SEA DOGS: LIFE ABOARD AN ENGLISH GALLEON

What was life like for the men aboard an Elizabethan ship? How did they survive tropical heat, storms, bad water, rotten food, disease, poor navigation, shifting cargoes and enemy fire? What led them to the dangers of Islas Cabo Verdes and the Caribbean, the Rivers Amazonas and Orinoco? Drawing on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century accounts, and with more than a whiff of oakum, salt spray and gunpowder, this book reveals the realities of life at sea for the English sailor in the age of Drake, Raleigh and Hawkyns.