Neptune's Trident: Spices and Slaves 1500-1507

Neptune's Trident is a dazzlingly detailed account of a forgotten, yet major aspect of British history. Full of risk, adventure and heroic action on the one hand, with exploitation, skull-duggery and piracy on the other, this first of five volumes carries the reader from the emergence of Tudor England on the world stage in defiance of Spain's sea-borne empire, to the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, with an account of the slavetrade until its abolition in 1807. Prize-winning maritime author Richard Woodman restores Great Britain's mercantile marine to its rightful place in the nation's history - alongside that of the Royal Navy, to whose glories it contributed - but not buried beneath it. Truly this is a surprising history.