CAPE BOJADOR
– The Gateway to Hell

The early European sailor had no means of establishing his position on the open sea. This fact, together with the terror of Bojador, the evil cape, the gateway to hell, where the waters cascading over the edge of the flat earth would plunge his fragile caravel into the abyss, obliged him to navigate always in sight of familiar landmarks.

A young Portuguese mariner, Mario Freitas, in love with his captain's daughter, Elena, is captured by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean. His ship is taken. His captain killed. The beautiful young Countess of Zaragossa, on her way to a forced marriage with Prince Carlos of Naples, is captured by the same pirates when they loot and sink her ship. With Mario she is stripped and sold on the slave block in Ceuta. They are bought by the dashing young Emir of Meknes with whom the young countess eventually falls in love. The emir negotiates a treaty with Castile which requires the return of the countess. Mario is ordered to take her back to Castile but she dies in the plague sweeping through Meknes.

During his years of slavery among the Moors Mario ranges the deserts with the caravans and learns the secret of how to navigate by the stars. The cruel commander of the pirate galley is a recurring menace throughout his slavery. Condemned by the commander to be crucified Mario is freed when the Portuguese attack and conquer Ceuta in 1415. Mario returns to Portugal to search for Elena. A cherubic local priest tells him she is in a nunnery, unreachable.

He establishes, under Prince Henry the Navigator, the world-famous Navigation School at Sagres in the Algarve, whence he directs the attempts to conquer Bojador and where Portuguese mariners can learn, at last, how to navigate the open ocean by the stars, thus beginning the great age of discovery. He is visited by agents of the Inquisition. He sails to Bojador. On his return the priest helps him to unite with his love, Elena.
An interesting little surprise closes this tale of adventure.

Based on early fifteenth century historical fact, this is a tale of adventure, seamanship, love, slavery, torture and the life and beliefs of a man who lives to compare the freedom of his slavery in the desert with the bondage of his liberty back home.





MARTIN ALONSO PINZON
– The Mariner Who Preempted Columbus

In MARTIN ALONSO PINZON, the dynamic sequel to BOJADOR, his first novel, G. Edwin Tilston brings vividly to life the turbulent years that lead up to the sailing of the Pinzon fleet in August, 1492. He rivets your imagination with adventure, war, sea battles, love, the burgeoning terror of the Spanish Inquisition, the victorious battle of Granada which expelled the Moors from Iberia after 700 years of occupation, and Isabella’s forced eviction of the Jews, many of whom sailed on the same tide as Pinzon.

With meticulously researched historical fact, this novel shows how Martin Alonso Pinzon conceived, planned, and successfully carried out the famous voyage of discovery as described in the litigation brought by the Castillian crown against the Columbus family in 1506. How Vicente Yanez Pinzon, Martin Alonso’s younger brother, takes his beloved Gabriela to Sevilla to stand by her parents when they are arrested by the Inquisition and thereby witness the horror of the auto de fe where heretics are tortured and burned at the stake. How her parents are arrested again and condemned to the stake themselves.

It is the fifteenth century, when a mariner can fix his latitude and, thereby, finally sail the open ocean; when Bojador has been conquered and the earth is no longer flat; when Portuguese caravels range ever farther down the African coast seeking a route to the Spice Islands, and a handful of intrepid mariners look not to the east, but to the west across the Atlantic Ocean, and believe they can see Cathay.


To continue please click on "The Quadrilogy, Page 2," above.