony was still new and small. Perhaps they expected the British navy to show up.
Re:Spain planned to 'invade' Australia in the 1790s with 100... by shanmoorthy on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @07:54PM (#8957340)
The voyage from Spain to England's quite short. For a voyage from South America to Australia across the Pacific, you'd need a few ships purely to carry supplies, plus you'd have to account for a fair amount of losses of ships and men due to bad weather, disease etc.
Re:Spain planned to 'invade' Australia in the 1790s with 100... by serve_yay on Tuesday January 27, 2015 @03:42PM (#8955689)
It was the style at the time.