The Defeat of John Hawkins : A Biography Of His Third Slaving Voyage

London: George Allen & Unwin. Very Good- in Very Good- dust jacket. (1960). First Edition. Hardcover. Ex libris label, Bruce Godward. Previous owner's signature. Some foxing. Fading to dust-jacket spine. 15mm abrasion at head of dust-jacket spine. Dust-jacket protected in archival mylar cover.; First printing. 319, [1] pages + frontispiece + 6 illustrations on 3 plates leaves. 3 full page maps and 3 illustrations within the paginated leaves. Red boards with gilt lettering on spine. Page dimensions: 216 x 137mm. "Twenty years before Sir John Hawkins and his kinsman Drake harried the Great Armada to its doom, these two same English sea-captains ahd matched their guns against those of Spain in an obscure harour on the Gulf Coast of Mexico - San Juan de Ulua. It was a hard-fought, desperate battle, from which Hawkins and relatively few of his men escaped home. It was also a turning-point in the relationship between England and Spain. The fight at San Juan made the Great Armada inevitable, and taught the English navy how to overcome it. // The voyage that brought Hawkins' fleet to the Caribbean was a slaving and trading venture - the most ambitious he had ever untaken. To accomplish his object Hawkins sought out negroes in the creek villages of West Africa and sailed, in defiance of Spanish law, to sell them to the Spanish colonists of the islands and the main. Despite storm and mutiny, and the hazards of navigating uncharted seas, he almost succeded. Then destruction overwhelmed his fleet." - from dust-jacket blurb. .