The Great Adventurers

Christopher Columbus survived battles with Tunisian galleys, shipwrecks, imprisonment, and severe illness during his remarkable expeditions, eventually setting foot in the West Indies and on the South American mainland in search of gold.

Navigator, poet, and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter's meteoric rise was followed by a slow and tragic fall from grace that eventually ended with the farcical Orinoco disaster, and subsequent death on the executioner's block.

Sir Francis Drake and the British victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 are inextricably linked, but there is more to this man's story. Drake was the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean and the first to circumnavigate the world.

Shackleton was a leader of men. Most memorable was his 1914 expedition where he and his crew's dream of becoming the first team of explorers to cross the Antarctic continent turned nightmarish. Yet, through sheer endurance, all survived.