Kings, Queens, Sailors, Spies!: How Francis Drake's Secret Mission Claimed California and Fooled the Mapmakers for 200 Years

1579. Famed English privateer Francis Drake navigates the Pacific Northwest on a clandestine search for the fabled Northwest Passage, aided by Portuguese sea secret pilot Nuñez da Moreira. Left on the rugged California coast and sent on a perilous secret mission, Moreira survives only to face the dreaded Spanish Inquisition and, under torture, reveals secrets of Drake's voyage and that California is an island.

The Spanish government chooses to allow the geographical mistake for two hundred years to deny English claims to North America in a tense game of deception and conquest between empires in the New World. A documented reimagining of the first European explorations of California by sea and land, KINGS, QUEENS, SAILORS, SPIES! tells how the greatest cartographers of the Age of Discovery got it wrong.