Empire of Blue Water

Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, 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 stronghold of Port Royal, Jamaica, ''the wickedest city in the New World'', Morgan and his men terrorised 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 any found in a Hollywood swashbuckler, 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.

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