In this lively and engaging new biography, Harry Kelsey shatters the familiar image of Sir Francis Drake. The Drake of legend was a pious, brave, and just seaman who initiated the move to make England a great naval power and whose acts of piracy against his country's enemies earned him a knighthood for patriotism. Kelsey paints a different and far more interesting picture of Drake as an amoral privateer at least as interested in lining his pockets with Spanish booty as in forwarding the political goals of his country, a man who became a captain general of the English navy, but never waged...

Although his cousin Sir Francis Drake is more famous, Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595) was a more successful seaman and played a pivotal role in the history of England and the emergence of the global slave trade. Born into a family of wealthy pirates, Hawkins became fascinated by tales of the riches of foreign lands. Early in his career he led an illegal expedition in which he captured three hundred slaves in Sierra Leone and transported them to the West Indies, where he traded them for pearls, hides, and sugar - thus giving birth to the British slave trade. His voyages were so lucrative that...

Newly revised and updated for 2016, this book provides the first complete story of one of Californias most important historical and archaeological sites. It explores the story of the Mission and its people starting with the pre-European era, followed by the arrival of the Spanish and the start of the mission era, through secularization, decay, and then rebuilding. The book features over 70 historic photos, maps, and drawings, many previously unpublished.

This is the engaging story of what is arguably the finest mission church in California, retaining most of the features that it had when...