In 1680, a band of English buccaneers marched across the Isthmus of Darien from the Atlantic to the Pacific and, off Panama, captured several Spanish vessels, one of which they made their flagship. From this vessel they terrorized Spanish possessions on the west coast of the Americas. On July 29, 1681, they captured another Spanish ship, from which they obtained a derrotero, or book of charts and sailing directions. Their depredations over, the pirates sailed eastward around Cape Horn to the Caribbean, where they distributed their booty. When they arrived in England, the Spanish ambassador demanded that the buccaneers be brought to trial. The derrotero was ordered to be brought to King Charles II, who apparently appreciated its great intelligence value. The buccaneers were acquitted; as a result the English ambassador to Spain was expelled from Madrid.

The derrotero was subsequently translated, and one of the buccaneers, Basil Ringrose, added a text to the compilation and information to the Spanish charts. The resulting atlas, consisting of 106 pages of charts and 106 pages of text, is published in full for the first time in this volume. Covering the area from California to Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos, and Juan Fernandez, Basil Ringrose's south sea waggoner is a rich source of geographical information, with observations on navigational, physical, biological, and cultural features as well as on ethnography, customs, and folklore. After almost exactly three hundred years, this secret atlas is now made available to libraries and individuals. The editors have provided an extensive introduction on historical, geographical, and navigational aspects of the atlas, as well as annotations to the charts and text, and they have plotted the coverage of the charts on modern map bases.