Skip to main content

Free UK delivery for orders £30

The Queen's Pirate

The Triumphant Life and Tragic End of Thomas Cavendish, Elizabethan Privateer

The Queen's Pirate cover

The Queen's Pirate

The Triumphant Life and Tragic End of Thomas Cavendish, Elizabethan Privateer

Quantity
Pre-order. Available 05 Nov 2026
£12.60 RRP £14.00 Website price saving £1.40 (10%)

Payment for this pre-order will be taken when the item becomes available

Description

In June 1593, a ghostly ship drifted into an Irish harbour. Only 16 crewmen remained alive, and the deck was littered with the dead.

This was the melancholy homecoming of the ship Desire, one of a fleet of five that had left England two years before, fuelled by dreams of Spanish gold and the glory of exploring the globe. The expedition's captain, thirty-one-year-old Thomas Cavendish, had been lost in the South Atlantic and was presumed dead: a victim of disease, mutiny, and an excess of ambition.

Yet just five years earlier, in 1588, things had been very different. Cavendish had returned aboard the Desire triumphant from circumnavigating the world in record time, having taken a Manila galleon and secured the largest haul of treasure ever to fall into English hands. Cavendish sailed the Desire to Greenwich and paid homage to Queen Elizabeth I, staging a lavish banquet for her on board.

In The Queen's Pirate, Iain Gately traces the career of this remarkable Elizabethan mariner from spectacular triumphs to great betrayals and an ill-fated final voyage. Gately expertly steers readers through Cavendish's tempestuous life, as he crafts the first biography of an unjustly neglected Elizabethan hero.

Product details

Published 05 Nov 2026
Format Audiobook
Duration 10 hours and 1 minutes
ISBN 9781035917587
Imprint Apollo
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Iain Gately

Iain Gately was raised in Hong Kong and studied la…

Related Titles

Environment: Staging