How many ships were in the Spanish Armada of 1588?

How to get close to this number

Reason from the objective. The fleet was assembled to escort an invasion army across the Channel, which requires troop transports, supply vessels and warships to protect them. A force with that mission runs to a hundred or more vessels, because most of them are not fighting ships at all.

The casualty pattern in the explanation is what the popular story gets wrong: most losses came from storms off Scotland and Ireland rather than from English gunfire, and only a handful of ships were actually sunk in battle. The fleet was defeated tactically and destroyed by weather on the long route home around the British Isles.

That distinction matters for how the event is understood. A naval battle that decides almost nothing, followed by a navigational catastrophe that decides everything, is a much less satisfying story than the one usually told — which is precisely why the told version has persisted for four centuries.