Manila galleon

By F. van Wyck Mason

Subjects: British Naval history, Fiction

Description: Fiction based on historical naval history. Adventure and action on the high seas, charting the real life expedition of Admiral George Anson, charged with creating mayhem with the Spanish territories between 1740 - 1744, culminating in the capture of the legendary 'Manila Galleon', a Spanish treasure ship homeward bound annually to Spain. Mason's novel is crammed with tension, action, excitement and adventure, while providing a horrific portrayal of conditions in King George 3rd's English Navy. Particularly disturbing, yet fascinating, are the true and graphic accounts of mutiny and Cannibalism amongst shipwrected sailors and Anson's classic leadership skills, when faced with adversity, the deadly 'scurvy' and very hungry rats, openly eating sailors too weak to fend them off, on the Island of Juan Fernandez, the original setting of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe - based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, marooned on that Island 40 years earlier.