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The Navy That Crossed Mountains: The Conquest of Mexico
The Navy That Crossed Mountains The Conquest of Mexico Author:James Norman Schmidt 5 full page illustrations by Dirk Gringhuis. Bibliography included. Blurb: Martin Lopez was a sixteenth-century carpenter of Spain who joined the Cortes expedition to Mexico. He longed to become an adventurous swordsman, and he did. But it was his carpentry that was one of the greatest factors in the defeat of the Aztecs. Centuries before the... more » word "prefabricated" was coined, Lopez designed a prefabricated navy. He built thirteen ships, disassembled them, and had the parts carried across the tortuous mountain route to the huge lake fronting the capital city of Moctezuma. Reassembled, the little navy was indispensable in the storming of Tenochtitlan.« less