In the days of Queen Elizabeth, English sailors first began to find their way across the seas to new lands, from which they brought home many strange, and rich, and beautiful things. The Spaniards sailed across the seas too, to fetch gold and silver from the mines in Mexico, which belonged to the King of Spain. Sometimes the English ships met the Spanish ones, and robbed them of their gold, for it was thought quite right and fair in those days to take every chance of doing harm to the enemies of England. Of course the Spaniards hated the English for this, and whenever they met English ships which were weaker than theirs they attacked them, and robbed them, killing the sailors, or taking them prisoners.

Once, a small ship, called the Revenge, was sailing home to England, when it met with fifty great Spanish vessels. The captain of the Revenge was Sir Richard Grenville, and he had a great many sick men on board. There was no time to escape from the Spanish ships, which soon surrounded the little Revenge. So there were only two courses which Sir Richard could take. One was to give up his ship to the Spaniards............