Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (11 page)

Even before the return of Barlow and Amadas, Richard Hakluyt the younger had begun to write his Discourse of Western Planting, a key text in English colonial history, written, he says, 'at the requeste and direction of...Sir Walter Raghley, nowe knight' and presented to the Queen on 5 October 1584 - but only published much later, in 1877.
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 A few words are necessary at this point to introduce Hakluyt, a key publicist of Ralegh's and other mens' voyages. Confusingly, there were two men called Richard Hakluyt, cousins, living at much the same time and both fascinated by geography and voyaging. The elder, a lawyer, was important largely for inspiring the interest of his younger cousin in maps and travel. The younger Hakluyt records that he visited his cousin in the Inner Temple as a schoolboy and was fascinated by the maps and charts that he saw there. After graduating in 1575 from Christ Church, Oxford, at the age of twenty-three, he began to lecture on geography. He also took holy orders and became a preacher. He tells us that 'in my publike lectures [I] was the first, that produced and shewed both the olde imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed Mappes, Globes, Spheares, and other instruments of this Art for demonstration in the common schooles, to the singular pleasure, and generall contentment of my auditory'.
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This was the start of an astonishing publishing career, crowned by the various editions of the Principall Navigations...of the English Nation.
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In his Discourse of Western Planting, Hakluyt turns, after an introductory section on the importance of 'thin largemente of the gospel of Christe', to commercial and fiscal arguments. English trades 'are growen beggarly or daungerous', especially where the King of Spain has dominions. Elsewhere, trade was decayed by the burden of taxes in France, by pirates in the Mediterranean and by civil dissension in Flanders. Hakluyt supports his case with glowing reports from the writings of Ribault and others. The colonies would provide 'manifolde ymployment of numbers of idle men', bring an increase in the royal revenues and would also be 'a greate bridle to the Indies of the Kinge of Spaine'. Philip II was, claimed Hakluyt, less powerful than people thought.

Hakluyt moves from arguments in favour of colonies to 'a note of some thinges to be prepared for the voyadge': animals for food, carpenters and other artisans for building works, and trading goods. The knitted woollen caps made in Toledo may, he suggests, 'become a notable trade'.
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 He then notes things that should not be forgotten: preachers, bibles, books on the discovery and conquest of the East and West Indies to raise men's minds to courage; a table of laws to be produced, for showing to prospective colonists; a physician and a surgeon; honey for making mead, and so on. Every man's gifts and qualities should be entered in a register; no papists should be chosen. All this was written before the Amadas-Barlow reconnaissance voyage had returned. Hakluyt is plainly an obsessive maker of lists.

Even more important to Ralegh's enterprise, and certainly more remarkable intellectually than Hakluyt, was Thomas Harriot. Born in 1560, Harriot went up to St Mary's Hall, Oxford, in about 1576.
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 By the time of his graduation in 1580 he had become principally interested in mathematics and especially in its application to navigation. This may have been due to the influence of Richard Hakluyt, but of that we cannot be certain. Indeed, there is a great deal in Harriot's life of which we cannot be certain. He published virtually nothing and left his surviving papers in confusion.
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 Around the time of Ralegh's return from Ireland in 1581-2, the two men made contact and developed a strong friendship. How they met is a matter of speculation: possibly through Hakluyt, possibly through Lawrence Keymis, who was at Balliol about the same time. At all events, by 1582 or 1583 Harriot was living and working in Ralegh's household, where he stayed until he moved into the service of the Earl of Northumberland, a richer master, in or around 1597. Ralegh and Northumberland were of course friends and companions, with a common interest in the sciences. Initially at least, Harriot's principal value to Ralegh lay in his application of mathematics to navigation. In his translation of Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo, dedicated to Ralegh, Richard Hakluyt commented that Ralegh had nourished in his household 'with a most liberal salary, a young man well trained in those studies [mathematics],Thomas Harriot; so that under his guidance you might in spare hours learn those noble sciences and your collaborating sea captains, who are many, might very profitably unite theory with practice, not without almost incredible results'.
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Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1584, Ralegh was consolidating his authority with a parliamentary bill confirming his patent. It was entered in the Commons on 14 December, passed three readings there after some controversy, but did not pass the Lords.
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 Richard Hakluyt senior, the lawyer, wrote two pamphlets as inducements to men 'to the liking of the voyage intended towards Virginia'. The general tenor of both resembled the Discourse in their stress upon conversion of the Indians and the development of trade. Both insisted that the business of conversion should be carried out in 'a gentle course without crueltie'. Both accepted that there might be opposition from the Indians, but insisted that 'we are lords of navigation, and they not so'.
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 Anonymous advice given to Ralegh and Thomas Cavendish maintained that although the Indians had no armour it would be necessary for the expedition to contain well-armed men in case of a Spanish attack, spelling out in some detail the force required. Out of 800 men, 400 should be arquebusiers, and while a fort was being constructed there should always be 200 men on guard, and thereafter 100. The fort should be constructed as a pentangle, with five bulwarks. The overall organization of the colony was to be military. There were thus two broad colonial models proposed to Raleigh: one commercial, the other military.

When Ralegh was forbidden by Elizabeth to leave her side, his place was taken by Sir Richard Grenville, a man twenty years older. A native Cornishman, Grenville had seen service in Ireland and had been interested in Gilbert's plans for a colony in the New World. On 9 April 1585 he left Plymouth with seven ships: the Tiger, a galleass of 160 tons, as 'admiral'
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 with Grenville as general and Simon Fernandez'
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 pilot and piaster; the Roebuck (100 tons), probably vice-admiral, with John Clarke captain; the Lion (or Red Lion) of Chichester (100 tons); the Elizabeth (50 tons), captained by Thomas Cavendish, the high marshal of the expedition; the Dorothy (50 tons), possibly commanded by Arthur Barlowe; and two pinnaces. In all there were 600 men aboard, of whom about half were sailors and the rest soldiers and specialists.
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 It is not clear how either group was recruited. A commission was issued in June 1585 for Ralegh to impress sailors and soldiers, but that would have been too late for a sailing in April.
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 However, some sailors were probably conscripted after their ship was taken in a privateering raid.

The colony seems to have been intended principally as a military settlement, following the pattern set out in the notes given to Ralegh and Cavendish above, and setting to one side the commercial or agrarian pattern recommended by Hakluyt. Most recent opinion has viewed the intention behind the Roanoke settlement as being primarily the provision of a fortified base from which privateering expeditions or strategic attacks on Spanish ports could be launched. Significantly, there were no women attached to this expedition, by contrast with that despatched two years later. But it is difficult to be certain of the colony's purpose and perhaps there can be no sharp distinction between the two models.
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A few days after they set sail the ships were separated by storms. The Tiger sailed on alone and eventually reached their agreed rendezvous, where Thomas Cavendish in the Elizabeth joined them. Both ships then proceeded north towards the Carolina Banks, stopping off on the Island of Hispaniola, where they were able to buy supplies and where, rather surprisingly, the Spanish governor of the island gave a grand banquet. Probably he felt that the English force was too big to attack and had better be entertained. Eventually the other ships of the expedition also caught up with the Tiger and on 3 July they reached the Carolina Banks, where the Tiger went aground. Although it was taken off the shoal, most of its cargo of supplies was lost. After he had been on the island of Roanoke a few days Grenville 'began to establish a colony' there, appointing Ralph Lane its general with 106 men under him. Lane was an experienced soldier, who had fought on sea and on land, particularly in Ireland; but according to his most recent biographer he was 'vain, boastful and fiery-tempered'. His relations with Grenville were poor.
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 The latter evidently intrigued against Lane when he got back, and Lane asked Walsingham that he not be asked to serve under him again, since Grenville showed 'intollerable pryede and unsaciable' [sic].
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Grenville left for England on the Tiger on 25 August, with some other ships departing later. On the way, he was lucky enough to encounter a Spanish ship 'richlie laden with sugar, hides, spices, and some quantitie of gold, silver, and pearle', to an estimated value of £50,000.
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 After this fortunate delay he reached Plymouth on 18 October. Meanwhile, Lane and his 106 soldiers stayed on Roanoke to explore the mainland territory and prepare for further settlements. They were severely handicapped by Grenville's having left them only one pinnace and some smaller boats. The pinnace had too deep a draught for the shallow lagoon and the rivers, and did not answer well to the oars. Even without this handicap Lane's small force had a massive and daunting task. Apart from one or two sketch maps of the coastline drawn by John White, presumably on the Amadas-Barlow voyage, they had no idea of the geography of the land and relations with the Indians became increasingly tense. They were wandering in an unknown and unmapped land of primeval forest and swamps, among an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile people with whom communication was at best limited. Only Harriot, and possibly White, knew anything of the language.

Between August 1585 and June 1586 the colonists explored the territory. One group went north, towards Chesapeake, and stayed for two or three months in the region of the Chesepian tribe. According to Lane this land, for fertility of soil and temperate climate, 'and for the commoditie of the sea, besides multitude of beares...is not to be excelled by any other whatsoever'.
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 The language is familiar. It is the testimony of many discoverers, from Columbus onwards, praising their newfound paradise in the hope of attracting settlers or pleasing their patrons. Unfortunately, Lane's account of the Chesapeake region is fairly sparse, perhaps because he hoped to establish his base there later and wanted to keep it secret from the Spanish.

Harriot and White evidently went south and visited Secoton, where White drew the village and some of its inhabitants. A third group, including it would seem Lane himself, explored to the north-west along the Chowan River and towards Choanoke. His description of this journey is detailed but far from lucid. Lane got useful information about the land to the north from the local chief, Menatonon, whom he praises highly. Lane resolved that on the arrival of supplies and reinforcements he would take a ship and find what we now know as Chesapeake Bay, moving his headquarters from Roanoke. But that was for the future. For now, he began to explore westward and then north-westward up the Roanoke River. There he learned that the chief of the people on Roanoke Island, Pemisapan, previously known as Wingina, was spreading rumours among other tribes that the English intended to attack them. Pemisapan's father, Ensenore, died in April 1586, removing the principal protector of the English. Relations between the Indians and the English deteriorated badly, each side fearing that the other was going to attack, and the Indians probably resenting English demands for food. Pemisapan planned to depart from Roanoke Island with his people, leaving corn unsown so that the English would be starved out. In the end, Lane lured Pemisapan onto Roanoke Island and devised a surprise attack. On 1 June, at the watchword 'Christ our victory' the settlers shot the king and his 'chief men', giving them in Lane's words 'that which they had purposed for us'. After falling, Pemisapan got up and fled into the woods, where he was pursued by one of Lane's men, who returned with the chief's head in his hand.

A week later twenty-three ships were seen approaching by a lookout. They turned out to be the fleet of Sir Francis Drake, returning from the great West Indies raid on which he had embarked in the autumn of 1585. Having captured Cartagena on the Panama Isthmus, Drake decided against a permanent occupation of the town and sailed north, taking with him 200 Moors and Turks freed from Spanish galleys and 300 native Americans, most of them women. The point of this is not certain, but Drake may very likely have known Ralegh's plans before he sailed and purposed to provide labour for the Roanoke colony. Be that as it may, Drake reached Roanoke in early June and generously offered Lane the choice of either a passage home for all his men or a ship of 70 tons, the Francis, two pinnaces and some smaller boats, all fully equipped, together with enough food for 100 men for four months. This would have enabled Lane to carry out a much more thorough exploration of the region, especially around Chesapeake Bay. Unhappily, a violent storm broke out on 13 June. It was vividly described in the journal of one of Drake's ships, the Primrose: the unknown author writes that all the time they were in the region, they 'had thunder...and raigne with hailstones as bigge as hennes egges'. There were, he says,'greate spowtes at the seas as thoughe heaven & [earthe] woulde have mett'.
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 When the storm swept the Francis out to sea with her store of food, Drake offered another ship, the 170 ton Barke Bonner, as a replacement. This would have been less suitable for exploring and the loss of the Francis's stores was serious. Lane's captains came to him and said that in view of the smallness of their number and the failure of Grenville to arrive with the food promised before Easter, he would ask Drake for a passage home. This he did and Drake agreed. On 19 June all the colonists, except three who were up country, embarked for Portsmouth. One further accident occurred when the sailors, according to Lane, threw all their books and writings into the sea. A later writer, possibly Hakluyt, described the embarkation as being so confused that the settlers might have been chased by a mighty army. This, he contends, was the consequence of the 'crueltie, and outrages committed by some of them against the native inhabitantes of that countrie', which had brought the hand of God upon them.
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 Such was the unlucky end of the first Roanoke colony.