The French writer Gustave Aimard (1818–1883) did not become acquainted with distant countries, the elements of the sea, Indians, gold mines and other attributes of adventure literature in the library. As a boy, he ran away from home and got a job as a cabin boy on a ship, trying at all costs to get to the “wonderland” of America. Twenty years of wanderings allowed the future writer to stock up on exciting stories for future use. In the novel “Kings of the Ocean,” which completes the cycle of the same name, the very spirit of adventure was embodied with amazing vividness: an atmosphere of freedom, battles on land and sea, exciting love stories, proud and noble heroes - pirates , adventurers, merciless to enemies, but honest and fair. The book reproduces illustrations made by French artists for the first editions of Aimard's novels.