Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (2 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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When the men prepared to set sail, they realised their ship had been fatally weakened by storms and ice and needed substantial repairs before it could rejoin the
William.
When Hore delved into the hold of his vessel, he discovered to his horror that all the barrels and casks were empty and that all of their fishing equipment had been transferred onto the other vessel. “[The men] grew into great want of victuals … [and] found small relief.” They did have one stroke of good fortune. An osprey made its nest in a nearby tree and “brought hourely to her yong great plentie of divers sorts of fishes”—fish that the men eagerly took from the fledglings. But when the osprey grew wise to their tricks, it moved the nest and the men began to starve.
“Such was the famine,” Dawbeny later recalled, “that they were forced to seeke to relieve themselves of raw herbes and rootes that they sought on the maine.” He now found himself longing for polar bear or roasted auk, but the Labrador wilderness proved to be almost devoid of life. Small parties of men were sent into the forest to search for food, but they returned empty-handed. As each day
passed the men grew weaker and weaker. It was not long before they grew so crazed from hunger that the dark lust for food affected their reason.
 
Richard Hore’s 1536 expedition to America hoped to return to England with “savages” in tow. But the Indians escaped in their dugout canoes, leaving Hore with debts and disappointments
“[With] the famine increasing, and the reliefe of herbes being to little purpose to satisfie their insatiable hunger … [a] fellowe killed his mate while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe.” He
hauled the body into the forest and, “cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them.” It soon transpired that he was not the only one to turn in desperation to cannibalism. A head count revealed that several men had gone missing, and Hore began to grow suspicious. He had at first assumed that they had been “devoured with wilde beastes” or “destroyed with savages,” but he soon learned that there was a far more sinister explanation. “It fortuned that one of the company, driven with hunger to seeke abroade for reliefe, found out in the fieldes the savour of broyled flesh.” The man went to investigate the smell and spotted one of his shipmates grilling juicy gobbets of what looked like human flesh over a fire. A heated conversation ensued, and tempers flared into “cruell speaches” until the culprit confessed. “If thou wouldest needes know,” he said, “the broyled meate that I had was a piece of such a man’s buttocke.”
When this news reached Richard Hore, he sank to his knees in horror. He immediately summoned the men and launched into “a notable oration,” telling them “how much these dealings offended the Almightie; and vouched the Scriptures from first to last.” He added that “it had bene better to have perished in body and to have lived everlastingly … [than] bee condemned everlastingly both body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell.” As he ended his speech he “besought all the company to prey that it might please God to looke upon their miserable present state and for his owne mercie to relieve the same.”
Their prayers for food went unanswered and, as the famine grew ever more desperate, even their Christian resolve failed them. “They agreed amongst themselves rather then all should perish, to cast lots who should be killed.” But no sooner had the first unfortunate victim been selected than they spied a French ship on the horizon—a stray fishing vessel—which was “well furnished with vittaile.” It did not take the men long to decide on a course of action. “Such was the policie [trickery] of the English, that they became master of the
same and, changing ships [abandoning the damaged
Trinity
] … they set sayle to come into England.”
These proud Tudor gentlemen, who had set out with such high hopes of adventure, were utterly broken by their experiences. They were so heartily sick of the sea that they put into the first port they came to—St. Ives—and elected to travel overland to London, resting at “a certaine castle belonging to Sir John Luttrell.” All of the men were dejected, and one of their number, Thomas Buts, “was so changed in the voyage with hunger and miserie, that Sir William his father and my Lady his mother knew him not to be their sonne untill they found a secret marke, which was a wart upon one of his knees.”
The men fully expected to be punished for their cannibalism, but to their surprise their plight was met not with shame and stigma but with sympathy. King Henry was untroubled by their desperate recourse to cannibalism and declared himself “so moved with pitie that he punished not his subjects.” When the French authorities complained about the English theft of their ship, he “of his owne purse, made full and royall recompence.”
The voyage that had set sail with such confidence and expectation had failed in every respect. Hore had hoped to return home with a primitive “savage” in tow—a seminaked chieftain decked in skins and headdress. Instead, he arrived with a band of sick and emaciated men who had experienced an adventure they would try hard to forget. Hore himself was saddled with debt and, worse still, the owner of the
Trinity
was demanding compensation for the loss of his ship. Far from exciting public enthusiasm for America, Hore’s expedition killed off all interest in the land over the water. The king, too, had lost his enthusiasm. For the next quarter of a century, there were no officially sanctioned voyages of discovery to America.
The “new founde lande” had been abandoned to its “savages.”
Sir Humfrey and the Cannibals
On a brilliant summer’s evening in 1582, Maurice Browne and Thomas Smythe could be seen strolling down Red Crosse Street, a prosperous quarter of London that lay just a stone’s throw from the River Thames. Browne was a close friend of Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state, Sir Francis Walsingham. Smythe was the son of Customer Smythe, who had amassed an immense fortune from farming customs duties. Although both men were still in their twenties, they had already made an impression at court.
They were dressed in considerable splendour, sporting foppish doublets and jaunty hats, yet their presence passed almost unnoticed by the hawkers who were accustomed to loiter in the neighbourhood. Courtiers were among Red Crosse Street’s most regular visitors, for this gabled thoroughfare was home to a number of important merchants and adventurers.
These two men were to be the guests of Sir Humfrey Gilbert. He had invited them to his imposing dwelling to show them his “charte” of America in the hope that it would convince them to accompany him on his greatest adventure. They had scarcely reached the porch of one of the grander houses when the door was flung open by a striking gentleman, a dozen or so years older than his visitors. Gilbert was a familiar figure in the Elizabethan court
and a man of such dynamic energy that he was doomed never to be content in the parochial atmosphere of Elizabethan England. “He is not worthy to live at all,” he once wrote to his brother, “that for fear or danger of death shunneth his country’s danger or his own honour.”
Ever since he was a child, Gilbert had thirsted for adventure, dreaming up overseas schemes and projects—many of them fantastical—which he nonetheless tried to put into practice with a foolhardy determination. He was so reckless and boastful that his contemporaries were unable to decide whether to stand in awe of him or to be repulsed. To his friends he had a “verie pregnant wit” and “excellent vertues,” but his enemies at court saw a darker and less savoury aspect to his character: “unsound and brimful of fickleness, and bragging and overflowing with vanity.”
If his portrait is at all honest, Sir Humfrey carried himself with a suitably buccaneering swagger, his pranked ruff forcing him to walk with his head bolt upright. He had jet-black hair and a cold, calculating expression that would have been sinister were it not for his flamboyant moustache, clipped, frounced, and brushed back in such a way that it looked as if he had two doormice stuck to his face. In later portraits he is shown caressing a globe, a suitable pose for one of the leading spirits in that group of intrepid Elizabethans, the gentlemen of the West, who looked towards the horizon—the Americas—for glory, riches, and adventure.
Sir Humfrey had already attempted to land men in America in 1578, the first Atlantic voyage of exploration for many a year. He had persuaded the queen to grant him a licence to discover “such remote, heathen and barbarous landes, countries and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince.” He had then furnished a little flotilla and set sail across the ocean with a motley crew of pirates and criminals, trusting to fair winds and good luck. He was blessed with neither. Most of his vessels limped home without ever losing sight of England. Only one ship, the
Falcon
, actually left English waters; it was captained by Gilbert’s youthful half-brother, who
set his course for the West Indies with the intention of pillaging Spanish treasure ships. But this vessel also returned to England “sore battered and disabled,” and its captain was roundly condemned for his behaviour. His name—then entered into the official records for the first time—was Walter Ralegh.
 
Sir Humfrey Gilbert had long thirsted for adventure. Ignoring the queen’s warning that he was a man noted “of not good hap,” he sailed for America in pursuit of riches and glory
Gilbert’s two visitors knew all about his abortive 1578 expedition, for they shared his fascination with the land across the sea. Gilbert
hoped that his newly found chart would fire their enthusiasm for his proposed voyage. “Within a whyle after our cominge to hym,” recalled Browne, “he shewed us the card of the whole country where he ment to settill hymselfe.” Gilbert spoke with such gusto about his voyage that he almost persuaded his two guests to accompany him. “We fell to discoursing with Sir Humfrey of his [planned] voyage,” wrote Browne, “and in that discourse kept on so longe that he wolde have us staye to supper.” The men continued to chat as they munched their broiled capons, and “had no other talke but of the fruitfullness and great riches that was in that country.” After much discussion, Gilbert’s friends reluctantly informed him that they “were sory that we had not knowledge of these matters in tyme, for if we had, we wold have made provysion to have accompanied hym.”
Gilbert was disappointed but not disheartened, for as he led the two men out of his study he played his trump card. With a theatrical flourish, he announced that he had in his possession another unique document that he knew would cause them to change their minds. This document was to remain a secret until the next evening, but he promised them that it contained some truly astonishing news about America. This, he felt sure, would dispel their reluctance to join him on a new adventure—and besides, both men were in possession of vast fortunes that he could put to good use.
 
Sir Humfrey Gilbert believed his map of America to be the most accurate in existence. The British Isles (far right) were well charted, but the American coastline was guesswork. The interior of the continent was optimistically depicted as a series of broad waterways
Before dusk had descended on the following day, the two men were once again seated in Gilbert’s study, and they soon discovered that they were not to be disappointed. Sir Humfrey informed them that a humble Englishman called Davy Ingrams—known to him personally—had walked the entire Atlantic coastline of America and brought back the first eyewitness account of the interior of the country, as well as an account of its “beastly” natives. This information was priceless and highly secret, but Gilbert was prepared to share it with his visitors on the condition that they would reconsider their earlier decision not to accompany his expedition.
The story that he recounted had the ring of truth. Davy Ingrams was a common sailor who had left England in 1567 on a slave-trading mission under the command of Sir John Hawkins. The mission had ended in disaster after a battle with the Spanish and Hawkins had been forced to abandon half his men on the shores of Mexico. One of these castaways was Ingrams, a man of Herculean strength who was not prepared to wait the two or three years it would take for Hawkins to return for the men. Aware that English fishing vessels were regular visitors to Newfoundland—and ignorant of the fact that it lay more than three thousand miles away—he selected a band of his more adventurous colleagues and set off on what was to prove a very long march.
What happened on that marathon hike was anyone’s guess. Ingrams claimed that after twelve months of extreme hardship, he and two other haggard survivors emerged from the wilderness in Nova Scotia. Half-starved and clothed in skins, they were approached by natives who told them “that they had seene shippes on that coast, and did draw upon the ground the shape and figure of
shippes.” The men dashed to the clifftop and saw a French ship lying at anchor. They secured a passage to Le Havre, crossed the English Channel in a fishing vessel, and paid a call on Hawkins before touting their story around Devon taverns. When Ingrams finally made it back to his home in Barking, Essex, his family nearly fainted in astonishment.
Sir Humfrey realised that Ingram’s story was, if true, of immense importance. Virtually nothing was known about the natives of North America, nor was there any information about the lay of the land, and he decided to grill the sailor for more information. His experience of interrogation—learned in Ireland—was limited to torture and mutilation, but he had the foresight to realise that such methods were not necessarily the best way to extract information from Ingrams. He turned for help to the queen’s secretary of state, Sir Francis Walsingham, who was famed for his skill in extracting men’s secrets. He was “one who knew excellently well how to win men’s affections to him,” wrote William Camden, “and make use of them for his own purpose.” He was to find himself tested to the limits when confronted with this humble sailor from Barking.
Davy was “abowt the age of fortye yeares” when he was summoned to be interrogated, and more than a dozen years had passed since the events he was about to describe. Yet he claimed to remember every detail of his trip. Not wishing to disappoint his distinguished interrogators, he peppered his account with tales of fearsome cannibals and ghoulish monsters. He did so safe in the knowledge that his tale could not be cross-checked for accuracy, since both of his fellow travellers were dead: Richard Browne “was slaine about five yeeres past,” and Richard Twide had died in 1579.
He gave a remarkable description of the cannibalistic “savages” of America, “brutish” tribesmen who wore skins more colourful than the queen’s most extravagantly dressed jester. From afar, they resembled patchwork eiderdowns, their naked bellies “painted with divers colours” and their heads “shaven in sundry spots.” Some even decked their gleaming brows with red and russet feathers. In hot
weather many of the men stripped off their feathers and skins and wandered around stark naked, although Ingrams recalled that “the noble men’s privities are covered with the necke of a goorde.”
Their comely wives displayed rather less flesh and a great deal more modesty. They covered their private parts “with the hayre or leafe of the palme tree” and in winter they trussed themselves up in skins, “the hayrie side being next to their bodies.” Ingrams displayed such a keen interest in “privities” that it was one of the first Indian words he learned—
carmugnar
.
He soon found his own
carmugnar
an object of curiosity. On arriving at one village, he and his men were summoned to a meeting of tribal elders who “caused them to be stripped naked.” The Indians then prodded them, poked their bellies, and, “wondring greatly at the whitenes of their skins, let them depart without further harme.”
The more Ingrams embellished his story, the more he realised that Gilbert and Walsingham were spellbound. Hoping to be richly rewarded at the end of his interview, he told them he had watched adulterers being knifed to death, and even observed a bizarre form of euthanasia. With a twinkle in his eye, he said that he met one tribe which, “when any of them is sicke and like to dye, [the] nexte of his kinne doe cutt his throte and all his kinne must drinke up his bloude.” He even watched them carve the corpse into juicy gobbets and munch the pieces raw, licking the bones with relish, “for they make a religion to have none of his bloudde lost.” Domestic disputes invariably ended in mutilation and torture. Unfaithful husbands and wives were pinned to a stone slab, “flatt on their backes, and their handes and legges being holde or tyed, the executioner commeth and kneeleth on their breastes and, with a crooked knife cutteth both their throtes.” It made for a gruesome spectacle, yet Ingrams assured Sir Humfrey that no harm was done to him or his companions. He added that although the tribesmen had “teeth like dogs,” they were quite charming, “a curteous people, and no meneaters,” at least where Englishmen were concerned.
A far greater threat was posed by the monstrous beasts that stalked America’s forests. Ingrams claimed that the sheep were bright red, as were the rabbits, while the birds of prey had heads “as big as a man’s.” Gilbert could have justifiably asked how such a top-heavy bird could fly, but Ingrams never gave his interrogators time to respond. He was already telling them about the hideous creature that had “nether heade nor necke, his eyes and mouthe weare in his brest.” This, added Ingrams, “is very ugly to beholde, and cowardly.”

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