Alastair Macleod 
Carta Marina 
or necklace of gold

In the year 1588; with the blessing of the Pope, the Spanish Armada sets out from Iberia to invade England. This is the story of a young man’s coming of age. Of first love in Lisbon, as he prepares to sail with his father on the huge fleet of ships assembled by King Phillip II of Spain, then a close encounter with death on the high seas, as they first battle the English, then find themselves pitted against Atlantic summer storms in unknown waters as the Armada tries to sail round the top of Scotland. It is also the story of their wrecked ship, the El Gran Grifón and its crew. Surviving, in northern waters, when so many other Armada crews perished on the coast of Ireland, these men owed much of their fate to a remarkable map, the Carta Marina, created by the young man’s grandfather.