The conquest of the North Atlantic

The earliest ventures out into the Western Ocean were those of certain Irish monks in quest of desert islands in which to pursue their vocation. These culminated in a series of voyages to Iceland. The Irish were later followed by Norsemen of the Viking age assuredly some of the most skillful and most daring mariners who ever sailed the seas, their ventures eventually extending as far westward as Greenland and the American mainland. Besides the due assessment of what these early seafarers actually achieved, there has to be faced the even more difficult problem of how they did it, without compass, quadrant, or astrolabe: a question which has generally baffled the purely academic authority. Marcus looks at these matters, not only as a historian, but also as the lifelong friend of sailors of various lands. At each stage, extensive research has been checked and supplemented by the views of experienced seamen. From the opening account of the launching of a curach in the Aran Islands, through the great pages of the Icelandic saga which contains the first recorded sighting of America, Marcus conveys all the hazard and excitement of these ventures in a narrative that is based equally on scholarly research and knowledge of seamanship. Lastly, he considers the new light which has recently been shed on the earliest phase of English maritime expansion and the rediscovery of the New World in the fifteenth century.