Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (17 page)

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Authors: Giles Milton

BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
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Drake listened to Lane’s request and “most readily assented,” aware that it was the only sensible option. Without further ado, he sent his surviving pinnaces to Roanoke to pick up the supplies and men. As he watched them crash through the surf towards his offshore fleet, he was surprised to see a small, dark-faced figure seated at the helm of one of the boats. Manteo, friend of the English, had decided to return to London.
Smoke into Gold
Ralph Lane’s departure from Roanoke was chaotic. Sir Francis Drake’s sailors were so fearful the hurricane would return that they threatened to leave the colonists behind if they did not immediately assemble on the foreshore. “The weather was so boysterous,” admitted Lane, “[that] the greater number of the fleete [were] much agrieved with their long and daungerous abode in that miserable road.”
Lane was the first to climb aboard the waiting pinnace, followed by Harriot, White, and the other gentlemen. They were rowed out to Drake’s vessel, the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
, leaving a few sailors in charge of their trunks and chests. These contained virtually everything that had been collected over the previous year—charts, maps, specimens, paintings, and seeds. It was a scientific treasure trove—a complete record of Queen Elizabeth I’s Virginia.
To Lane’s surprise, the pinnace assigned to bring these trunks to Drake’s flagship was empty when it arrived at the ship’s side. His immediate concern was that his belongings had been left unattended on the beach, and he ordered the men to row the two miles back to shore to retrieve them. But the sailors refused. They had already made the journey several times and were worried by the growing strength of the wind. When Lane repeated his order, he was
told by one of the men that there was no point. The trunks, chests, and crates, he explained, had all gone to a watery grave.
There was a moment’s stunned silence before a horrified Lane demanded to know more. The sailors nonchalantly explained that the heavily laden pinnace had repeatedly grounded in the shallow waters of Pamlico Sound, and they had lightened it by simply hurling everything overboard. “Most of all wee had,” wrote a distraught Lane, “with all our cardes, bookes and writings, were by the saylers cast over boord.” The scale of the catastrophe soon became apparent. Many of Lane’s notebooks had been hurled into the sea, Harriot’s priceless scientific notes were lost, and even a “fayre chaine” of pearls was jettisoned. This caused Harriot no less distress than the loss of his notes, for they were of such “uniformitie in roundenesse [and] orientnesse” that he had intended to present them to the queen on his return. Even some of John White’s watercolours had been cast overboard. Of the enormous amount of material gathered from Roanoke, only a few boxes of seeds and a book of Harriot’s notes had made it to the
Elizabeth Bonaventure
. It was a setback that devastated Lane, Harriot, and White.
The maps and notes were not all that had been left behind. Such was the rush to set sail that three of the colonists had the misfortune to be left on shore. “[They] had gone further into the country,” explained Lane, “and the wind grew so that we could not stay for them.” Their fate was to remain a mystery for more than three decades, and was to become entwined in one of the great riddles of the early seventeenth century, one which would involve Ralegh, Harriot, and White as well as two Indian chieftains and dozens of tribesmen.
Drake’s ships were extremely crowded. In addition to Lane’s colonists, he was still carrying 500 African and Indian slaves that had been picked up in the Caribbean. There were far too many mouths to feed on the long journey back to England. After guaranteeing safe passage to a small group of Turkish galley slaves, Sir Francis set the rest of the slaves ashore on the Outer Banks and left them to fend for
themselves. It was a cruel decision, for he knew they had little hope of survival. Abandoned and hungry, they must have either starved to death or been butchered by the Indians. They were never heard from again.
The fleet made its hurried departure from the Outer Banks in the third week of June 1586, and arrived “in Portesmouth, the 27 of Julie the same yeere.” Drake was given a triumphant welcome when he stepped ashore. Stories of his voyage of destruction had already reached England and the harbour was thronged with townsfolk anxious to glimpse not only Sir Francis, but the “great spoyles and riches” that were said to be stashed in the holds of his ships. The fact that he had failed in his key objective—to attack the Spanish treasure fleet—was brushed aside in the rush to celebrate his “large scale villainy.” The audacity of his attack on Santo Domingo thrilled even England’s most peace-minded courtiers, and “so inflamed the whole countrie with a desyre to adventure unto the seas yn hope of the lyke good successe, that a greate nomber prepeared shipps, marynors and soylders and travelled every place at the seas where any proffite might be had.”
After a brief rest, Drake made his leisurely progress to London, where he was royally entertained at Richmond Palace. “I happened to meet Francis Drake, the knight, on the next day,” wrote a German visitor to the court. “He filled the whole palace with a very special joy. His friends and relatives are celebrating his safe return from such a long journey with its difficulties and dangers overcome.”
Drake’s return totally overshadowed that of Ralph Lane and his men. The court was far more interested in the sack of Santo Domingo than in the failed experiment on Roanoke, and even those who had been keeping themselves informed of developments did not rush to make contact with Lane. When Richard Hakluyt learned of his disorderly departure, his moral indignation got the better of him: “[He] left all thinges so confusedly,” he wrote, “as if they had bene chased from thence by a mightie armie, and no doubt so they
were, for the hande of God came upon them for the crueltie and outrages committed by some of them against the native inhabitantes of the countrie.”
The records of Ralegh’s first meeting with Lane have been lost, but the content of their discussion is not in doubt. Enough of Lane’s letters have survived to show that his opinion of America—and more particularly of Roanoke—had changed dramatically in the twelve months he spent living there. His earliest reports had been bursting with optimism; he had assured the court that “the Lord, to hys glory, dothe dayely blesse here with a dayely discoverye of sumwhat rare growynge.” In a note to Hakluyt he was more expansive, informing him that the land “has the goodliest soile under the cape of heaven” and adding the tantalising news that “the people [are] naturally most curteous, and very desirous to have clothes, but especially of course cloth rather than silke.” This, he knew, would gain the attention of England’s merchants, for woollens and broadcloth were among the country’s most profitable exports. If anything was guaranteed to ensure the survival of Ralegh’s American colony, it was a new export market.
Now, one year on, Lane had changed his tune. The natives, he had discovered, where not quite as “curteous” as he had first supposed. Far from wanting woolly jerkins and cloaks, they were desperate to get their hands on muskets and calivers—items that even England’s hard-pressed merchants were reluctant to sell. Then there was the geographical position of the colony to consider. Pamlico Sound was certainly hidden from the prying eyes of the Spaniards, but there was a high price to pay for such security. The water was so shallow that even relatively small craft had to remain at anchor several miles offshore, and all three inlets to the sound were treacherous. Wococon had already displayed ample proof of its dangers; Trinity had just seven feet of water at high tide; Ferdinando was only a few feet deeper. The only boats that could move freely in and out of the sound were wherries and pinnaces, fragile craft that had not been built to withstand the Atlantic breakers. Since a secure harbour
was critical to the success of any colony, Lane had grave reservations about this entire stretch of coastline.
His greatest disappointment was the lack of success of his “mynerall men.” In the early days he had written excitedly about “many sortes of apothecorie drugs” and had held out the hope of finding, if not gold, then certainly silver and copper. Metallurgist Joachim Ganz had been so confident of success that he built a smelting laboratory and devoted hours of his time to bubbling up heady concoctions of crushed stone and dirt. It was a forlorn task, for his men had been unable to find anything more valuable than “ragge stones” or pebbles. Although there was a brief moment of celebration when they discovered a vein of kaolin, useful for colonists with diarrhoea, they soon realised that short of a nationwide outbreak of food poisoning, it was unlikely to make Ralegh the fortune he craved. Lane still held out the hope that precious metals would be found in the interior of the country, but his forced evacuation had brought to a halt all of his planned expeditions. His final assessment of the realities of American colonisation was blunt and uncompromising: “The discovery of a good mine, by the goodnesse of God, or a passage to the South Sea, … and nothing els, can bring this country in request to be inhabited by our nation.”
For all the doom and gloom, there was a faint glimmer of hope in his prognosis. America’s soil was fertile and the country could boast “the most sweete and healthfullest climate.” If Ralegh could discover even a small amount of gold, concluded Lane, then the “many other rootes and gummes there found [will] make good marchandise … which otherwise, of themselves, will not be worth the fetching.”
Sir Walter must have been disappointed in Lane’s assessment of the Roanoke experiment and dismayed that Lane had abandoned his colony. His only consolation was the fact that the crippling costs of equipping the settlers had been more than covered by pillage from Spanish vessels—a tidy sum that could yet persuade London’s merchants to try their luck once again in America.
But he soon found his efforts hampered by an unexpected development. Lane’s men had suffered appalling hardships during their year on Roanoke and were furious at having been duped into thinking that life in the New World would be comfortable. Now that they were back in London, they gave vent to their rage, vilifying the organisation of the colony and spreading scurrilous tales about the gentlemen in charge. Their criticisms were not entirely unwarranted: it was all very well for their governor to brag of surviving on a diet of congealed dog gristle and leaves, but they—unlike him—were not war-hardened soldiers. Nor were they enamoured with living alongside neighbours who showed an alarming propensity for murder and bloodshed—a very different picture from the one they had been given by Manteo during his time in London. One of the wealthier colonists, Thomas Harvey, was virtually bankrupted by his year on Roanoke; unable to settle his debts, he found himself in the dock. He used the court as a platform from which to pour out his grievances, further widening the damaging publicity. He publicly complained of the colonists’ “very miserable case” and said that as a direct consequence of his year in America, “he became poore and [was] unable to pay his creditors.” The court was not impressed and he was thrown in prison, but his plight found a ready audience among tavern dwellers and gossips who delighted in the colourful stories of colonists scavenging for acorns while fighting off murderous Indians.
“There have bin divers and variable reportes,” wrote a despairing Harriot, “with some slaunderous and shameful speeches bruited abroad by many that returned from thence.” He was concerned that these “envious, malicious and slaunderous” tales would dissuade “many that otherwise would have also favoured and adventured in the action.”
With Ralegh’s active encouragement, Harriot now began work on his A
Briefe and True Report
about America, a brilliant and wellcrafted work of propaganda that set out to scotch many of the “lies” being told by the settlers. “I have therefore thought it good,” he
writes in the preface, “to impart so much unto you of the fruites of our labours, as that you may knowe how injuriously the enterprise is slaundered.” He added that he was uniquely qualified to tell the truth, since he alone spoke the Indian tongue and had “seene and knowne more then the ordinarie.”
Published in 1588,
A Briefe and True Report
was neither brief nor was it always true. Harriot had been hired to write a book whose principal aim was to persuade London’s merchants that America was a land of glittering opportunity that could be a great source of “profit and gaine.” He urged them not to lose sight of the New World’s potential, and gave his assurance that trade with the Indians would “enrich yourselves the providers, those that shal deal with you; the enterprisers in general, and greatly profit our owne countreymen.”
Harriot’s breadth of knowledge was remarkable, especially since so much of his material had been lost in the departure from Roanoke, but he worked in tandem with Manteo, his unacknowledged collaborator, who explained the customs of the Indians and provided information about the produce of the land. The two men had renewed their chambers at Durham House on their return to England and, shortly afterwards, begun work on what was to prove an exhilarating project.
Their hardest task was to present the Indian population in a positive light. Men like Davy Ingrams and Sir George Peckham had led the colonists to expect that they would arrive in America to find cheery natives falling over themselves in their desire to be helpful. The reality had proved rather different. Many of the native Americans had looked upon the English adventurers with deep suspicion, and although they had saved Lane’s men from starvation on more than one occasion, they had also come close to wiping them out. Harriot chose to gloss over the murders and butchery; he made only one oblique reference to the slaughter of Wingina, and even then he blamed the bloodthirsty settlers. His purpose was to persuade future colonists that “in respect of troubling our inhabiting and planting, [the Indians] are not to be feared.”
He took great exception to the popular view that they were ignorant savages: while admitting that they were somewhat lacking in “skill and judgement in the knowledge and use of our things,” he made the startling assertion (for the Elizabethan age) that they were “very ingenious”—clever and talented—“for although they have no such tooles, nor any such craftes, sciences and artes as wee, yet in those things they doe, they shewe excellencie of wit.” He added that if future colonists behaved themselves and taught by example, the natives “may in short time be brought to civilities and the imbracing of true religion.”

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