The Sea Adventure
Experience is a great teacher. That London Company with Virginia
to colonize had now come to see how inadequate to the attempt were
its means and strength. Evidently it might be long before either
gold mines or the South Sea could be found. The company's ships were
too slight and few; colonists were going by the single handful when
they should go by the double. Something was at fault in the
management of the enterprise. The quarrels in Virginia were too
constant, the disasters too frequent. More money, more persons
interested with purse and mind, a great company instead of a small,
a national cast to the enterprise these were imperative needs. In
the press of such demands the London Company passed away. In 1609
under new letters patent was born the Virginia Company.
The members and shareholders in this corporation touch through and
through the body of England at that day. First names upon the roll
come Robert Cecil, Thomas Howard, Henry Wriothesley, William
Herbert, Henry Clinton, Richard Sackville, Thomas Cecil, Philip
Herbert--Earls of Salisbury, Suffolk, Southampton, Pembroke,
Lincoln, Dorset, Exeter, and Montgomery. Then follow a dozen peers,
the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, a hundred knights, many
gentlemen, one hundred and ten merchants, certain physicians and
clergymen, old soldiers of the Continental wars, sea-captains and
mariners, and a small host of the unclassified. In addition shares
were taken by fifty-six London guilds or industrial companies. Here
are the Companies of the Tallow and Wax Chandlers, the Armorers and
Girdlers, Cordwayners and Carpenters, Masons, Plumbers, Founders,
Poulterers, Cooks, Coopers, Tylers and Brick Layers, Bowyers and
Vinters, Merchant Taylors, Blacksmiths and Weavers, Mercers,
Grocers, Turners, Gardeners, Dyers, Scriveners, Fruiterers,
Plaisterers, Brown Bakers, Imbroiderers, Musicians, and many more.
The first Council appointed by the new charter had fifty-two
members, fourteen of whom sat in the English House of Lords, and
twice that number in the Commons. Thus was Virginia well linked to
Crown and Parliament.
This great commercial company had sovereign powers within Virginia.
The King should have his fifth part of all ore of gold and silver;
the laws and religion of England should be upheld, and no man let go
to Virginia who had not first taken the oath of supremacy. But in
the wide field beside all this the President--called the Treasurer
-and the Council, henceforth to be chosen out of and by the whole
body of subscribers, had full sway. No longer should there be a
second Council sitting in Virginia, but a Governor with power,
answerable only to the Company at home. That Company might tax and
legislate within the Virginian field, punish the ill-doer or
"rebel," and wage war, if need be, against Indian or Spaniard:
One of the first actions of the newly constituted body was to seek
remedy for the customary passage by way of the West Indies -so long
and so beset by dangers. They sent forth a small ship under Captain
Samuel Argall, with instructions "to attempt a direct and cleare
passage, by leaving the Canaries to the East, and from thence to run
a straight westerne course . .. . And so to make an experience of
the Winds and Currents which have affrighted all undertakers by the
North."
This Argall, a young man with a stirring and adventurous life behind
him and before him, took his ship the indicated way. He made the
voyage in nine weeks, of which two were spent becalmed, and upon his
return reported that it might be made in seven, "and no apparent
inconvenience in the way." He brought to the great Council of the
Company a story of necessity and distress at Jamestown, and the
Council lays much of the blame for that upon "the misgovernment of
the Commanders, by dissention and ambition among themselves," and
upon the idleness of the general run, "active in nothing but
adhearing to factions and parts." The Council, sitting afar from a
savage land, is probably much too severe. But the "factions and
parts" cannot easily be denied.
Before Argall's return, the Company had commissioned as Governor of
Virginia Sir Thomas Gates, and had gathered a fleet of seven ships
and two pinnaces with Sir George Somers as Admiral, in the ship
called the Sea Adventure, and Christopher Newport as Vice-Admiral.
All weighed anchor from Falmouth early in June and sailed by the
newly tried course, south to the Canaries and then across. These
seven ships carried five hundred colonists, men, women, and
children.
On St. James's day there rose and broke a fearsome storm. Two days
and nights it raged, and it scattered that fleet of seven. Gates,
Somers, and Newport with others of "rancke and quality" were upon
the Sea Adventure. How fared this ship with one attendant pinnace we
shall come to see presently. But the other ships, driven to and fro,
at last found a favorable wind, and in August they sighted Virginia.
On the eleventh of that month they came, storm-beaten and without
Governor or Admiral or Sea Adventure, into "our Bay" and at last to
"the King's River and Town." Here there swarmed from these ships
nigh three hundred persons, meeting and met by the hundred dwelling
at Jamestown. This was the third supply, but it lacked the hundred
or so upon the Sea Adventure and the pinnace, and it lacked a head.
"Being put ashore without their Governor or any order from him (all
the Commissioners and principal persons being aboard him) no man
would acknowledge a superior."
With this multitude appeared once more in Virginia the three ancient
councilors--Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin. Apparently here came
fresh fuel for factions. Who should rule, and who should be ruled?
Here is an extremely old and important question, settled in history
only to be unsettled again. Everywhere it rises, dust on Time's
road, and is laid only to rise again.
Smith was still President. Who was in the right and who in the wrong
in these ancient quarrels, the recital of which fills the pages of
Smith and of other men, is hard now to be determined. But Jamestown
became a place of turbulence. Francis West was sent with a
considerable number to the Falls of the Far West to make there some
kind of settlement. For a like purpose Martin and Percy were
dispatched to the Nansemond River. All along the line there was
bitter falling out. The Indians became markedly hostile. Smith was
up the river, quarreling with West and his men. At last he called
them "wrongheaded asses," flung himself into his boat, and made down
the river to Jamestown. Yet even so he found no peace, for, while he
was asleep in the boat, by some accident or other a spark found its
way to his powder pouch. The powder exploded. Terribly hurt, he
leaped overboard into the river, whence he was with difficulty
rescued.
Smith was now deposed by Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, because,
"being an ambityous, onworthy, and vayneglorious fellowe," say his
detractors, "he wolde rule all and ingrose all authority into his
own hands." Be this as it may, Smith was put on board one of the
ships which were about to sail for England. Wounded, and with none
at Jamestown able to heal his hurt, he was no unwilling passenger.
Thus he departed, and Virginia knew Captain John Smith no more. Some
liked him and his ways, some liked him not nor his ways either. He
wrote of his own deeds and praised them highly, and saw little good
in other mankind, though here and there he made an exception.
Evident enough are faults of temper. But he had great courage and
energy and at times a lofty disinterestedness.
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