Empire of Blue Water: Henry Morgan And The Pirates Who Rules The Caribbean Waves

Descripción

'Stephan Talty has always been an elegant and engaging writer, and to read along as he sinks his teeth into such exciting characters and yarns is a delight!' SHAWN LEVY, author of Rat Pack ConfidentialHenry Morgan challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades - and brought it to its knees. A twenty-year-old Welshman, he arrived in the New World in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean in the service of the English became legend. His daring attacks on the mighty Spanish Empire on land and sea changed the fates of kings and queens. His victories helped shape the destiny of the New World.Morgan gathered disaffected English and European sailors and soldiers, hard-bitten adventurers, runaway slaves, cutthroats and sociopaths and turned them into the fiercest and most feared army in the Western Hemisphere. Sailing out from the English strong-hold of Port Royal. Jamaica, 'the wickedest city in the New World'. Morgan and his men terrorized Spanish merchant ships and devastated the cities where great riches in silver, gold, and gems lay waiting to be sent to the King of Spain. His last raid, a daring assault on the fabled city of Panama, helped break Spain's solitary hold on the New World for ever.Awash with bloody battles, political intrigues, and a cast of characters more compelling, bizarre, and memorable than found in a Hollywood swashbuckler - including the notorious pirate L'Ollonais, the soul-tortured King Philip IV of Spain, and Thomas Modyford, the crafty English governor of Jamaica - Empire of Blue Water brilliantly re-creates the passions and the violence of the age of exploration and empire. What's more, it chillingly depicts the apocalyptic natural disaster that finally ended the pirates dominion.'Swashbuckling history at its briny, blood-soaked best, with enough violence and passion to keep the pages flying by' TOM REISS, author of The Orientalist