The Jamestown Experiment (3 page)

In 1584, Hakluyt wrote
Discourse on Western Planting
to promote the schemes of Sir Walter Ralegh—who developed plans to colonize North America after his half brother perished at
sea—to the queen. The blueprint for colonization repeated many of the ideas of
Divers Voyages,
but he also presented a concise economic and commercial blueprint for empire. All the accounts he read spoke of the potential wealth in precious metals and of a bountiful, fertile land that would provide many commodities to the industrious English. The chronically poor and unemployed would find opportunity in the North American colonies. The colonists would serve as producers of raw materials, but also they would be consumers who demanded products from England, which would stimulate the English economy. A prosperous economy would lead English parents to have more children and strengthen the nation. Experience in navigation and great wealth would also allow England to build a navy to defend the realm and its far-flung empire. The colonies could serve as a base for privateers to intercept and plunder the Spanish treasure fleets, but Hakluyt’s scheme was dedicated primarily to building the English empire.
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Hakluyt was an intellectual who laid down a cohesive framework for the rationale behind the English empire, but he left it to the gentlemen adventurers with whom he conferred to execute his vision.

In 1584, Sir Walter Ralegh received Gilbert’s exclusive patent to North America and planned to settle on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Ralegh was educated at Oxford and the Middle Temple. He had made the acquaintance of Hakluyt and served Sir Francis Walsingham. In 1580, he fought in Ireland and participated in the slaughter of hundreds of foreign mercenaries at Smerwick Fort. He was a favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth, by whom he was rewarded with generous estates and incomes. His Durham House became a center of discussion for navigation and colonization and included all of the leading figures involved in the schemes.
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On April 27, 1584, Ralegh dispatched an expedition of two ships to the Outer Banks for reconnaissance of the area to establish privateering bases from which to strike the Spanish treasure fleets. By July 13 they had discovered Roanoke Island as a suitable site and captured two Indians (Manteo, son of the Croatoan chief, and Wanchese) who served as a promotional vehicle for the venture among English investors to fund colonization. Written propaganda accounts claimed, “The soil is the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world.” In fact, Ralegh was trying to secure London investors even before the expedition returned. The military nature of the colony Ralegh envisioned meant that the gentlemen adventurers were not yet prepared to establish Hakluyt’s proposed trade colony.
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Soldier Ralph Lane was released from his service in Ireland and appointed governor of the colony, while Sir Richard Grenville served as admiral for the fleet. On April 9, 1585, seven ships and some six hundred men sailed for Roanoke. A storm scattered the fleet and sank one of the smaller pinnaces, causing Lane to put in at Puerto Rico to build a new one. They landed at Roanoke in late June, but a storm grounded the flagship,
Tiger,
and ruined most of its provisions. Lane ordered the Roanoke colonists to erect homes, a storehouse, and a diamond-shaped fort with a firing step. In August the fleet departed, leaving behind 107 colonists to live off the land until a relief expedition arrived. Grenville returned to England and encouraged Ralegh to send supplies, but not before Grenville seized a Spanish prize, the “richly laden”
Santa Maria de San Vincente,
before reaching home. The prize paid for the expedition and confirmed in the mind of many investors the value of focusing on taking Spanish treasure ships. In June, Ralegh had already acted without waiting to hear of the colony’s fate and sent supplies, but the ships were diverted to Newfoundland at the request of the queen
to warn them of an impending sea war with Spain. The priority of the Crown was battling Catholic Spain, even to the detriment of Roanoke.
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Roanoke was largely a sideshow for the audacious privateering voyage of Sir Francis Drake, who left England in September in command of the largest English fleet ever in American waters. After narrowly missing the main treasure fleet by hours and losing several hundred men to disease after plundering the Cape Verde Islands, he sailed for the Caribbean. On New Year’s Day, 1586, Drake sacked Santo Domingo and seized sixteen thousand furs before ransoming the city. Cartagena fell to the sea dog, who liberated hundreds of African slaves and won another ransom. After losing several hundred men, Drake sailed for Roanoke but stopped on the coast of Florida and burned the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine to the ground.
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On June 8, Drake arrived at Roanoke and agreed to provide boats, men, supplies, and guns for Lane’s colony. A mighty storm rolled in and destroyed several smaller ships and damaged the others. The situation was precarious for the hungry colonists, and they yielded to what they imagined to be inevitable and returned to England with Drake’s fleet. Drake left the hundreds of slaves liberated from the Spanish to their fate. Only a few weeks later, Grenville arrived at the deserted colony with three supply ships, and when he did not find anyone, he sailed back to England. Had he not sought Spanish prizes on the voyage to Roanoke, he might have reached the colony in time to convince Lane to remain. Grenville left fifteen men with artillery and supplies to find the missing Roanoke colonists. The men were never heard from again.
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Despite the failure, Ralegh and his backers still believed that Roanoke could serve as a privateering base and that the colonists could find gold, the Northwest Passage, and marketable commodities to
keep investors interested. A third expedition to Roanoke was organized under the weak leadership of painter Governor John White. The model of settlement seemed to change from a mostly privateering base to land development, as a number of families were sent who received land grants and were governed by a council. On May 8, 1587, three ships sailed from England and arrived by late July. They moved into the existing houses built by Lane’s colonists. By the end of August, the settlers begged White to return home and lobby Ralegh for additional provisions. Upon White’s return, Ralegh attempted to organize a supply fleet for the spring of 1588, but it was stopped when every available ship was called into service against the Spanish Armada.
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On April 22, amid the confusing preparations for war and the impounding of all ships, Ralegh finally won permission to send a few small supply ships with Governor White. The ships, however, never made it to Roanoke, because they engaged in privateering battles and were heavily damaged. They sailed back to England. Ralegh could not persuade the Privy Council to send another relief expedition and soon lost interest.
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The outrages the English perpetrated against Philip’s overseas possessions, as well as the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, led the Spanish king—with the assistance of papal funds—to go to war against Protestant England. But while he was assembling his massive war fleet, Drake secretly brought a large fleet of ships to the Spanish coast to take the war to the enemy. On April 29, 1587, Drake appeared at the port of Cadiz and immediately attacked. English firepower drove six Spanish galleons back into the harbor. Drake’s men proceeded to plunder and sink two dozen vessels and depart nearly unscathed. The size of the monetary return mattered much less than the devastating psychological impact on the Spanish.
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By July 1588, after many delays and storms at sea, the Spanish fleet of about 130 ships reached the English coast. It sailed in a crescent formation past Plymouth and the other coastal towns into the English Channel, where it planned to embark the Duke of Parma’s soldiers waiting at Dunkirk and invade England. The larger English fleet of some 180 ships pursued the Spanish and skirmished a bit. On July 21, the English sank the colossal 1,150-ton Spanish warship
Nuestra Señora del Rosario.
The two fleets otherwise largely exchanged ineffective broadsides, although the Armada was becoming desperately short of food, water, and gunpowder. When the Spanish put in to pick up Parma, he was not there. Subsequently, the English sent eight fireships toward the Spanish and dispersed the enemy fleet, which headed north. The Armada sailed north around the British Isles but was punished by storms off the coast of Ireland that drove many ships into the rocks, where the survivors were slaughtered by Irish Catholics (who were supposedly friendly) and English troops. The remnants of the Armada limped back to a dispirited Spain, where the defeat could be seen as nothing less than a national tragedy, whereas the victory set off great patriotic celebrations in England. The English believed God had blessed their victory over the Catholic king.
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The epic battle between the two nations had direct implications for their imperial struggle and the English drive for empire in North America.

While the English defended their home against invasion, Governor White was determined to learn the fate of the Roanoke colonists and sought to rescue them. But he did not sail until 1590, when he boarded a privateering vessel in a small fleet without supplies for the colony. Rather than sailing directly for Roanoke, the ships hunted Spanish prizes in the Caribbean. In August, after several encounters, the ships finally reached the abandoned Roanoke colony. The settlers White had left behind years before were
gone, but they had left two messages—CRO carved on a tree and CROATOAN carved on a palisade post—but they had not left the prearranged distress signal, meant to indicate that they had moved of their own accord rather than facing an Indian attack. White fruitlessly searched for them, but he had to return to England without learning their ultimate fate.
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The aging generation of explorers and sea dogs who had braved the oceans and unsettled lands, as well as given war to the Spanish enemy for decades, died out in the 1590s. At home, England suffered rising inflation, failed harvests, plague, and increasing poverty for the landless masses. Nevertheless, the English had quelled the Spanish threat, and voyaging overseas for trade and colonies persisted.

The most successful of the ventures was the East India Company, founded to participate in the lucrative spice trade. From 1591 to 1594, an English merchant adventurer, Sir James Lancaster, sailed to the East Indies to reconnoiter the area for opportunities. Dutch ships simultaneously conducted similar voyages. Although the trip was a financial failure, London merchants continued to meet and plan additional expeditions to break into the Portuguese trade and block Dutch challenges. On September 22, 1599, 101 London merchants (including members of the Levant Company and Drake’s crew) pledged money for and petitioned the queen “to venture in the pretended voyage to the East Indies.”
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Elizabeth hesitated because of peace negotiations with King Philip’s successor, Philip III, but when they stalled interminably, she gave her consent. On December 31, 1600, the collection of what was now 218 members was granted a charter to “the East Indies, the countries and ports of Asia and Africa, and to and from all the islands’ ports, towns, and places of Asia, African and America,
or any of them beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan.” Sir Thomas Smythe served as the first governor of the company. Lancaster sailed within only two months to Sumatra and Bantham, and he triumphantly returned to England three years later with five ships laden with five hundred tons of pepper.

Within a decade, trade “factories” were established in Africa, India, the Spice Islands, China, and Japan, where the English traded for ivory, silks, cloves, nutmeg, sugar, coffee, and tea, among other valuable commodities, all of which returned great profits to investors. By 1620 the company owned a fleet of more than thirty armed ships that accompanied convoys of more than a dozen trading ships at a time. Competition with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was fierce, as England reaped growing profits from its global trade.
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The record of English expansion during the latter part of the sixteenth century produced mixed results, though it was largely a story of failures and disappointed hopes that fell far short of what most of its supporters had envisioned. England was still far from achieving the global imperial status of its chief rival Spain. Except for a few noteworthy successes, such as Drake’s circumnavigation and the successful Dutch East India Company, English attempts at trade and settlement had resulted in few tangible gains. Virtually none of the trade companies generated large profits, explorers had perished, colonists had died, the coasts of North America still did not have any permanent English settlements, and the Northwest Passage remained elusive. Nevertheless, the promise of great wealth and glory continued to draw English gentlemen adventurers to voyage or invest in overseas ventures. They were still interested in the North American coast for several reasons. The lure of gold and silver, an undiscovered route to the East, and the endless bounty of a fertile land could not be contained.
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And as a new century dawned with a new king, a new generation
of independent, enterprising men sought to realize the dream of a global English empire. Among these rising young gentleman was an adventurer named John Smith, who would help initiate the plan to colonize Virginia, shaping the course that settlement in Virginia would take in the opening years of the seventeenth century.

Chapter Two

W
hen the twenty-four-year-old gentleman adventurer John Smith returned to England in 1604, he found the realm much changed from when he had left only a few years before. In 1603 the beloved Virgin Queen had died after nearly half a century on the throne. The Scottish king, James I, succeeded her as the first monarch of the Stuart family. The following year, he signed a peace treaty with England’s mortal enemy, Spain, ending the decades-long sea war that had culminated in the destruction of the Spanish Armada.

Peace presented a new series of opportunities for a new generation of gentlemen adventurers and investors overseas. The old generation of Elizabethan sea dogs and promoters had largely passed away during the previous decade. One of the firmest supporters of overseas ventures at court, Sir Francis Walsingham, had died in 1590. The elder Richard Hakluyt, who had published so many tracts to promote investment and support for colonization, had passed away in 1591. Renowned privateers Sir Francis Drake and Sir John
Hawkins perished in an ill-fated 1595 expedition to Panama. Sir Thomas Cavendish was lost at sea, and Sir Richard Grenville was killed assaulting a Spanish fortress. Grenville’s half brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, the guiding force behind the failed attempts to colonize Roanoke, lost favor at court, and James had him imprisoned in the Tower of London.

John Smith was a gentleman adventurer of the new generation who moved English schemes for colonizing North America forward. He was born of humble origins in 1580, the son of a middling yeoman farmer in Lincolnshire, far below the previous generation of well-heeled gentry with ties to court. He received an elementary education and apprenticed with a merchant in Kings Lynn. At sixteen years old, Smith discovered that he was not going to sea on trading voyages as he wished and then learned of his father’s death. Since he thought his future prospects were dim, Smith traveled to the Low Countries to join an English regiment in aiding the Dutch in their revolt against the brutal rule of Catholic Spain.

After battling Spanish forces for a time, Smith returned to his home of Lincolnshire and received a martial education in the art of war. He read Machiavelli’s
Art of War
and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, among other works, and was tutored in the military arts by Theadora Polaloga, who had traveled to England from the Byzantine Empire, which was now controlled by the Ottoman Turks. Seignior Polaloga trained Smith in riding, languages, conversation, and oratory, as befit a young Renaissance gentleman.

In 1600 the restless twenty-year-old Smith left England to battle the Ottoman Turks, who were then threatening Christendom in Eastern Europe. He traveled across France, where four rogues pretending to be adventurers robbed the young man of his gold and baggage. A number of French women patronized his voyage through the country until he boarded a ship at Marseilles bound for Italy.

Smith encountered a great deal of animosity from his fellow passengers. The Roman Catholic passengers from different nations disliked the young English Protestant because of his religion and his nation’s reputation for piracy. He similarly held the Catholics in disdain, particularly because they were on a pilgrimage to Rome. When severe storms threatened the ship, the superstitious among the passengers blamed the Protestant soldier of fortune for their woes and threw him overboard to improve their luck.

Smith was able to swim to a nearby island, where another ship was fatefully riding out the storm and offered to take him aboard. The hapless traveler encountered additional dangers when a Venetian ship fired on the vessel after it entered the Adriatic Sea. The two ships exchanged a ferocious barrage as they lined up broadside. Fifteen men were killed on Smith’s ship, and twenty men lay dead on the opposing ship. As flames raged aboard his vessel, Smith and his new companions boarded the Venetian ship and engaged in hand-to-hand combat in an attempt to take the ship. The Venetians surrendered before the onslaught, and Smith joined in the plunder of the ship for his efforts. The ship carried valuable silks, velvets, gold, and other riches. He netted a princely sum, including £225 in coin and a gold box worth again as much.

Smith spent time in Italy, where he saw the pope, and then made his way over land to the combined armies of Christian Europe arrayed against the Turks. He made an immediate impression upon the leaders of the European forces. In order to help a relief army break the enemy siege of Limbach, Germany, he demonstrated a communication network with torches, which he recalled reading about in Machiavelli’s
Art of War.
He also offered a means to deceive the enemy by hanging burning cords that emulated soldiers firing their muskets and made the army appear larger than it was. The Turkish army retired and the siege was
lifted, and he came to the attention of his superiors, who gave him command of a cavalry unit.

Smith’s unit was deployed in the siege of Szekesfehervar, which had been occupied by the Turks since 1543. He suggested making bombs from large pots filled with gunpowder, pitch, turpentine, and musket balls. The incendiary devices were ignited and launched over the walls of the city with dramatic effect. He later described the scene as “a fearful sight to see the short flaming course of their flight in the air, but presently after their fall, the lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turks was most wonderful to hear.” His innovative “fiery dragons” were partly responsible for helping to break the siege and storm the city.

In 1602, Smith was serving under Szigmond Báthory, a Transylvanian prince under Mózes Székely, who was in command of the siege of Alba Julia. Although it was not a military necessity, a Turkish commander issued a challenge to the Christian allies to send out a champion to meet him in single combat. The Turkish commander rode on to the field with armor adorned with gold, silver, gems, and eagle’s feathers. Smith donned his modest armor and mounted his warhorse. At the sound of a trumpet, the two foes charged each other and lowered their lances. Smith impaled the Turk with a sickening crunch and drove him off his mount, killing him instantly. He then unsheathed his sword and beheaded the man, carrying his gruesome trophy across the field to the cheers of his army.

A friend of the dead Turk challenged Smith to a duel the following day. Smith took the field of honor armed with a lance, firearm, and sword. After their lances shattered on each other’s shields, they withdrew their firearms. Smith drew a bead on his opponent and knocked him off his horse with one shot. He then drew his sword and took another head for his collection.

In the euphoria of these victories, Smith’s arrogance was fueled
and he threw down a gauntlet to anyone in the Turkish army. His next competitor gladly took the chance to humiliate the swaggering mercenary. After an exchange of pistol shots missed their marks, the adversaries unhooked their battle-axes and took aim at each other’s skulls.

Smith explained that he “received such a blow that he lost his battle-axe,” though luckily for him not his head. Nevertheless, he managed to dodge more blows, unsheathe his sword, and turn the tide of battle. “Beyond all men’s expectation, by God’s assistance, [he] not only avoided the Turks’ violence but…pierced the Turk so…thorough back and body that although he alighted from his horse, he stood not long ere he lost his head as the rest had done.”

Although the fights did not alter the outcome of the siege, the Europeans assaulted the city and the garrison surrendered. Most of defenders lost their heads, and the victors sacked the town and carried away a great deal of plunder.

An immediate legend in the army, John Smith was awarded a promotion, a warhorse, a sword, a gilded belt, an annual pension, and a coat of arms bearing the heads of the three Turks whom he defeated.

Only a few months after his victory, Smith’s fortunes turned for the worse. The army encountered a force allied with the Turks, and he was gravely wounded on the battlefield and left for dead. He was discovered alive by some pillagers, and he was taken away to a slave market on the Danube, where he was clapped in chains and sold with others “like beasts in a market-place.” He was chained to other slaves and then subjected to a five-hundred-mile death march through the Ottoman Empire. An iron ring was clasped around his neck, his head and beard were shaved, and he was fed a meager diet.

Smith’s military training led him to spend every waking
moment probing for a way to escape. One day he found his chance. Smith was threshing grain in an isolated field, alone with his owner, who was taking sadistic pleasure in “beating, spurning, and reviling” him. Smith gripped his thresher until his knuckles turned white and swung a vicious blow that killed his master. He hid the body in some straw, put on his master’s clothes, and ran away.

The fugitive desperately rode north into Russia for weeks, trying to avoid detection and find a way home. Smith came upon a camp where the commander took off his neck ring and issued him a safe-conduct pass. The Englishman journeyed back to Transylvania, where Prince Sigismundus gave him fifteen hundred gold ducats for his service and troubles. He traveled home through a circuitous route in Europe and Northern Africa. The final leg of his voyage was spent aboard a French man-of-war that was struck by storms and had a two-day running broadside battle with two Spanish warships. With cutlasses and blunderblusses in hand, Smith and the Frenchmen barely repulsed the Spaniards. In 1604, Smith finally arrived home in England and learned of the planning of another adventure to North America. Although Smith had spent his time battling enemies on the continent, he now joined others in winning glory by settling distant lands for England. The dangers would be just as great, but the rewards could be beyond imagination.

In 1604, London and other cities were abuzz with several different schemes for overseas voyages. Merchants, adventurers, politicians, and members of the court were discussing the potential risks and rewards of the different ideas that were proposed. They were generally guided by a desire for profit, but they were also fierce patriots who wished to support England’s imperial ambitions, particularly against the hated Spanish, even if they were officially at peace. Many were committed Protestants who combated the spread of
Catholicism on the Continent and in the New World by joining the enemies of Spain, fighting closer to home, or colonizing Ireland. The promoters of colonial ventures were also generally involved in more than one scheme with an almost unlimited appetite for personal profit and imperial greatness. They were gentlemen, but they also were men of action, willing to risk their lives and fortunes on gold and the glory of mother England.

When John Smith returned from his adventures, one such promoter was Bartholomew Gosnold, who was actively lobbying merchants and politicians to support a venture to North America. Indeed, Smith called Gosnold “one of the first movers of the colony.” For many years, Gosnold had “solicited many of his friends” but mustered little interest. He persisted, nevertheless, and slowly won people over to the idea of a Virginia colony. Smith himself became interested in the colony and had money to invest in the venture.
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Gosnold was born of a well-connected Suffolk family. He was a cousin of gentleman adventurer Edward Maria Wingfield. When he was a young man, Gosnold had gone to sea and fought as a privateer. He also joined other English adventurers in the Low Countries against the Spanish. In 1602 he led an expedition to the coasts of New England at Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard to establish a trading station in furs and fish with the local Indians. He brought back an Indian canoe to England to stir enthusiasm for overseas ventures and promoted the great beauty and bounty of the land. He also carried some commodities—furs, sassafras roots, cedarwood—to show the potential goods to be found there.

Gosnold interested his cousin Wingfield in the Virginia colony. Wingfield had come from a similarly distinguished family, and his father was a member of Parliament. Wingfield had served in Ireland and the Netherlands, where he was held as a prisoner of war in 1588 before returning to Ireland. He had fought in the Low
Countries with Fernando Gorges, who was the governor of the fort at Plymouth and willing to support Gosnold.