Part One deals with the voyages of the ancients. Where was the Ultima Thule of the Greeks and the fabled land of Punt of the Egyptians ? Who discovered America—certainly not Columbus, but was it an eleventh-century Norseman or an even earlier Irish saint ? Did the Phoenicians circumnavigate Africa two thousand years in advance of Dias ? These problems of historical deduction form a fascinating prelude to the golden age of discovery.
Part Two covers the great burst of deep-sea voyaging that followed the Renaissance. Here we meet not only well-known explorers such as Magellan and Cook, but also a number of lesser-known figures—Gil Eannes who opened the sea route to India, the saint-like Quiros whose ships sighted Australia a hundred and fifty years before Cook, and the Dutchman William Barents whose ship's company were the first to winter in the Arctic pack-ice and live.
Part Three deals with the exploration in the Artic and Antarctic : with well-known figures such as Parry who unveiled the secret of the North-West Passage, James Clark Ross who dis-covered Antarctica, Nansen who crossed the last of the oceans, and the little-known American George Washington De Long without whose heroic drift in the polar ice Nansen's voyage would never have got under way. Here is a carefully-researched reconstruction of the voyages which did most to unveil the secrets of the world : a superb evocation of the unconquerable spirit of man.
