The work reproduces the tapestries that depicted the defeat of the Spanish Armada that once hung in the House of Lords. The tapestries had been commissioned by Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral under Elizabeth I, and the man who commanded the English fleet against the Armada. The designs for the tapestries were drawn by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom (1562-1640) and woven in the Delft workshop of Francis Spierincx. For several years, Effingham displayed them in his London house, until debts forced him to sell them to James I. In 1650, the tapestries took up permanent residence in the House of Lords.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada was seen then - as now - as one of the defining moments of Elizabeth I's reign. The victory affirmed her supremacy at sea and the righteousness of her new Protestant religion. The Herculean nature of the victory is emphasised in Pine's engravings, with Spanish galleons appearing to dwarf the small English vessels. The accompanying text goes on to state that the Spanish ships were, "of an uncommon size, strength, and thickness, more like floating castles than any thing else…".

John Pine in his preface states the reason for his work: "because time, or accident, or moths may deface these valuable shadows, which, by being multiplied and dispersed in various hands, may meet with that security from the closets of the curious, which the originals must scarce always hope for, even from the sanctity of the place they are kept in." In 1834 the Houses of Parliament were largely destroyed by fire, taking Vroom's original tapestries with them, and Pine's engravings are now, as he foresaw, the surviving pictorial record of the images they portrayed.