This book examines the 1583 voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to North America. This was England's first attempt at colonization beyond the British Isles, yet it has not been subject to thorough scholarly analysis for more than 70 years. An exhaustive examination of the voyage reveals the complexity and preparedness of this and similar early modern colonizing expeditions. Prominent Elizabethans assisted Gilbert by researching and investing in his expedition: the Printing Revolution was critical to their plans, as Gilbert’s supporters traveled throughout England with promotional literature proving England’s claim to North America. Gilbert’s experts used maps and charts to publicize and navigate, while his pilots experimented with new navigating tools and practices. Though he failed to establish a settlement, Gilbert created a blueprint for later Stuart colonizers who achieved his vision of a British Empire in the Western Hemisphere. This book clarifies the role of cartography, natural science, and promotional literature in Elizabethan colonization and elucidates the preparation stages of early modern colonizing voyages.

This book examines the 1583 voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to North America. This was England's first attempt at colonization beyond the British Isles, yet it has not been subject to thorough scholarly analysis for more than 70 years. An exhaustive examination of the voyage reveals the complexity and preparedness of this and similar early modern colonizing expeditions. Prominent Elizabethans assisted Gilbert by researching and investing in his expedition: the Printing Revolution was critical to their plans, as Gilbert’s supporters traveled throughout England with promotional literature proving England’s claim to North America. Gilbert’s experts used maps and charts to publicize and navigate, while his pilots experimented with new navigating tools and practices. Though he failed to establish a settlement, Gilbert created a blueprint for later Stuart colonizers who achieved his vision of a British Empire in the Western Hemisphere. This book clarifies the role of cartography, natural science, and promotional literature in Elizabethan colonization and elucidates the preparation stages of early modern colonizing voyages.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

An enthralling new biography of the most exciting and charismatic adventurer in the history of the English-speaking world Tall, dark, handsome, and damnably proud, Sir Walter Raleigh was one of history's most romantic characters. An explorer, soldier, courtier, pirate, and poet, Raleigh risked his life by trifling with the Virgin Queen's affections. To his enemies—and there were many—he was an arrogant liar and traitor, deserving of every one of his thirteen years in the Tower of London. Regardless of means, his accomplishments are legion: he founded the first American colony, gave the Irish the potato, and defeated Spain. He was also a brilliant operator in the shark pool of Elizabethan court politics, until he married a court beauty, without Elizabeth's permission, and later challenged her capricious successor, James I. Raleigh Trevelyan has traveled to each of the principal places where Raleigh adventured—Ireland, the Azores, Roanoke Islands, and the legendary El Dorado (Orinoco)—and uncovered new insights into Raleigh's extraordinary life. New information from the Spanish archives give a freshness and immediacy to this detailed and convincing portrait of one of the most compelling figures of the Elizabethan era.

From the book: "They were five weeks out of England, driving through a storm on the icy edge of the world, when a sudden blast knocked Gabriel on her side. The helmsman tried frantically to turn the tiny ship into the wind that pinned it down, but the rudder had lifted clear of the surface and took no purchase. Water poured over the side, roaring into hatches as the wind drove the vessel across the waves and the crew clung frozen in despair. Only the captain acted, scrambling along the almost-horizontal upper sides, casting off lines to spill wind from the sails, forcing the crew into action to cut away the mizzenmast and the broken foreyard, then preventing them from doing the same to the mainmast. Finally Gabriel rose sluggishly, heavy with seawater but steering slowly off the wind. A tangle of broken rigging and sodden sails, she wallowed before the storm through the remainder of the day and all of the following night, while the captain restored order and set men to pumping the ship dry." Under orders from Queen Elizabeth I, Gabriel's captain B privateer and adventurer Martin Frobisher B took up the search for a northwestern route to Asia. A few days after enduring the storm of 14 July 1576, Frobisher sighted the most easterly outlier of Arctic North America and for the first time England became aware of this vast northern region. Over the next three summers it would be the scene of an adventure involving the fruitless search for a northwest passage, the first attempt by the British to establish a settlement in the New World, and the first major gold-mining fraud in North American history. Over 1,200 tons of rock were mined from Baffin Island and shipped to England, where they were found to contain not an ounce of gold. Yet Frobisher's claim of possession established British interest in northern North America and was the first step in the eventual establishment of British sovereignty over the northern half of the American continent. Using reports from the men who participated in the venture, details preserved in the oral histories of the Inuit, and archaeological information recovered from the sites of Elizabethan activities on Baffin Island, Robert McGhee describes Frobisher's expeditions and offers new insights into this audacious venture. The story ends on an ironic note B the capital of the new Territory of Nunavut, which restores to the Inuit a measure of the sovereignty claimed for England by Frobisher, lies at the head of the bay named after him, where over four centuries ago the English first ventured into Arctic America.