Sir Walter Raleigh and Prospectors for England
Conquerors
first, prospectors second, then the pioneers: that is the order of
those by whom 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 sixteenth-century 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 1607, New
France in 1608, New England in 1620.
It 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 belong to the class of conquerors, while many would have
gladly been the pioneers of permanent colonies. Nevertheless the
prospectors form 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 El Dorado. He died a ruined
and neglected man. But still he was the chief of those whom we can
only call prospectors, first, because they tried their fortune
ashore, 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 be Not one but all mankind's
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 of prose, Raleigh had one ruling passion
greater than all the rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir
Robert Cecil, the son of Queen Elizabeth's principal minister of
state, Lord Burleigh, he expressed this great determined purpose of
his life: "I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation". He had
other interests in abundance, perhaps in superabundance; and he had
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 motto "Noblesse oblige". He was
splendidly handsome and tall, a perfect blend of strength and grace,
full of deep, 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 Inglishe
nation.'
He left Oxford as an undergraduate to serve the Huguenots in France
under Admiral Coligny 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 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, is 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, and launched upon the full
flood-stream 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
prospectus, dated at London, the 6th of November, 1577, and still
kept there in the Record Office, is 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 the New Land, which, with your
good license, I will undertake without your Majesty's charge.... The
New Land fish is a principal and rich and everywhere vendible
merchandise; and by the gain thereof shipping, victual, munition,
and the transporting of five or six thousand soldiers may be
defrayed.'
But Gilbert's associates cared nothing for fish and everything for
gold. He went to the West Indies, lost a ship, and returned without
a fortune. Next year he was forbidden to repeat the experiment.
The project then languished until the fatal voyage of 1583, when
Gilbert set sail with six vessels, intending to occupy Newfoundland
as the base from which to colonize 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 who
'had no good hap at sea.' He was also passionately self-willed, and
Elizabeth had doubts about the propriety of backing him. But she
sent him a gilt anchor by way of good luck and off he went in June,
financed chiefly by Raleigh, whose name was given to the flagship.
Gilbert's adventure never got beyond its base in Newfoundland. His
ship the "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 was returning broken down. Gilbert, furious
at the sailors' hints that he was just a little sea-shy, would
persist in sticking to the Lilliputian ten-ton "Squirrel", which was
woefully top-hampered with guns and stores. Before leaving
Newfoundland he was implored to abandon her and bring her crew
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" foundered with all hands.
Amadas and Barlow sailed in 1584. 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, 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 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 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 took home
discomfited in 1586. There might have been a story to tell of
successful colonization, instead of failure, if Drake had kept away
from Roanoke that year or if he had tarried a few days longer. For
no sooner had the colony departed in Drake's vessels than a ship
sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, 'freighted with all maner of things
in most plentiful maner,' arrived at Roanoke; and 'after some time
spent in seeking our Colony up in the countrey, and not finding
them, returned with all the aforesayd 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 fifteene men in the
Isle of Roanoak, furnished plentifully with all maner of provision
for two yeeres, 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, too, had been
severe in dealing with the natives and they had turned from friends
to foes. These and other facts were carefully recorded on the spot
by the official chronicler, Thomas Harriot, better known as a
mathematician.
Among the captains who had come out under Grenville in 1585 was
Thomas Cavendish, a young and daring gentleman-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, 1586, Cavendish was making the final
preparations for a two-year voyage. He sailed mostly along the route
marked out by Drake, 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 1588 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 Cavendish was preying on Spanish treasure in America, and
Drake was 'singeing the King of Spain's beard' in Europe, Raleigh
still pursued his colonizing plans. In 1587 John White and twelve
associates received incorporation as the 'Governor and Assistants of
the City of Ralegh in Virginia.' The fortunes of this ambitious city
were 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 22nd of July, 1587. Every effort was made
to find the fifteen men left behind the year before by Grenville to
hold possession for the Queen. Mounds of earth, which may even now
be traced, 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.
One native friend was 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 Island. But the
mischief between red and white had been begun; and though Manteo had
been baptized and was recognized as '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 momentous year of 1588, Raleigh
managed to spare two pinnaces, with fifteen colonists aboard, well
provided with all that was most needed. A Spanish squadron, however,
forced both pinnaces to run back for their lives. After this
frustrated attempt two more years passed before White could again
sail for Virginia. In August, 1590, his trumpeter sounded all the
old familiar English calls as he approached the little fort. No
answer came. The colony was lost for ever. White had arranged that
if the colonists should be obliged to move away they should carve
the name of the new settlement on the fort or surrounding trees, and
that if there was either danger or distress they should cut a cross
above. The one word CROATOAN 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. 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 Croatoan,
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 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
'native-born' Americans, was born on the 18th of August, 1587.
Perhaps Manteo, 'Lord of Roanoke,' saved 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 first permanent Anglo-American colony was founded in
1607, twenty years after her birth. Who knows?
Back to: English Exploration of America
