[PDF] Under Drakes Flag eBook

Author : George Alfred Henty
Publisher :
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 19,89 MB
Release : 1883
Category : Adventure stories
ISBN :

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Historical adventure tale featuring Ned Hearn, a young teenager who sails with Francis Drake, experiencing a harsh seafaring life, strange, unexplored lands; and witnessing the great naval battle between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada.

Author : George Alfred Henty
Publisher : London : Blackie
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 33,93 MB
Release : 1885
Category : Scotland
ISBN :

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At the turn of the fourteenth century in Scotland, young Archie Forbes becomes involved with both William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in the struggle for Scottish independence from English rule.

Author : Laurence Bergreen
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 21,45 MB
Release : 2021-03-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0062875388

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“FASCINATING . . . Dramatic and timely.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan and Columbus reveals the singular adventures of Sir Francis Drake, whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history. “Entrancing . . . Very good indeed.” —Wall Street Journal Before he was secretly dispatched by Queen Elizabeth to circumnavigate the globe, or was called upon to save England from the Spanish Armada, Francis Drake was perhaps the most wanted—and successful—pirate ever to sail. Nicknamed “El Draque” by the Spaniards who placed a bounty on his head, the notorious red-haired, hot-tempered Drake pillaged galleons laden with New World gold and silver, stealing a vast fortune for his queen—and himself. For Elizabeth, Drake made the impossible real, serving as a crucial and brilliantly adaptable instrument of her ambitions to transform England from a third-rate island kingdom into a global imperial power. In 1580, sailing on Elizabeth’s covert orders, Drake became the first captain to circumnavigate the earth successfully. (Ferdinand Magellan had died in his attempt.) Part exploring expedition, part raiding mission, Drake’s audacious around-the-world journey in the Golden Hind reached Patagonia, the Pacific Coast of present-day California and Oregon, the Spice Islands, Java, and Africa. Almost a decade later, Elizabeth called upon Drake again. As the devil-may-care vice admiral of the English fleet, Drake dramatically defeated the once-invincible Spanish Armada, spurring the British Empire’s ascent and permanently wounding its greatest rival. The relationship between Drake and Elizabeth is the missing link in our understanding of the rise of the British Empire, and its importance has not been fully described or appreciated. Framed around Drake’s key voyages as a window into this crucial moment in British history, In Search of a Kingdom is a rousing adventure narrative entwining epic historical themes with intimate passions.

Author : Samuel Bawlf
Publisher : D & M Publishers
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 20,65 MB
Release : 2009-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1926706242

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In The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, Samuel Bawlf offers fascinating insight into life at sea in the sixteenth century, from the dangers of mutiny and the difficulty of understanding patterns of wind and current to the arduous physical challenges faced every day by Drake’s men. But it is Bawlf's assertion of Drake’s whereabouts in the summer of 1579 that gives his book its exciting originality. Based especially on his seminal study of maps produced after the voyage, Bawlf shows with certainty that Drake sailed all the way to Alaska, much farther north than anyone has heretofore imagined, thereby rewriting the history of exploration. He was, Bawlf claims, in search of the western entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage, at which he planned to found England’s first colony, and wrest control of the Pacific from Spain. Drake’s voyage was in fact so far ahead of its time that another 200 years would pass before the eighteenth-century explorers of record reached the northwest coast of North America.

Author : David Drake
Publisher : Baen Books
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 26,57 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0743435648

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Earth is a dead cinder and the last of the human race struggles for survival beneath the dense clouds of Venus. Two courageous visionaries--the fighting men Brainard and Gordon--must struggle through the hellish surface jungles, but if they fail, both Venus and Mankind will die.

Author : Robert L. Stupack
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 27,88 MB
Release : 2017-03-21
Category :
ISBN : 9781518827495

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It took the genius of Sir Francis Drake and an army of men to bury the contents of a Spanish Treasure Galleon somewhere in the land Drake called Nova Albion, and the only evidence they left behind was a small brass plaque that claimed the land for England. It only took one man to unravel the 400-year-old mystery surrounding the treasure's location and contents and he found it in his own backyard. Uncovering the Treasure of Sir Francis Drake and the Theft of His Plate of Brass follows the true adventures of Robert Stupack, who buys a house on Greenbrae Ridge in one of America's wealthiest areas, Marin County, and is told by a neighbor that Sir Francis Drake's famous -Plate of Brass- was discovered on his street. While walking along an undeveloped hillside between his property and San Francisco Bay, Stupack finds a weather worn stone carving of an Aztec warrior. When an antiquities dealer positively identifies the alabaster piece as dating from the early 1500s, Stupack instinctively knows that Drake's fabled treasure is buried somewhere on his property. After reading about Drake's life, Stupack uses a copy of the -treasure map, - formally known as the Hondius Broadside Map of 1595, aligning its images with key features on his property. His calculated test excavations with a shovel and jackhammer quickly transform his once magnificently landscaped back yard into a disaster area. When his ex-wife and family learn of his activities, they are convinced that he's lost his mind and have the police drag him off to a psych ward where he's placed in a straight-jacket and kept in a locked room on a 72-hour hold. Their efforts do not dissuade him from continuing his quest! His early excavations, guided by Drake's clever use of different colored clay, provide important clues as to where the treasure is hidden, prompting Stupack to dig a series of tunnels. However, the various kinds of clay turn out to contain high levels of boron, selenium and arsenic that severely sicken him. Now, wearing layers of clothing to protect him from the toxins, he follows these clay clues, zigzagging downward until he's 36 feet below ground level. Along the way he finds a cache of Brazilian diamonds; a -missing- Incan artifact, -The Emerald Goddess; a large round stone covered in gold, and an incredible array of precious and semi-precious stones. Numerous times, he narrowly escapes potentially fatal booby-traps that employ quicksand, collapsing rooms and flooding tunnels, all designed by Drake to prevent anyone but him from recovering the treasure. Two years into his project and exactly 423 years after the date in the Plate of Brass inscription, Stupack discovers the set of missing tools used to create Drake's artifact. In the 1970s the Plate had been discredited as a fake, but now Stupack knows better. He meets with the Acting Director of the Bancroft Library to inform him that he's found something that can change that -worthless fake- back into a -priceless artifact.- After metallurgical tests are conducted on the tools, the Bancroft staff suddenly stop responding to Stupack's calls and emails, and he suspects that something is seriously wrong. His internet sleuthing reveals the probable cause: that same Acting Director was the one responsible for discrediting the Plate back in the '70s by misquoting the opinion of the authentication team's lead scientist. Stupack also learns of one other man who knew about this crime, whose death certificate shows that arsenic poisoning was a contributing factor in his early demise.

Author : John Drake
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 24,96 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 141659275X

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A captivating and original prequel to "Treasure Island" that will delight fans of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic as well as fans of those "other" pirates of the Caribbean.

Author : George Alfred Henty
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
Page : 550 pages
File Size : 19,80 MB
Release : 1978-01-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1613107242

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"It is a fair sight." "It may be a fair sight in a Roman's eyes, Beric, but nought could be fouler to those of a Briton. To me every one of those blocks of brick and stone weighs down and helps to hold in bondage this land of ours; while that temple they have dared to rear to their gods, in celebration of their having conquered Britain, is an insult and a lie. We are not conquered yet, as they will some day know to their cost. We are silent, we wait, but we do not admit that we are conquered." "I agree with you there. We have never fairly tried our strength against them. These wretched divisions have always prevented our making an effort to gather; Cassivelaunus and some of the Kentish tribes alone opposed them at their first landing, and he was betrayed and abandoned by the tribes on the north of the Thames. It has been the same thing ever since. We fight piecemeal; and while the Romans hurl their whole strength against one tribe the others look on with folded hands. Who aided the Trinobantes when the Romans defeated them and established themselves on that hill? No one. They will eat Britain up bit by bit." "Then you like them no better for having lived among them, Beric?" "I like them more, but I fear them more. One cannot be four years among them, as I was, without seeing that in many respects we might copy them with advantage. They are a great people. Compare their splendid mansions and their regular orderly life, their manners and their ways, with our rough huts, and our feasts, ending as often as not with quarrels and brawls. Look at their arts, their power of turning stone into lifelike figures, and above all, the way in which they can transfer their thoughts to white leaves, so that others, many many years hence, can read them and know all that was passing, and what men thought and did in the long bygone. Truly it is marvellous." "You are half Romanized, Beric," his companion said roughly. "I think not," the other said quietly; "I should be worse than a fool had I lived, as I have done, a hostage among them for four years without seeing that there is much to admire, much that we could imitate with advantage, in their life and ways; but there is no reason because they are wiser and far more polished, and in many respects a greater people than we, that they should come here to be our masters. These things are desirable, but they are as nothing to freedom. I have said that I like them more for being among them. I like them more for many reasons. They are grave and courteous in their manner to each other; they obey their own laws; every man has his rights; and while all yield obedience to their superiors, the superiors respect the rights of those below them. The highest among them cannot touch the property or the life of the lowest in rank. All this seems to me excellent; but then, on the other hand, my blood boils in my veins at the contempt in which they hold us; at their greed, their rapacity, their brutality, their denial to us of all rights. In their eyes we are but savages, but wild men, who may be useful for tilling the ground for them, but who, if troublesome, should be hunted down and slain like wild beasts. I admire them for what they can do; I respect them for their power and learning; but I hate them as our oppressors."