num_pages: 314
description: On July 29 1681 a band of English buccaneers that had been terrorizing Spanish possessions on the west coast of the Americas captured a Spanish ship from which they obtained a derrotero or book of charts and sailing directions. When they arrived back in England the Spanish ambassador demanded that the buccaneers be brought to trial. The derrotero was ordered to be brought to King Charles II who apparently appreciated its great intelligence value. The buccaneers were acquitted to the chagrin of the king of Spain who had the English ambassador expelled from the court at Madrid on a seemingly trumped-up charge.The derrotero was subsequently translated and one of the buccaneers Basil Ringrose added a text to the compilation and information to the Spanish charts. The resulting atlas consisting of 106 pages of charts and 106 pages of text is published in full for the first time in this volume. Covering the coast from California to Tierra del Fuego the Galapagos and Juan Fernandes Basil Ringrose's south sea waggoner is a rich source of geographical information with observations on navigational physical biological and cultural features as well as on ethnography customs and folklore.After almost exactly three hundred years this secret atlas is now made available to libraries and individuals. The editors have provided an extensive introduction on historical geographical and navigational aspects of the atlas as well as annotations to the charts and text and they have plotted the coverage of the charts on modern map bases.
language: English
title: A Buccaneer's Atlas: Basil Ringrose's South Sea Waggoner
publisher: University of California Press