September 2, 2025 • 26 mins
Step back into the dawn of American history with Elizabethan Sea-Dogs, where the spirit of the citizen, colonist, and pioneer comes alive! This captivating exploration reveals the daring adventurers of the Elizabethan era who paved the way for future generations in the New World. Under the brilliant leadership of Sir Francis Drake, the first of the modern admirals, English sailors claimed their dominion over the sea. Known as Sea-Dogs, they opened the gateway for explorers and settlers seeking their fortunes in America. Discover how this century of maritime quests and naval warfare laid the foundations for Anglo-American history and secured the path for countless pioneers eager to carve out their destinies.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eleven of Elizabethan Dogs by William Wood. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Chapter eleven Raleigh and
the Vision of the West Conquerors first, prospectors second, then
the pioneers, that is, the order of those by whom
(00:23):
America was opened up for English speaking people. No Elizabethan
colonies took root. Therefore, the age of Elizabethan Sea Dogs
was one of conquerors and prospectors, not one of pioneering
colonists at all. Spain and Portugal alone founded sixteen century
(00:46):
colonies that have had a continuous life from those days
to our own. Virginia and New England, like New France,
only began as permanent settlements after Drake and Queen Elizabeth
were dead, Virginia in sixteen hundred and seven, New France
and sixteen hundred eight New England in sixteen twenty. It
(01:11):
is true that Drake and his Sea Dogs were prospectors
in their way, so were the soldiers, gentlemen, adventurers, and
fighting traders in theirs. On the other hand, some of
the prospectors themselves belonged to the class of conquerors, while
many would have gladly been the pioneers of permanent colonies. Nevertheless,
(01:33):
the prospectors formed a separate class, and Sir Walter Raleigh,
though an adventurer in every other way as well, is
undoubtedly their chief. His colonies failed, he never found his elderado,
he died a ruined and neglected man. But still he
(01:55):
was the chief of those whom we can only call prospects.
First because they tried their fortune are sure one step
beyond the conquering sea dogs. And secondly because their fortune
failed them just one step short of where the pioneering
colonists began. A man so various that he seemed to
(02:19):
be not one but all mankinds epitome is a description
written about a very different character, but it is really
much more appropriate to Sir Walter Raleigh. Courtier and would
be colonizer, soldier and sailor, statesman and scholar, poet and
master prose. Raleigh had one ruling passion greater than all
(02:44):
the rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir
Robert Cecil, the son of Queen Elizabeth's principal Minister of State,
Lord Burley, he expressed, this great determined purpose of his life,
I shall yet live to an English nation. He had
other interests in abundance, perhaps in superabundance, and he had
(03:07):
much more than the usual temptations to live the life
of fashion, with just enough of public duty to satisfy
both the Queen and the very least that is implied
by the Mato nobless oblige. He was splendidly handsome and tall,
a perfect blend of strength and grace, full of deep
(03:27):
romantic interest in great things far and near, the very
man whom women dote on. And yet through all the
seductions of the court, and all the storm and stress
of Europe, he steadily pursued the vision of that West,
which he would make an English nation. He left Oxford
(03:49):
as an undergraduate to serve the Huguenots in France under
Admiral Coligni and the Protestants in Holland under William of Orange.
Like Hawkins and Drake, he hated Spain with all his heart,
and paid off many a score against her by killing
Spanish troops at Smerwick during an Irish campaign marked by
(04:09):
ruthless slaughter on both sides. On his return to England,
he soon attracted the charmed attention of the Queen. His
spreading his cloak for her to tread on lest she
might wet her feet, as one of those stories which
ought to be true if it's not. In any case,
he won the royal favor, was granted monopolies, promotion and estates,
(04:34):
and launched upon the full floodstream of fortune. He was
not yet thirty when he obtained for his half brother
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, then a man of thirty eight, a
royal commission to inhabit and possess all remote and heathen
lands not in the possession of any Christian prince. The
draft of Gilbert's original prospects dated at London the sixth
(04:59):
of November fifteen seventy seven, and still kept there in
the Record Office, as an appeal to Elizabeth, in which
he proposed to discover and inhabit some strange place. Gilbert
was a soldier and knew what fighting meant, so he
likewise proposed to set forth certain ships of war to
(05:20):
the New Land, which with your good license, I will
undertake without your Majesty's charge. The new Land fish is
a principle enrich in everywhere vendable merchandise, and by the
gain thereof shipping biddle, munition and the transporting of five
or six thousand soldiers may be defrayed, But Gilbert's associates
(05:45):
cared nothing for fish and everything for gold. He went
to the West Indies, lost his ship, and returned without
a fortune. Next year he was forbidden to repeat the experiment.
The project then languished until the fatal voyage of fifteen
eighty three, when Gilbert sets there with six vessels, intending
to occupa Newfoundland as the base from which to colonize
(06:09):
southwards until an armed New England should meet and beat
New Spain. How vast his scheme, how pitiful its execution,
and yet how immeasurably beyond his wildest dreams the actual
development today. Gilbert was not a sea dog, but a
soldier with an uncanny reputation for being a regular jonah
(06:34):
who had no good habit sea. He was also passionately
self willed, and Elizabeth had doubts about the propriety of
backing him, but she sent him a guilt anchor by
way of good luck, and off he went in June,
financed chiefly by Raleigh, whose name was given to the flagship.
(06:54):
Gilbert's adventure never got beyond its base and Newfoundland is
shipped to delight, was wrecked. The crew of the Raleigh
mutinied and ran her home to England. The other four
vessels held on, but the men, for the most part,
were neither good soldiers, good sailors, nor yet good colonists,
but ne'er do wells and desperadoes. By September the expedition
(07:20):
was returning broken down. Gilbert, furious that the sailor's hints
that he was just a little sea shy, would persist
in sticking to the Liliputian ten tons Squirrel, which was
woefully top hampered with guns and stores. Before leaving Newfoundland.
He was implored to abandon her and bring her crew
(07:41):
aboard a bigger craft. But no, do not fear, he answered,
We are as near to heaven by sea as land.
One wild night off the Azores, the Squirrel founded with
all hands. Amadas and Barlow sailed in fifteen eighty four
(08:01):
prospecting for Sir Walter Raleigh. They discovered several harbors in
North Carolina, then part of the vast plantation of Virginia,
Roanoke Island, Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, as well as the
intervening waters were all explored with enthusiastic thoroughness and zeal. Barlow,
(08:22):
a skipper who was handy with his pen, described the
scent of that fragrant summer land in terms which attracted
the attention of Bacon at the time and of Dryden
a century later. The Royal Charter authorizing Raleigh to take
what he could find in this strange land, had a
(08:42):
clause granting his prospective colonists all the privileges of free
denizens and persons native of England, in such ample manner
as if they were born and personally resident in our
said realm of England. Next year, Sir Richard Grenville, who
(09:03):
was Raleigh's cousin, convoyed out to Roanoke, the little colony
which Ralph Lane governed, and which, as we have seen
in an earlier chapter, Drake Tookcombe discomfited in fifteen eighty six.
There might have been a story to tell of successful
colonization instead of failure, if Drake had kept away from
(09:26):
Roanoke that year, or if he had tarried a few
days longer. For no sooner had the colony departed in
Drake's vessels than our ship sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh,
freighted with all manner of things in most plentiful manner,
arrived at Roanoke, and, after some time spent in seeking
(09:46):
our colony up in the country, and not finding them,
returned with all the aforce said provision into England. About
a fortnight later, Sir Richard Grenville himself arrived with three ships,
not wishing to lose possession of the country where he
had planted a colony the year before, he landed fifteen
(10:08):
men in the isle of Roanoke, furnished plentifully with all
manner of provision for two years, and so departed for England.
Grenville unfortunately had burnt an Indian town and all its
standing corn because the Indians had stolen a silver cup.
Lane two, had been severe in dealing with the natives,
(10:29):
and they had turned from friends to foes. These and
other facts were carefully recorded on the spot by the
official chronicler, Thomas Harriet, better known as a mathematician. Among
the captains who had come out under Grenville in fifteen
eighty five was Thomas Cavendish, a young and daring gentleman
(10:51):
adventurer greatly distinguished as such even in that adventurous age,
and the second English leader to circumnavigate the globe. When
Drake was taking Lane's men home in June fifteen eighty six,
Cavendish was making the final preparations for a two year voyage.
He sailed mostly along the route marked out by Drake,
(11:13):
and many of his adventures were of much the same kind.
His prime object was to make the voyage pay a
handsome dividend, but he did notable service in clipping the
wings of Spain. He raided the shipping off Chile and Peru,
took the Spanish flagship, the famous Santa Anna, off the
coast of California, and on his return home in fifteen
(11:36):
eighty eight, had the satisfaction of reporting, I burned and
sank nineteen sail of ships, both small and great, and
all the villages and towns that ever I landed at,
I burned and spoiled. While Camerindish was preying on Spanish
treasure in America and Drake was singing the King of
(11:58):
Spain's beard in Europe, Raleigh still pursued his colonizing plans.
In fifteen eighty seven, John White and twelve associates received
incorporation as the governor and assistance of the city of
Raleigh in Virginia. The fortunes of this ambitious city were
(12:18):
not unlike those of many another boomed and busted city
of much more recent date. No time was lost in beginning.
Three ships arrived at Roanoke on the twenty second of
July fifteen eighty seven. Every effort was made to find
the fifteen men left behind the year before by Grenville,
(12:39):
to hold possession for the queen mounds of earth, which
may even now betrayed. So piously have their last remains
been cared for marked the site of the fort. From
natives of Croatoan Island, the newcomers learned that Grenville's men
had been murdered by hostile Indians. A native friend was
(13:01):
found in Manteo, a chief whom Barlow had taken to
England and Grenville had brought back. Manteo was now living
with his own tribe of Sea Coast Indians on Croatoan Islands.
But the mischief between Red and White had been begun,
and though Manteo had been baptized and was recognized as
(13:22):
the Lord of Roanoke, the races were becoming fatally estranged.
After a month, Governor White went home for more men
and supplies, leaving most of the colonists at Roanoke. He
found Elizabeth, Raleigh and the rest all working to meet
the Great Armada. Yet, even during the following year, the
(13:43):
momentous year of fifteen eighty eight, Raleigh managed to spare
two Pinnases, with fifteen colonists aboard. Will provided withal that
was most needed. A Spanish squadron, however, forced both Pennases
to run back for their lives. After this frustrated attempt,
two more years passed before White could again sail for Virginia.
(14:07):
In August fifteen ninety his trumpeter sounded all the old
familiar English calls as he approached the little fort. No
answer came. The colony was lost forever. White had arranged
that if the colonists should be obliged to move away,
they should carve the name of the new settlement on
(14:28):
the fort or surrounding trees, and if there was either
danger or distress, they should cut across above the one
word croat tone was all White ever found. There was
no cross White's beloved colony. White's favorite daughter and her
little girl were perhaps in hiding, but supplies were running short.
(14:48):
White was a mere passenger on board the ship that
brought him, and the crew were getting impatient, so impatient
for refreshment and a Spanish prize that they sailed past
Crow a tone, refusing to stop a single hour. Perhaps
White learnt more than is recorded and was satisfied that
all the colonists were dead. Perhaps not. Nobody knows. Only
(15:12):
a wandering tradition comes out of that impenetrable mystery, and
circles round the not impossible romance of young Virginia Dare.
Her father was one of White's twelve assistants. Her mother, Eleanor,
was White's daughter. Virginia herself, the first of all true
(15:32):
native born Americans, was born on the eighteenth of August
fifteen eighty seven. Perhaps Manthieu, Lord of Roanoke, save the
whole family, whose name has been commemorated by that of
the North Carolina County of Dare. Perhaps Virginia Dare alone
survived to be an Indian queen about the time the
(15:53):
first permanent Anglo American colony was founded in sixteen hundred
and seven, twenty years after her birth. Who knows these
twenty sundering. Years. From the end of this subortive colony
in fifteen eighty seven to the beginning of the first
permanent colony in sixteen hundred and seven constitute a period
(16:15):
that saw the close of one age and the opening
of another in every relation of Anglo American affairs. Nor
was it only in Anglo American affairs that change was rife.
The Honorable East India Company entered upon its wonderful career.
Shakespeare began to write his immortal plays. The Chosen Translators
(16:38):
began their work on the authorized version of the English Bible.
The Puritans were becoming a force within the body politic
as well as in religion. Ulster was planted with Englishmen
and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes,
the Great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in
(17:00):
sixteen hundred and three, and with her ended the glorious
Tudor dynasty of England. James pusillanimous and pedantic, son of
Darnley and Mary, Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as
the first of the sinister Stuarts, and truckling to vindictive
Spain through Raleigh into prison under suspended sentence of death.
(17:24):
There was a break of no less than fifteen years
in English efforts to colonize America. Nothing was tried between
the last attempt at Roanoke in fifteen eighty seven and
the first attempt in Massachusetts in sixteen hundred and two,
when thirty two people sailed from England with Bartholomew Gosnold,
(17:45):
formerly a skipper in Raleigh's employ Goznold made straight for
the coast of Maine, which he cited in May. He
then coasted south to Cape Cod. Continuing south, he entered
Buzzard's Bay, where he landed on Cutty Hunk Island. Here,
on the little island in a lake, an island within
an island, he built a fort round which the colony
(18:08):
was expected to grow, but supplies began to run out.
There was bad blood over the proper division of what remained.
The would be colonists could not agree with those who
had no intention of staying behind. The result was that
the entire project had to be given up. Gosnoe sailed
home with the whole disgusted crew and a cargo of
(18:31):
sassafras and cedar. Such was the first prospecting ever done
for what is now New England. The following year sixteen
hundred three, just after the death of Queen Elizabeth, some
merchant venturers of Bristol sent out to vessels under Martin Pring.
(18:51):
Like Gosnoe, Pring first made the coast to Maine and
then felt his way south. Unlike Gosnold, however, he bought
into the great off of Massachusetts Bay, where he took
in a cargo of sassafras at Plymouth Harbor. But that
was all the prospecting done this time. There was no
attempt at colonizing. Two years later, another prospector was sent
(19:14):
out by a more important company. The Earl of Southampton
and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were the chief promoters of this enterprise.
Gorgeous as Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maine, is
a well known character in the subsequent history of New England.
Lord Southampton, as Shakespeare's only patron and greatest personal friend,
(19:37):
is forever famous through the world. The chief prospective chosen
by the company was George Weymouth, who landed on the
coast of Maine, explored a little of the surrounding country,
kidnapped five Indians, and returned to England with a glowing
account of what he had seen. The cumulative effect of
the three expeditions of Gosnold, Kring and Weymouth was a
(20:00):
revival of interest in colonization. Prominent men soon got together
and formed two companies which were formerly charted by King
James on the tenth of April sixteen hundred and six.
The first or Southern Colony, which came to be known
as the London Company, because most of its members lived there,
was authorized to make its first plantation at any place
(20:24):
upon the coast of Virginia or America between the four
and thirty and one in forty degrees of latitude. The
northern second colony, afterwards called the Plymouth Company, was authorized
to settle any place between thirty eight degrees and forty
five degrees north, thus overlapping both the First Company to
(20:46):
the south and the French to the north. In this
summer of the same year sixteen hundred and six, Henry
Challons took two ships of the Plymouth Company round by
the West Indies, where he was caught in a fog
by the Spaniards. Later in the season, Pring went out
and explored North Virginia. In May sixteen hundred and seven,
(21:08):
one hundred and twenty men under George Popham started to
colonize this North Virginia. In August, they landed in Maine
at the mouth of the Kennebec, where they built a fort,
some houses, and a pinnas. Finding themselves short of provisions,
two thirds of their number returned to England. Late in
(21:29):
the same year, the remaining third past a terrible winter,
Popham died and Raleigh Gilbert succeeded him as governor. When
spring came, all the survivors of the colony sailed home
in the pinnace they had built, and the enterprise was abandoned.
The reports of the colonists after their winter and main
(21:50):
work to the effect that the second or a Northern
Colony was not habitable for Englishmen. In the meantime, the
permanent foundation of the first or Southern colony, the real Virginia,
was well under way. The same number of intending emigrants
went out one hundred and twenty on the twenty sixth
(22:11):
of April sixteen hundred and seven, about four o'clock in
the morning, we described the land of Virginia. The same
day we entered into the Bay of chesu pioc Chesapeake.
Thus begins the tale of Captain John Smith, of the
founding of Jamestown, and of a permanent Virginia, the first
(22:32):
of the future United States. Now that we have seen
one spot in vast America really become the promise of
the English nation which Raleigh had longed for, we must
return once more to Raleigh himself. As mocked by his
tantalizing vision, he looked out on a changing world from
(22:54):
his secular Mount Pizga in the prison tower of London.
By this time he had felt both extremes of fortune
to the full. During the travesty of justice at his trial,
the Attorney General, having no sound argument, covered him with
slanderous abuse. These are three of the false accusations on
(23:16):
which he was condemned to death. Viprous traitor, damnable atheist
and spider of Hell. Hawkins, Drake, Frobe, Bischer and Grenville
all were dead. So Raleigh, last of the great Elizabethan Lyons,
was caged and baited for the sport of Spain. Six
(23:37):
of his twelve years of imprisonment were lightened by the
companionship of his wife, Elizabeth Throgmorton, most beautiful of all
the late Queen's maids of honor. Another solace was the
History of the World, the writing of which set his
mind free to wander forth at will, although his body
(23:57):
stayed behind the bars. But the contrast was too poignant
not to wring this cry of anguish from his preface. Yet,
when we once come in sight of the port of
death to which all winds drive us, and when, by
letting fall that fatal anchor which can never be weighed again,
(24:18):
the navigation of this life takes in, then it is
I say that our own cogitations, those sad and severe
cogitations formally beaten from us by our health and felicity,
return again and pay us to the uttermost for all
the pleasing passages of our life passed at length. In
(24:40):
the spring of sixteen sixteen, Raleigh was released, though still unpardoned.
He and his devoted wife immediately put all that remained
of their fortune into a new venture. Twenty years before this,
he thought he could make discovery of the mighty, rich
and beautiful empire of Guiana, and of that great and
(25:01):
golden city which the Spaniards called El Dorado and the
natives called Manoa. Now he would go back to find
the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that mysterious
Manoah among those southern mountains of bright Stones which lay
behind the Spanish main. The King's cupidity was roused, and
(25:24):
so in sixteen seventeen Raleigh was commissioned as the Admiral
of fourteen Sail. In November, he arrived off the coast
that guarded all the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in
the far recesses of the Ournokan wilds Guiana Manoa El Dorado.
The inland voices called him on, but Spaniards barred the way,
(25:49):
and Raleigh, defying the instructions of the king, attacked them.
The English force was far too weak, and disaster followed.
Raleigh's son and heir was killed, and his lieutenant committed suicide.
Mn began to mutiny, Spanish troops and ships came closing in,
and the forlorn remnant of the expedition on which such
(26:11):
hopes were built. When straggling home to England, there, Raleigh
was arrested and sent to the block on the twenty
ninth of October sixteen eighteen. He had played the great
game of life and death and lost it. When he
mounted the scaffold, he asked to see the axe feeding
the edge. He smiled and said, tis a sharp medicine,
(26:33):
but a cure for all diseases. Then he bared his
neck and died like one who had served the Great
Queen as her captain of the guard. End of Chapter eleven.
Chapter eleven of Elizabethan Dogs by William Wood. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Chapter eleven Raleigh and
the Vision of the West Conquerors first, prospectors second, then
the pioneers, that is, the order of those by whom
(00:23):
America was opened up for English speaking people. No Elizabethan
colonies took root. Therefore, the age of Elizabethan Sea Dogs
was one of conquerors and prospectors, not one of pioneering
colonists at all. Spain and Portugal alone founded sixteen century
(00:46):
colonies that have had a continuous life from those days
to our own. Virginia and New England, like New France,
only began as permanent settlements after Drake and Queen Elizabeth
were dead, Virginia in sixteen hundred and seven, New France
and sixteen hundred eight New England in sixteen twenty. It
(01:11):
is true that Drake and his Sea Dogs were prospectors
in their way, so were the soldiers, gentlemen, adventurers, and
fighting traders in theirs. On the other hand, some of
the prospectors themselves belonged to the class of conquerors, while
many would have gladly been the pioneers of permanent colonies. Nevertheless,
(01:33):
the prospectors formed a separate class, and Sir Walter Raleigh,
though an adventurer in every other way as well, is
undoubtedly their chief. His colonies failed, he never found his elderado,
he died a ruined and neglected man. But still he
(01:55):
was the chief of those whom we can only call prospects.
First because they tried their fortune are sure one step
beyond the conquering sea dogs. And secondly because their fortune
failed them just one step short of where the pioneering
colonists began. A man so various that he seemed to
(02:19):
be not one but all mankinds epitome is a description
written about a very different character, but it is really
much more appropriate to Sir Walter Raleigh. Courtier and would
be colonizer, soldier and sailor, statesman and scholar, poet and
master prose. Raleigh had one ruling passion greater than all
(02:44):
the rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir
Robert Cecil, the son of Queen Elizabeth's principal Minister of State,
Lord Burley, he expressed, this great determined purpose of his life,
I shall yet live to an English nation. He had
other interests in abundance, perhaps in superabundance, and he had
(03:07):
much more than the usual temptations to live the life
of fashion, with just enough of public duty to satisfy
both the Queen and the very least that is implied
by the Mato nobless oblige. He was splendidly handsome and tall,
a perfect blend of strength and grace, full of deep
(03:27):
romantic interest in great things far and near, the very
man whom women dote on. And yet through all the
seductions of the court, and all the storm and stress
of Europe, he steadily pursued the vision of that West,
which he would make an English nation. He left Oxford
(03:49):
as an undergraduate to serve the Huguenots in France under
Admiral Coligni and the Protestants in Holland under William of Orange.
Like Hawkins and Drake, he hated Spain with all his heart,
and paid off many a score against her by killing
Spanish troops at Smerwick during an Irish campaign marked by
(04:09):
ruthless slaughter on both sides. On his return to England,
he soon attracted the charmed attention of the Queen. His
spreading his cloak for her to tread on lest she
might wet her feet, as one of those stories which
ought to be true if it's not. In any case,
he won the royal favor, was granted monopolies, promotion and estates,
(04:34):
and launched upon the full floodstream of fortune. He was
not yet thirty when he obtained for his half brother
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, then a man of thirty eight, a
royal commission to inhabit and possess all remote and heathen
lands not in the possession of any Christian prince. The
draft of Gilbert's original prospects dated at London the sixth
(04:59):
of November fifteen seventy seven, and still kept there in
the Record Office, as an appeal to Elizabeth, in which
he proposed to discover and inhabit some strange place. Gilbert
was a soldier and knew what fighting meant, so he
likewise proposed to set forth certain ships of war to
(05:20):
the New Land, which with your good license, I will
undertake without your Majesty's charge. The new Land fish is
a principle enrich in everywhere vendable merchandise, and by the
gain thereof shipping biddle, munition and the transporting of five
or six thousand soldiers may be defrayed, But Gilbert's associates
(05:45):
cared nothing for fish and everything for gold. He went
to the West Indies, lost his ship, and returned without
a fortune. Next year he was forbidden to repeat the experiment.
The project then languished until the fatal voyage of fifteen
eighty three, when Gilbert sets there with six vessels, intending
to occupa Newfoundland as the base from which to colonize
(06:09):
southwards until an armed New England should meet and beat
New Spain. How vast his scheme, how pitiful its execution,
and yet how immeasurably beyond his wildest dreams the actual
development today. Gilbert was not a sea dog, but a
soldier with an uncanny reputation for being a regular jonah
(06:34):
who had no good habit sea. He was also passionately
self willed, and Elizabeth had doubts about the propriety of
backing him, but she sent him a guilt anchor by
way of good luck, and off he went in June,
financed chiefly by Raleigh, whose name was given to the flagship.
(06:54):
Gilbert's adventure never got beyond its base and Newfoundland is
shipped to delight, was wrecked. The crew of the Raleigh
mutinied and ran her home to England. The other four
vessels held on, but the men, for the most part,
were neither good soldiers, good sailors, nor yet good colonists,
but ne'er do wells and desperadoes. By September the expedition
(07:20):
was returning broken down. Gilbert, furious that the sailor's hints
that he was just a little sea shy, would persist
in sticking to the Liliputian ten tons Squirrel, which was
woefully top hampered with guns and stores. Before leaving Newfoundland.
He was implored to abandon her and bring her crew
(07:41):
aboard a bigger craft. But no, do not fear, he answered,
We are as near to heaven by sea as land.
One wild night off the Azores, the Squirrel founded with
all hands. Amadas and Barlow sailed in fifteen eighty four
(08:01):
prospecting for Sir Walter Raleigh. They discovered several harbors in
North Carolina, then part of the vast plantation of Virginia,
Roanoke Island, Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, as well as the
intervening waters were all explored with enthusiastic thoroughness and zeal. Barlow,
(08:22):
a skipper who was handy with his pen, described the
scent of that fragrant summer land in terms which attracted
the attention of Bacon at the time and of Dryden
a century later. The Royal Charter authorizing Raleigh to take
what he could find in this strange land, had a
(08:42):
clause granting his prospective colonists all the privileges of free
denizens and persons native of England, in such ample manner
as if they were born and personally resident in our
said realm of England. Next year, Sir Richard Grenville, who
(09:03):
was Raleigh's cousin, convoyed out to Roanoke, the little colony
which Ralph Lane governed, and which, as we have seen
in an earlier chapter, Drake Tookcombe discomfited in fifteen eighty six.
There might have been a story to tell of successful
colonization instead of failure, if Drake had kept away from
(09:26):
Roanoke that year, or if he had tarried a few
days longer. For no sooner had the colony departed in
Drake's vessels than our ship sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh,
freighted with all manner of things in most plentiful manner,
arrived at Roanoke, and, after some time spent in seeking
(09:46):
our colony up in the country, and not finding them,
returned with all the aforce said provision into England. About
a fortnight later, Sir Richard Grenville himself arrived with three ships,
not wishing to lose possession of the country where he
had planted a colony the year before, he landed fifteen
(10:08):
men in the isle of Roanoke, furnished plentifully with all
manner of provision for two years, and so departed for England.
Grenville unfortunately had burnt an Indian town and all its
standing corn because the Indians had stolen a silver cup.
Lane two, had been severe in dealing with the natives,
(10:29):
and they had turned from friends to foes. These and
other facts were carefully recorded on the spot by the
official chronicler, Thomas Harriet, better known as a mathematician. Among
the captains who had come out under Grenville in fifteen
eighty five was Thomas Cavendish, a young and daring gentleman
(10:51):
adventurer greatly distinguished as such even in that adventurous age,
and the second English leader to circumnavigate the globe. When
Drake was taking Lane's men home in June fifteen eighty six,
Cavendish was making the final preparations for a two year voyage.
He sailed mostly along the route marked out by Drake,
(11:13):
and many of his adventures were of much the same kind.
His prime object was to make the voyage pay a
handsome dividend, but he did notable service in clipping the
wings of Spain. He raided the shipping off Chile and Peru,
took the Spanish flagship, the famous Santa Anna, off the
coast of California, and on his return home in fifteen
(11:36):
eighty eight, had the satisfaction of reporting, I burned and
sank nineteen sail of ships, both small and great, and
all the villages and towns that ever I landed at,
I burned and spoiled. While Camerindish was preying on Spanish
treasure in America and Drake was singing the King of
(11:58):
Spain's beard in Europe, Raleigh still pursued his colonizing plans.
In fifteen eighty seven, John White and twelve associates received
incorporation as the governor and assistance of the city of
Raleigh in Virginia. The fortunes of this ambitious city were
(12:18):
not unlike those of many another boomed and busted city
of much more recent date. No time was lost in beginning.
Three ships arrived at Roanoke on the twenty second of
July fifteen eighty seven. Every effort was made to find
the fifteen men left behind the year before by Grenville,
(12:39):
to hold possession for the queen mounds of earth, which
may even now betrayed. So piously have their last remains
been cared for marked the site of the fort. From
natives of Croatoan Island, the newcomers learned that Grenville's men
had been murdered by hostile Indians. A native friend was
(13:01):
found in Manteo, a chief whom Barlow had taken to
England and Grenville had brought back. Manteo was now living
with his own tribe of Sea Coast Indians on Croatoan Islands.
But the mischief between Red and White had been begun,
and though Manteo had been baptized and was recognized as
(13:22):
the Lord of Roanoke, the races were becoming fatally estranged.
After a month, Governor White went home for more men
and supplies, leaving most of the colonists at Roanoke. He
found Elizabeth, Raleigh and the rest all working to meet
the Great Armada. Yet, even during the following year, the
(13:43):
momentous year of fifteen eighty eight, Raleigh managed to spare
two Pinnases, with fifteen colonists aboard. Will provided withal that
was most needed. A Spanish squadron, however, forced both Pennases
to run back for their lives. After this frustrated attempt,
two more years passed before White could again sail for Virginia.
(14:07):
In August fifteen ninety his trumpeter sounded all the old
familiar English calls as he approached the little fort. No
answer came. The colony was lost forever. White had arranged
that if the colonists should be obliged to move away,
they should carve the name of the new settlement on
(14:28):
the fort or surrounding trees, and if there was either
danger or distress, they should cut across above the one
word croat tone was all White ever found. There was
no cross White's beloved colony. White's favorite daughter and her
little girl were perhaps in hiding, but supplies were running short.
(14:48):
White was a mere passenger on board the ship that
brought him, and the crew were getting impatient, so impatient
for refreshment and a Spanish prize that they sailed past
Crow a tone, refusing to stop a single hour. Perhaps
White learnt more than is recorded and was satisfied that
all the colonists were dead. Perhaps not. Nobody knows. Only
(15:12):
a wandering tradition comes out of that impenetrable mystery, and
circles round the not impossible romance of young Virginia Dare.
Her father was one of White's twelve assistants. Her mother, Eleanor,
was White's daughter. Virginia herself, the first of all true
(15:32):
native born Americans, was born on the eighteenth of August
fifteen eighty seven. Perhaps Manthieu, Lord of Roanoke, save the
whole family, whose name has been commemorated by that of
the North Carolina County of Dare. Perhaps Virginia Dare alone
survived to be an Indian queen about the time the
(15:53):
first permanent Anglo American colony was founded in sixteen hundred
and seven, twenty years after her birth. Who knows these
twenty sundering. Years. From the end of this subortive colony
in fifteen eighty seven to the beginning of the first
permanent colony in sixteen hundred and seven constitute a period
(16:15):
that saw the close of one age and the opening
of another in every relation of Anglo American affairs. Nor
was it only in Anglo American affairs that change was rife.
The Honorable East India Company entered upon its wonderful career.
Shakespeare began to write his immortal plays. The Chosen Translators
(16:38):
began their work on the authorized version of the English Bible.
The Puritans were becoming a force within the body politic
as well as in religion. Ulster was planted with Englishmen
and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes,
the Great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in
(17:00):
sixteen hundred and three, and with her ended the glorious
Tudor dynasty of England. James pusillanimous and pedantic, son of
Darnley and Mary, Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as
the first of the sinister Stuarts, and truckling to vindictive
Spain through Raleigh into prison under suspended sentence of death.
(17:24):
There was a break of no less than fifteen years
in English efforts to colonize America. Nothing was tried between
the last attempt at Roanoke in fifteen eighty seven and
the first attempt in Massachusetts in sixteen hundred and two,
when thirty two people sailed from England with Bartholomew Gosnold,
(17:45):
formerly a skipper in Raleigh's employ Goznold made straight for
the coast of Maine, which he cited in May. He
then coasted south to Cape Cod. Continuing south, he entered
Buzzard's Bay, where he landed on Cutty Hunk Island. Here,
on the little island in a lake, an island within
an island, he built a fort round which the colony
(18:08):
was expected to grow, but supplies began to run out.
There was bad blood over the proper division of what remained.
The would be colonists could not agree with those who
had no intention of staying behind. The result was that
the entire project had to be given up. Gosnoe sailed
home with the whole disgusted crew and a cargo of
(18:31):
sassafras and cedar. Such was the first prospecting ever done
for what is now New England. The following year sixteen
hundred three, just after the death of Queen Elizabeth, some
merchant venturers of Bristol sent out to vessels under Martin Pring.
(18:51):
Like Gosnoe, Pring first made the coast to Maine and
then felt his way south. Unlike Gosnold, however, he bought
into the great off of Massachusetts Bay, where he took
in a cargo of sassafras at Plymouth Harbor. But that
was all the prospecting done this time. There was no
attempt at colonizing. Two years later, another prospector was sent
(19:14):
out by a more important company. The Earl of Southampton
and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were the chief promoters of this enterprise.
Gorgeous as Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maine, is
a well known character in the subsequent history of New England.
Lord Southampton, as Shakespeare's only patron and greatest personal friend,
(19:37):
is forever famous through the world. The chief prospective chosen
by the company was George Weymouth, who landed on the
coast of Maine, explored a little of the surrounding country,
kidnapped five Indians, and returned to England with a glowing
account of what he had seen. The cumulative effect of
the three expeditions of Gosnold, Kring and Weymouth was a
(20:00):
revival of interest in colonization. Prominent men soon got together
and formed two companies which were formerly charted by King
James on the tenth of April sixteen hundred and six.
The first or Southern Colony, which came to be known
as the London Company, because most of its members lived there,
was authorized to make its first plantation at any place
(20:24):
upon the coast of Virginia or America between the four
and thirty and one in forty degrees of latitude. The
northern second colony, afterwards called the Plymouth Company, was authorized
to settle any place between thirty eight degrees and forty
five degrees north, thus overlapping both the First Company to
(20:46):
the south and the French to the north. In this
summer of the same year sixteen hundred and six, Henry
Challons took two ships of the Plymouth Company round by
the West Indies, where he was caught in a fog
by the Spaniards. Later in the season, Pring went out
and explored North Virginia. In May sixteen hundred and seven,
(21:08):
one hundred and twenty men under George Popham started to
colonize this North Virginia. In August, they landed in Maine
at the mouth of the Kennebec, where they built a fort,
some houses, and a pinnas. Finding themselves short of provisions,
two thirds of their number returned to England. Late in
(21:29):
the same year, the remaining third past a terrible winter,
Popham died and Raleigh Gilbert succeeded him as governor. When
spring came, all the survivors of the colony sailed home
in the pinnace they had built, and the enterprise was abandoned.
The reports of the colonists after their winter and main
(21:50):
work to the effect that the second or a Northern
Colony was not habitable for Englishmen. In the meantime, the
permanent foundation of the first or Southern colony, the real Virginia,
was well under way. The same number of intending emigrants
went out one hundred and twenty on the twenty sixth
(22:11):
of April sixteen hundred and seven, about four o'clock in
the morning, we described the land of Virginia. The same
day we entered into the Bay of chesu pioc Chesapeake.
Thus begins the tale of Captain John Smith, of the
founding of Jamestown, and of a permanent Virginia, the first
(22:32):
of the future United States. Now that we have seen
one spot in vast America really become the promise of
the English nation which Raleigh had longed for, we must
return once more to Raleigh himself. As mocked by his
tantalizing vision, he looked out on a changing world from
(22:54):
his secular Mount Pizga in the prison tower of London.
By this time he had felt both extremes of fortune
to the full. During the travesty of justice at his trial,
the Attorney General, having no sound argument, covered him with
slanderous abuse. These are three of the false accusations on
(23:16):
which he was condemned to death. Viprous traitor, damnable atheist
and spider of Hell. Hawkins, Drake, Frobe, Bischer and Grenville
all were dead. So Raleigh, last of the great Elizabethan Lyons,
was caged and baited for the sport of Spain. Six
(23:37):
of his twelve years of imprisonment were lightened by the
companionship of his wife, Elizabeth Throgmorton, most beautiful of all
the late Queen's maids of honor. Another solace was the
History of the World, the writing of which set his
mind free to wander forth at will, although his body
(23:57):
stayed behind the bars. But the contrast was too poignant
not to wring this cry of anguish from his preface. Yet,
when we once come in sight of the port of
death to which all winds drive us, and when, by
letting fall that fatal anchor which can never be weighed again,
(24:18):
the navigation of this life takes in, then it is
I say that our own cogitations, those sad and severe
cogitations formally beaten from us by our health and felicity,
return again and pay us to the uttermost for all
the pleasing passages of our life passed at length. In
(24:40):
the spring of sixteen sixteen, Raleigh was released, though still unpardoned.
He and his devoted wife immediately put all that remained
of their fortune into a new venture. Twenty years before this,
he thought he could make discovery of the mighty, rich
and beautiful empire of Guiana, and of that great and
(25:01):
golden city which the Spaniards called El Dorado and the
natives called Manoa. Now he would go back to find
the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that mysterious
Manoah among those southern mountains of bright Stones which lay
behind the Spanish main. The King's cupidity was roused, and
(25:24):
so in sixteen seventeen Raleigh was commissioned as the Admiral
of fourteen Sail. In November, he arrived off the coast
that guarded all the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in
the far recesses of the Ournokan wilds Guiana Manoa El Dorado.
The inland voices called him on, but Spaniards barred the way,
(25:49):
and Raleigh, defying the instructions of the king, attacked them.
The English force was far too weak, and disaster followed.
Raleigh's son and heir was killed, and his lieutenant committed suicide.
Mn began to mutiny, Spanish troops and ships came closing in,
and the forlorn remnant of the expedition on which such
(26:11):
hopes were built. When straggling home to England, there, Raleigh
was arrested and sent to the block on the twenty
ninth of October sixteen eighteen. He had played the great
game of life and death and lost it. When he
mounted the scaffold, he asked to see the axe feeding
the edge. He smiled and said, tis a sharp medicine,
(26:33):
but a cure for all diseases. Then he bared his
neck and died like one who had served the Great
Queen as her captain of the guard. End of Chapter eleven.
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