On the evening of the third day after the great Battle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, just before sunset, the enormous, epic naval battle that had engulfed nearly every major power in the Mediterranean basin and the navies of countless nations had finally, more or less, produced a victor.
After sinking the last large Spanish galleon in the fleet they had surrounded and cut off, and capturing dozens of Spanish sailors, Ottoman Empire Navy commander-in-chief Hadem Affermed Pasha and his North African ally, the pirate king Barbarossa Khair ad-Din, had no choice but to order a retreat. With little more than a dozen ships still in formation, Pasha led them away in disgrace.
As for the ships that had been scattered, they had no time to worry about them. A Spanish fleet had appeared on the distant horizon, and they had to leave.
Meanwhile, on the far-off horizon, the Spanish Invincible Fleet commander-in-chief watched Pasha's warships slowly turn and retreat. Pedro de Valdés, admiral of the Spanish Kingdom's navy, and the more than twenty warships under his command did not pursue them. Instead, he pretended not to notice as the enemy's remaining ships turned east and fled.
Pasha's retreat effectively announced the Spanish Invincible Fleet's final victory in the great Battle of the Mediterranean.
But in truth...
Both sides had suffered terrible losses in the battle. Of the nearly one thousand warships and armed vessels they had committed in total, probably fewer than a third remained afloat and made it back to port without being burned or sunk.
And even those that survived had sustained damage of one kind or another. Nearly all of them would be impossible to repair in the short term. So it was fair to say that this had been a war with no victors!
Although Pasha