Captain John Smith returned to England in the autumn of 1609, wounded
in body and loaded with accusations of misconduct, concocted by his
factious companions in Virginia. There is no record that these charges
were ever considered by the London Company. Indeed, we cannot find
that the company in those days ever took any action on the charges made
against any of its servants in Virginia. Men came home in disgrace and
appeared to receive neither vindication nor condemnation. Some sunk into
private life, and others more pushing and brazen, like Ratcliffe, the
enemy of Smith, got employment again after a time. The affairs of the
company seem to have been conducted with little order or justice.
Whatever may have been the justice of the charges against Smith, he had
evidently forfeited the good opinion of the company as a desirable man
to employ. They might esteem his energy and profit by his advice and
experience, but they did not want his services. And in time he came to
be considered an enemy of the company.
Unfortunately for biographical purposes, Smith's life is pretty much a
blank from 1609 to 1614. When he ceases to write about himself he passes
out of sight. There are scarcely any contemporary allusions to his
existence at this time. We may assume, however, from our knowledge of
his restlessness, ambition, and love of adventure, that he was not idle.
We may assume that he besieged the company with his plans for the proper
conduct of the settlement of Virginia; that he talked at large in all
companies of his discoveries, his exploits, which grew by the relating,
and of the prospective greatness of the new Britain beyond the Atlantic.
That he wearied the Council by his importunity and his acquaintances
by his hobby, we can also surmise. No doubt also he was considered a
fanatic by those who failed to comprehend the greatness of his schemes,
and to realize, as he did, the importance of securing the new empire to
the English before it was occupied by the Spanish and the French. His
conceit, his boasting, and his overbearing manner, which no doubt was
one of the causes why he was unable to act in harmony with the other
adventurers of that day, all told against him. He was that most
uncomfortable person, a man conscious of his own importance, and out of
favor and out of money.
Yet Smith had friends, and followers, and men who believed in him. This
is shown by the remarkable eulogies in verse from many pens, which he
prefixes to the various editions of his many works. They seem to have
been written after reading the manuscripts, and prepared to accompany
the printed volumes and tracts. They all allude to the envy and
detraction to which he was subject, and which must have amounted to
a storm of abuse and perhaps ridicule; and they all tax the English
vocabulary to extol Smith, his deeds, and his works. In putting forward
these tributes of admiration and affection, as well as in his constant
allusion to the ill requital of his services, we see a man fighting for
his reputation, and conscious of the necessity of doing so. He is ever
turning back, in whatever he writes, to rehearse his exploits and to
defend his motives.
The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare's day;
a city dirty, with ill-paved streets unlighted at night, no sidewalks,
foul gutters, wooden houses, gable ends to the street, set thickly with
small windows from which slops and refuse were at any moment of the day
or night liable to be emptied upon the heads of the passers by; petty
little shops in which were beginning to be displayed the silks and
luxuries of the continent; a city crowded and growing rapidly, subject
to pestilences and liable to sweeping conflagrations. The Thames had no
bridges, and hundreds of boats plied between London side and Southwark,
where were most of the theatres, the bull-baitings, the bear-fighting,
the public gardens, the residences of the hussies, and other amusements
that Bankside, the resort of all classes bent on pleasure, furnished
high or low. At no time before or since was there such fantastical
fashion in dress, both in cut and gay colors, nor more sumptuousness in
costume or luxury in display among the upper classes, and such squalor
in low life. The press teemed with tracts and pamphlets, written in
language “as plain as a pikestaff,” against the immoralities of the
theatres, those “seminaries of vice,” and calling down the judgment of
God upon the cost and the monstrosities of the dress of both men
and women; while the town roared on its way, warned by sermons, and
instructed in its chosen path by such plays and masques as Ben Jonson's
“Pleasure reconciled to Virtue.”
The town swarmed with idlers, and with gallants who wanted advancement
but were unwilling to adventure their ease to obtain it. There was much
lounging in apothecaries' shops to smoke tobacco, gossip, and hear the
news. We may be sure that Smith found many auditors for his adventures
and his complaints. There was a good deal of interest in the New World,
but mainly still as a place where gold and other wealth might be got
without much labor, and as a possible short cut to the South Sea and
Cathay. The vast number of Londoners whose names appear in the second
Virginia charter shows the readiness of traders to seek profit in
adventure. The stir for wider freedom in religion and government
increased with the activity of exploration and colonization, and one
reason why James finally annulled the Virginia, charter was because
he regarded the meetings of the London Company as opportunities of
sedition.
Smith is altogether silent about his existence at this time. We do not
hear of him till 1612, when his “Map of Virginia” with his description
of the country was published at Oxford. The map had been published
before: it was sent home with at least a portion of the description
of Virginia. In an appendix appeared (as has been said) a series of
narrations of Smith's exploits, covering the rime he was in Virginia,
written by his companions, edited by his friend Dr. Symonds, and
carefully overlooked by himself.
Failing to obtain employment by the Virginia company, Smith turned his
attention to New England, but neither did the Plymouth company avail
themselves of his service. At last in 1614 he persuaded some London
merchants to fit him out for a private trading adventure to the coast
of New England. Accordingly with two ships, at the charge of Captain
Marmaduke Roydon, Captain George Langam, Mr. John Buley, and William
Skelton, merchants, he sailed from the Downs on the 3d of March, 1614,
and in the latter part of April “chanced to arrive in New England,
a part of America at the Isle of Monahiggan in 43 1/2 of Northerly
latitude.” This was within the territory appropriated to the second (the
Plymouth) colony by the patent of 1606, which gave leave of settlement
between the 38th and 44th parallels.
Smith's connection with New England is very slight, and mainly that of
an author, one who labored for many years to excite interest in it by
his writings. He named several points, and made a map of such portion
of the coast as he saw, which was changed from time to time by other
observations. He had a remarkable eye for topography, as is especially
evident by his map of Virginia. This New England coast is roughly
indicated in Venazzani's Plot Of 1524, and better on Mercator's of a few
years later, and in Ortelius's “Theatrum Orbis Terarum” of 1570; but
in Smith's map we have for the first time a fair approach to the real
contour.
Of Smith's English predecessors on this coast there is no room here
to speak. Gosnold had described Elizabeth's Isles, explorations and
settlements had been made on the coast of Maine by Popham and Weymouth,
but Smith claims the credit of not only drawing the first fair map of
the coast, but of giving the name “New England” to what had passed under
the general names of Virginia, Canada, Norumbaga, etc.
Smith published his description of New England June 18, 1616, and it is
in that we must follow his career. It is dedicated to the “high, hopeful
Charles, Prince of Great Britain,” and is prefaced by an address to
the King's Council for all the plantations, and another to all the
adventurers into New England. The addresses, as usual, call attention
to his own merits. “Little honey [he writes] hath that hive, where there
are more drones than bees; and miserable is that land where more
are idle than are well employed. If the endeavors of these vermin be
acceptable, I hope mine may be excusable: though I confess it were more
proper for me to be doing what I say than writing what I know. Had I
returned rich I could not have erred; now having only such food as came
to my net, I must be taxed. But, I would my taxers were as ready to
adventure their purses as I, purse, life, and all I have; or as diligent
to permit the charge, as I know they are vigilant to reap the fruits of
my labors.” The value of the fisheries he had demonstrated by his catch;
and he says, looking, as usual, to large results, “but because I speak
so much of fishing, if any mistake me for such a devote fisher, as I
dream of nought else, they mistake me. I know a ring of gold from a
grain of barley as well as a goldsmith; and nothing is there to be had
which fishing doth hinder, but further us to obtain.”
John Smith first appears on the New England coast as a whale fisher.
The only reference to his being in America in Josselyn's “Chronological
Observations of America” is under the wrong year, 1608: “Capt. John
Smith fished now for whales at Monhiggen.” He says: “Our plot there was
to take whales, and made tryall of a Myne of gold and copper;” these
failing they were to get fish and furs. Of gold there had been little
expectation, and (he goes on) “we found this whale fishing a costly
conclusion; we saw many, and spent much time in chasing them; but could
not kill any; they being a kind of Jubartes, and not the whale that
yeeldes finnes and oyle as we expected.” They then turned their
attention to smaller fish, but owing to their late arrival and “long
lingering about the whale”--chasing a whale that they could not kill
because it was not the right kind--the best season for fishing was
passed. Nevertheless, they secured some 40,000 cod--the figure is
naturally raised to 60,000 when Smith retells the story fifteen years
afterwards.
But our hero was a born explorer, and could not be content with not
examining the strange coast upon which he found himself. Leaving his
sailors to catch cod, he took eight or nine men in a small boat, and
cruised along the coast, trading wherever he could for furs, of which
he obtained above a thousand beaver skins; but his chance to trade was
limited by the French settlements in the east, by the presence of one of
Popham's ships opposite Monhegan, on the main, and by a couple of French
vessels to the westward. Having examined the coast from Penobscot to
Cape Cod, and gathered a profitable harvest from the sea, Smith returned
in his vessel, reaching the Downs within six months after his departure.
This was his whole experience in New England, which ever afterwards
he regarded as particularly his discovery, and spoke of as one of his
children, Virginia being the other.
With the other vessel Smith had trouble. He accuses its master, Thomas
Hunt, of attempting to rob him of his plots and observations, and to
leave him “alone on a desolate isle, to the fury of famine, And all
other extremities.” After Smith's departure the rascally Hunt decoyed
twenty-seven unsuspecting savages on board his ship and carried them off
to Spain, where he sold them as slaves. Hunt sold his furs at a great
profit. Smith's cargo also paid well: in his letter to Lord Bacon in
1618 he says that with forty-five men he had cleared L 1,500 in less
than three months on a cargo of dried fish and beaver skins--a pound at
that date had five times the purchasing power of a pound now.
The explorer first landed on Monhegan, a small island in sight of which
in the war of 1812 occurred the lively little seafight of the American
Wasp and the British Frolic, in which the Wasp was the victor, but
directly after, with her prize, fell into the hands of an English
seventy-four.
He made certainly a most remarkable voyage in his open boat. Between
Penobscot and Cape Cod (which he called Cape James) he says he saw forty
several habitations, and sounded about twenty-five excellent harbors.
Although Smith accepted the geographical notion of his time, and thought
that Florida adjoined India, he declared that Virginia was not an
island, but part of a great continent, and he comprehended something
of the vastness of the country he was coasting along, “dominions which
stretch themselves into the main, God doth know how many thousand miles,
of which one could no more guess the extent and products than a stranger
sailing betwixt England and France could tell what was in Spain, Italy,
Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and the rest.” And he had the prophetic
vision, which he more than once refers to, of one of the greatest
empires of the world that would one day arise here. Contrary to the
opinion that prevailed then and for years after, he declared also that
New England was not an island.
Smith describes with considerable particularity the coast, giving the
names of the Indian tribes, and cataloguing the native productions,
vegetable and animal. He bestows his favorite names liberally upon
points and islands--few of which were accepted. Cape Ann he called from
his charming Turkish benefactor, “Cape Tragabigzanda”; the three islands
in front of it, the “Three Turks' Heads”; and the Isles of Shoals he
simply describes: “Smyth's Isles are a heape together, none neare them,
against Acconimticus.” Cape Cod, which appears upon all the maps before
Smith's visit as “Sandy” cape, he says “is only a headland of high hills
of sand, overgrown with shrubbie pines, hurts [whorts, whortleberries]
and such trash; but an excellent harbor for all weathers. This Cape is
made by the maine Sea on the one side, and a great bay on the other in
the form of a sickle.”
A large portion of this treatise on New England is devoted to an
argument to induce the English to found a permanent colony there, of
which Smith shows that he would be the proper leader. The main staple
for the present would be fish, and he shows how Holland has become
powerful by her fisheries and the training of hardy sailors. The fishery
would support a colony until it had obtained a good foothold, and
control of these fisheries would bring more profit to England than any
other occupation. There are other reasons than gain that should induce
in England the large ambition of founding a great state, reasons of
religion and humanity, erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the
ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue, finding employment
for the idle, and giving to the mother country a kingdom to attend her.
But he does not expect the English to indulge in such noble ambitions
unless he can show a profit in them.
“I have not [he says] been so ill bred but I have tasted of plenty and
pleasure, as well as want and misery; nor doth a necessity yet, nor
occasion of discontent, force me to these endeavors; nor am I ignorant
that small thank I shall have for my pains; or that many would have the
world imagine them to be of great judgment, that can but blemish these
my designs, by their witty objections and detractions; yet (I hope) my
reasons and my deeds will so prevail with some, that I shall not
want employment in these affairs to make the most blind see his own
senselessness and incredulity; hoping that gain will make them affect
that which religion, charity and the common good cannot.... For I am
not so simple to think that ever any other motive than wealth will ever
erect there a Commonwealth; or draw company from their ease and humours
at home, to stay in New England to effect any purpose.”
But lest the toils of the new settlement should affright his readers,
our author draws an idyllic picture of the simple pleasures which nature
and liberty afford here freely, but which cost so dearly in England.
Those who seek vain pleasure in England take more pains to enjoy it than
they would spend in New England to gain wealth, and yet have not half
such sweet content. What pleasure can be more, he exclaims, when men are
tired of planting vines and fruits and ordering gardens, orchards and
building to their mind, than “to recreate themselves before their owne
doore, in their owne boates upon the Sea, where man, woman and child,
with a small hooke and line, by angling, may take divers sorts of
excellent fish at their pleasures? And is it not pretty sport, to pull
up two pence, six pence, and twelve pence as fast as you can hale and
veere a line?... And what sport doth yield more pleasing content, and
less hurt or charge than angling with a hooke, and crossing the sweet
ayre from Isle to Isle, over the silent streams of a calme Sea? wherein
the most curious may finde pleasure, profit and content.”
Smith made a most attractive picture of the fertility of the soil
and the fruitfulness of the country. Nothing was too trivial to be
mentioned. “There are certain red berries called Alkermes which is worth
ten shillings a pound, but of these hath been sold for thirty or forty
shillings the pound, may yearly be gathered a good quantity.” John
Josselyn, who was much of the time in New England from 1638 to 1671 and
saw more marvels there than anybody else ever imagined, says, “I have
sought for this berry he speaks of, as a man should for a needle in
a bottle of hay, but could never light upon it; unless that kind of
Solomon's seal called by the English treacle-berry should be it.”
Towards the last of August, 1614, Smith was back at Plymouth. He had
now a project of a colony which he imparted to his friend Sir Ferdinand
Gorges. It is difficult from Smith's various accounts to say exactly
what happened to him next. It would appear that he declined to go with
an expedition of four ship which the Virginia company despatched in
1615, and incurred their ill-will by refusing, but he considered himself
attached to the western or Plymouth company. Still he experienced many
delays from them: they promised four ships to be ready at Plymouth;
on his arrival “he found no such matter,” and at last he embarked in
a private expedition, to found a colony at the expense of Gorges, Dr.
Sutliffe, Bishop o Exeter, and a few gentlemen in London. In January
1615, he sailed from Plymouth with a ship Of 20 tons, and another of 50.
His intention was, after the fishing was over, to remain in New England
with only fifteen men and begin a colony.
These hopes were frustrated. When only one hundred and twenty leagues
out all the masts of his vessels were carried away in a storm, and it
was only by diligent pumping that he was able to keep his craft afloat
and put back to Plymouth. Thence on the 24th of June he made another
start in a vessel of sixty tons with thirty men. But ill-luck still
attended him. He had a queer adventure with pirates. Lest the envious
world should not believe his own story, Smith had Baker, his steward,
and several of his crew examined before a magistrate at Plymouth,
December 8, 1615, who support his story by their testimony up to a
certain point.
It appears that he was chased two days by one Fry, an English pirate,
in a greatly superior vessel, heavily armed and manned. By reason of the
foul weather the pirate could not board Smith, and his master, mate,
and pilot, Chambers, Minter, and Digby, importuned him to surrender,
and that he should send a boat to the pirate, as Fry had no boat.
This singular proposal Smith accepted on condition Fry would not take
anything that would cripple his voyage, or send more men aboard
(Smith furnishing the boat) than he allowed. Baker confessed that
the quartermaster and Chambers received gold of the pirates, for what
purpose it does not appear. They came on board, but Smith would not come
out of his cabin to entertain them, “although a great many of them had
been his sailors, and for his love would have wafted us to the Isle of
Flowers.”
Having got rid of the pirate Fry by this singular manner of receiving
gold from him, Smith's vessel was next chased by two French pirates at
Fayal. Chambers, Minter, and Digby again desired Smith to yield, but he
threatened to blow up his ship if they did not stand to the defense; and
so they got clear of the French pirates. But more were to come.
At “Flowers” they were chased by four French men-of-war. Again Chambers,
Minter, and Digby importuned Smith to yield, and upon the consideration
that he could speak French, and that they were Protestants of Rochelle
and had the King's commission to take Spaniards, Portuguese, and
pirates, Smith, with some of his company, went on board one of the
French ships. The next day the French plundered Smith's vessel and
distributed his crew among their ships, and for a week employed his boat
in chasing all the ships that came in sight. At the end of this bout
they surrendered her again to her crew, with victuals but no weapons.
Smith exhorted his officers to proceed on their voyage for fish, either
to New England or Newfoundland. This the officers declined to do at
first, but the soldiers on board compelled them, and thereupon Captain
Smith busied himself in collecting from the French fleet and sending on
board his bark various commodities that belonged to her--powder,
match, books, instruments, his sword and dagger, bedding, aquavite, his
commission, apparel, and many other things. These articles Chambers and
the others divided among themselves, leaving Smith, who was still on
board the Frenchman, only his waistcoat and breeches. The next day, the
weather being foul, they ran so near the Frenchman as to endanger their
yards, and Chambers called to Captain Smith to come aboard or he would
leave him. Smith ordered him to send a boat; Chambers replied that
his boat was split, which was a lie, and told him to come off in the
Frenchman's boat. Smith said he could not command that, and so they
parted. The English bark returned to Plymouth, and Smith was left on
board the French man-of-war.
Smith himself says that Chambers had persuaded the French admiral that
if Smith was let to go on his boat he would revenge himself on the
French fisheries on the Banks.
For over two months, according to his narration, Smith was kept on board
the Frenchman, cruising about for prizes, “to manage their fight against
the Spaniards, and be in a prison when they took any English.” One of
their prizes was a sugar caraval from Brazil; another was a West Indian
worth two hundred thousand crowns, which had on board fourteen coffers
of wedges of silver, eight thousand royals of eight, and six coffers of
the King of Spain's treasure, besides the pillage and rich coffers of
many rich passengers. The French captain, breaking his promise to put
Smith ashore at Fayal, at length sent him towards France on the sugar
caravel. When near the coast, in a night of terrible storm, Smith seized
a boat and escaped. It was a tempest that wrecked all the vessels on the
coast, and for twelve hours Smith was drifting about in his open boat,
in momentary expectation of sinking, until he was cast upon the oozy
isle of “Charowne,” where the fowlers picked him up half dead with
water, cold, and hunger, and he got to Rochelle, where he made complaint
to the Judge of Admiralty. Here he learned that the rich prize had been
wrecked in the storm and the captain and half the crew drowned. But
from the wreck of this great prize thirty-six thousand crowns' worth of
jewels came ashore. For his share in this Smith put in his claim with
the English ambassador at Bordeaux. The Captain was hospitably treated
by the Frenchmen. He met there his old friend Master Crampton, and he
says: “I was more beholden to the Frenchmen that escaped drowning in
the man-of-war, Madam Chanoyes of Rotchell, and the lawyers of Burdeaux,
than all the rest of my countrymen I met in France.” While he was
waiting there to get justice, he saw the “arrival of the King's great
marriage brought from Spain.” This is all his reference to the arrival
of Anne of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip III., who had been
betrothed to Louis XIII. in 1612, one of the double Spanish marriages
which made such a commotion in France.
Leaving his business in France unsettled (forever), Smith returned to
Plymouth, to find his reputation covered with infamy and his clothes,
books, and arms divided among the mutineers of his boat. The chiefest
of these he “laid by the heels,” as usual, and the others confessed and
told the singular tale we have outlined. It needs no comment, except
that Smith had a facility for unlucky adventures unequaled among the
uneasy spirits of his age. Yet he was as buoyant as a cork, and emerged
from every disaster with more enthusiasm for himself and for new
ventures. Among the many glowing tributes to himself in verse that Smith
prints with this description is one signed by a soldier, Edw. Robinson,
which begins:
“Oft thou hast led, when I brought up the Rere,
In bloody wars where thousands have been slaine.”
This common soldier, who cannot help breaking out in poetry when he
thinks of Smith, is made to say that Smith was his captain “in the
fierce wars of Transylvania,” and he apostrophizes him:
“Thou that to passe the worlds foure parts dost deeme
No more, than ewere to goe to bed or drinke,
And all thou yet hast done thou dost esteeme
As nothing.
“For mee: I not commend but much admire
Thy England yet unknown to passers by-her,
For it will praise itselfe in spight of me:
Thou, it, it, thou, to all posteritie.”