by Edwin M. Bacon
From the Preface: "In the year 1582, a quarter of a century before the founding of Jamestown, in 1607, and thirty-eight years before the establishment of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in 1620, there appeared in London a pamphlet-volume entitled, Divers Voyages touching the Discouerie o America and the Ilands adaicent unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen and afterwards by the Frenchmen and Britons. The direct and practical object of this little book was the promotion of English colonization on the American continent, where Spain at the South and France at the North then had firm footholds. Its mission was fully accomplished in giving the first effective impulse to the movements which led up to the ultimate establishment of the colonies that eventually formed the United States. So it has a particular interest, especially for all Americans who would know their country, as a first source of the True History of the American Nation." In this, the ideal accompanying volume to Elizabethan Sea Dogs , Bacon both interprets and retells that seminal work by Richard Hakluyt, and significantly aids the modern reader to understand the politics, emotions and oft-times the venality of the motives behind the great explorations of the New World by such as the Cabots, Frobisher, Hawkins and of course Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.
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