 |
| Fig.1: Yellow sky during battle, better find a paddle! |
Among all the unpredictable things in the world, like the ending of an M. Night Shyamalan movie or whether or not a doughnut is jelly-filled, all are trumped by the unreliability of naval battles. It doesn't matter whether you have the most experienced sailors, best equipped ships, or highest SPF sunscreen; when two navies go at it, you might as well put all of your faith in Poseidon, or maybe even the Snorks. A good example of this is the famous Spanish Armada of 1588, which despite their superior numbers, commanders, and Catholicism, floundered away in the English Channel due to poor tactics and a simple low-pressure system. To this day, the Spanish Armada serves as a metaphor for an over-hyped project which, despite all of the faith put to it, is doomed to fail (a comparison that has been challenged by the Dallas Cowboys since 1996).
