Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (8 page)

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Authors: Giles Milton

BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
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Day after day, Manteo fed Harriot with priceless information about battle strategy and weaponry. “Their maner of warres amongst themselves is either by sudden surprising one another,” recorded Harriot, “most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moone light, or els by ambush—or some suttle devises.”
Weapons were extremely primitive. Harriot was assured that they had “no edge tooles or weapons of yron or steele to offend us withall, neither knowe they how to make any.” Most Indians possessed only “bowes made of witch-hazle and arrowes of reeds,” although a few warriors carried “flat-edged truncheons, also of wood about a yard long” and some had shields made of bark. Their armour was laughably ineffectual when compared to the helmets and breastplates still worn by England’s knights. It was made of “stickes wickered together with thread” and fell apart at the mere tap of a halberd. All in all, the
Indian tribesmen made for a derisory fighting force. Harriot was able to assure Ralegh that the result of any clash between the English and Indians was a foregone conclusion, since the English would have the “advantages against them [in] so many maner of waies, as by our discipline, our strange weapons, and devises else, especially by ordinance great and small.” He added that it was most unlikely that the Indians would fight back, and that “the turning up of their heels against us in running away was their best defence.”
 
Harriot quizzed Manteo about Indian battle tactics. They usually attacked “about the dawning of the day, or moone light,” but were armed with primitive weapons
Walter Ralegh had amassed a considerable fortune by the winter of 1584. His expenses were immense—his shoes alone were later rumoured “to be worth six thousand gold pieces”—but he was in
receipt of rich gifts from the queen. “When will you cease to be a beggar?” she once asked him. “When your majesty ceases to be a benefactor,” he nonchalantly replied.
For all his flamboyance, there was a cautious individual lurking within the ostentatious shell. Prattling courtiers constantly reminded Ralegh of his humble roots, and, as his poetry reveals, he was keenly aware that fate could quickly plunge him straight back to his rented farmhouse in Devon.
When he came to planning his colony in America, his first preference was that the state should carry the costs. Sir Humfrey had sunk a fortune into equipping a fleet that had failed to make a successful landfall. Ralegh’s expenses—if and when he landed his colonists—were going to be far greater. It was for this reason that he asked his gifted friend Richard Hakluyt to pen a treatise for the queen, explaining why Her Majesty should finance the establishment of his colony. The treatise was entitled
A Discourse of Western Planting
; just in case the queen never got beyond the cover, it was given the unambiguous subtitle
Certain reasons to induce her majesty and the state to take in hand the western voyage and the planting therein.
Hakluyt’s treatise was a cogent argument for state-financed colonial expansion. Many of his arguments were well rehearsed, particularly those that dealt with the growing power of Spain. He argued that Ralegh’s colony could be a base from which “we may arreste at our pleasure … every yere, one or twoo hundred saile of [Spanish] shippes.” It could also serve as a training ground for native Indians, tribes who rejected “the proude and bluddy governemente of the Spaniarde” and were desperate to “shake of their moste intollerable yoke.”
Mindful of the queen’s spendthrift nature, Hakluyt also stressed the economic benefits of a colony. “The savages,” he wrote, “are greatly delighted with any cappe or garment made of coarse wollen clothe, their contrie beinge colde and sharpe in the winter.” He
assured Her Majesty that they would like nothing better than to wrap themselves up in English cloaks, and begged the queen to consider the employment that a colony would bring to “cappers, knitters, clothiers, wollmen, corders, spynners, weavers, fullers, sheremen, dyers, drapers, hatters and such like.” Hakluyt was not a gambling man, but even he was prepared to hazard that the savages would be so delighted with English clothes that they would bring to the country an annual revenue that would run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Hakluyt presented his treatise on bended knee. His humble mien so enchanted the queen that she rewarded him with the canonry of Holy Trinity in Bristol. But Elizabeth had already made up her mind on the issue of investing in Ralegh’s colony and no amount of persuasion was going to change it. She demurred from the suggestion that she should spend her own money on the project, arguing that the costs would be enormous, and said that the results of any clash with the Spanish would have serious repercussions if she was involved. Worse still, if the colony failed, she herself would become an object of ridicule.
The queen had her own proposal, one that was more in tune with her imperial aspirations. Instead of pouring money into a bottomless pit, she decided to donate something that was less costly yet at the same time infinitely more precious—her name. The country across the ocean could not continue to be called Wingandacoa, a word that no one except Harriot could pronounce. Henceforth it was to be known as Virginia, in honour of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.
Only she could have turned the tables with quite such panache. And only she could have dreamed up something that was clever, politic, and wildly egotistical. It was coquettish and romantic, yet it also sent an unambiguous political message to King Philip II of Spain. The queen had staked her honour on the New World and was personally entrusting its future to her chosen favourite, the young Walter Ralegh.
She realised, of course, that this was not a task to be undertaken
by a mere commoner. Queenly honour needed to be defended by a knight—one who displayed all the chivalrous gallantry of his medieval forebears. And so at the Twelfth Day celebrations in 1585, at the palace of Greenwich, Queen Elizabeth called her favourite to her side. Ralegh fell to his knees a commoner, but when he arose he found himself a knight. The future champion of Virginia was now Sir Walter Ralegh.
Storms, Sprites, and Goblins
It was not a good year to be travelling. No sooner had the bells of London tolled in New Year’s Day, 1585, than the quacks and soothsayers of the capital were prophesying doom on a scale not seen since the death of old King Henry. Catastrophe was written in the heavens. The planets showed malevolent conjunctions and the moon revealed disturbing signs. Worse still, there was to be an eclipse on April 19—only a partial one in England, but warning enough of impending disaster.
The writings of the soothsayers were taken extremely seriously by Elizabethan Londoners, especially those about to attempt a long sea voyage. To such men, the prophecies of experts like Thomas Porter made for grim reading. “Yf any man hath many journeys to take by land or by water,” warned Porter, “let hym have an eye rounde about hym, for force is lykely to exceede in all places, and violence already shaketh its head and frowneth upon travaylers.” He added that “warinesse and courage are the best spelles agaynst such sprites and goblins.” The only consolation for those leaving England was that “pestilence and pestilent fevers … wyll sweepe cities and scoure townes.”
Others were scarcely more encouraging. Astronomer Euan Lloyd confirmed Porter’s gloomy prognostication and added that “discoveries
this yeere attempted are like to prove but badly.” He predicted that travellers would “sustaine great labour and trouble therein” and promised a particularly awful year for “effeminate persons” and those with venereal disease. Nor was he overly optimistic about the weather, forecasting “many tempests, fogges and mysts at the sea; also many stormes, muche foule weather and shipwracke by occasion thereof.”
London’s astrologers predicted doom for Ralegh’s fleet. “Discoveries this yeere are like to prove but badly,” wrote one
Ralegh was neither effeminate nor suffering from venereal disease. He dismissed such talk as gibberish and began to sketch out rough plans for his colony. He quickly became aware of the ambitious nature of his undertaking. An operation on this scale had never before been attempted by Elizabethan England and no one had the faintest idea whether it would succeed. It was going to be hard
enough to ship some 300 colonists across the ocean and plant them on a little-known coastline. But that was the easy part. Even if they arrived in spring—when they could sow their crops—they would still need food supplies to last them five months until harvest time.
There was also the daunting logistical problem of transporting to America the immense quantity of equipment and hardware needed to construct a fortified settlement. A fort required masonry and ironwork; that, in turn, required a foundry and a smithy as well as masons, tilers, and carpenters. And, since Manteo had revealed that the area around Roanoke lacked even the most basic raw materials, including stone, everything would have to be shipped from England.
The first and greatest hurdle to be overcome was raising enough money to buy ships and supplies. The queen had graciously offered one of her vessels, the
Tiger
, and given Ralegh £400 of gunpowder from the Tower. But an expedition on the scale planned by Sir Walter required far greater resources than even the queen could afford. He was forced to turn elsewhere for sponsors. The usual method of harnessing finance was to raise subscriptions as a joint-stock company, to be repaid with profit (or loss) at the end of the voyage. But the astronomical cost of equipping a colony was never going to be covered by a trading expedition to North America; Ralegh had to offer merchants a more attractive incentive. There was never any question as to what this might be. With tensions between England and Spain growing by the day, Ralegh promised them a summer season of piracy on the high seas—smash-and-grab raids on any Spanish ship that was foolish enough to sail into his line of fire. Such attacks had already been given the unofficial blessing of the queen, whose patience with King Philip II was wearing thin. Indeed, her “payment” for the loan of the
Tiger
was almost certainly a share in any Spanish plunder that Ralegh’s captains were able to seize.
Ralegh had dangled an alluring bait before England’s merchants and they were soon offering their financial support. Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Richard Grenville both ventured capital, the West Country gentry provided supplies, while the wealthy London
entrepreneur William Sanderson introduced him to some of the city’s richest merchants. Ralegh was so exultant that he struck a seal bearing his new arms and title: “Sir Walter Ralegh, Lord and Governor of Virginia.” Money quickly flowed into his coffers. By early spring he had raised enough hard cash to begin detailed planning of the prospective colony.
He sought expert advice from the two Richard Hakluyts—uncle and nephew—who had amassed a considerable amount of knowledge about previous overseas expeditions. They considered every aspect of Ralegh’s project and reached a conclusion that would have dampened the enthusiasm of all but the most optimistic of adventurers. The younger Hakluyt believed that construction of the settlement alone was going to require “brickmakers, tilemakers, lymemakers, bricklayers, tilers, thackers (with reede, russhes, broome or strawe), synkers of welles and finders of springes, quarrellers to digge tile, rough masons, carpinters and lathmakers.” And, since the colonists would have no access to supplies from England, they would require blacksmiths “to forge the yrons of shovels” and spade makers “that may, out of the woods there, make spades like those of Devonshire.”
Neither of the Hakluyts was able to predict the exact number of skilled craftsmen that would be needed to build the colony, but the construction of any reasonably sized settlement was certain to require perhaps fifty or sixty men. All of these would have to be kept fed and watered, a logistical nightmare that would require crops to be grown on a scale that few Elizabethan farmers could contemplate. The younger Hakluyt prepared a second list of farming specialists whose task would be to hunt, fish, and produce a bumper harvest in soil that had never been manured. He proposed sending marksmen “skilfull to kill wilde beasts” and warreners to breed rabbits, and added that to maintain the supply of meat during the winter it would be necessary to ship greyhounds to kill deer, bloodhounds to recover the kill, and mastiffs “to kill heavie beastes.” The colony would also require both “sea-fisshers” and “freshwater-fisshers,”
while the cultivation of vegetables and pulses would call for specialists with a proven track record.
 
Ralegh sought advice on what equipment and specialists would be needed by his colony. No settlement could survive without a village blacksmith
Health was a prime concern. The young Hakluyt was well aware that the colony could not afford to lose men to sickness and proposed employing a team of men to care for their physical welfare. These included a surgeon “to lett bloude,” an apothecary to concoct potions, and “a phisition … to kepe and to cure such [as] fall into disease and destemperature.” Mindful of the men’s spiritual welfare, he urged that “there be appointed one or twoo preachers … that God may be honoured.” This last suggestion was studiously ignored, to the probable relief of most of the men.
Though Hakluyt’s list was by no means comprehensive, it did at least cover the basic skills required to establish a colony. But if the community was to achieve anything more than mere subsistence, it would also require artisans, craftsmen, and experts such as cobblers and tanners, coopers and “tallowchanders,” bottlemakers, tailors, and fletchers.
Ralegh was advised that mastiffs would be required “to kill heavie beastes.”
When Ralegh read this advice he was struck by the immensity of his undertaking. What he was attempting to do—in effect—was transplant a large English village such as Stratford-on-Avon into a little-known wilderness whose most fertile land was already being farmed by native inhabitants. As if that was not daunting enough, there was a very real possibility that the fledgling colony would come under attack from the Spanish, who were most unlikely to allow the English to settle on land that they claimed by virtue of Columbus’s 1492 discovery.
Despite the dangers and difficulties, Ralegh had little trouble finding a commander for his expedition. Sir Richard Grenville—a Devonshire kinsman—had the two qualities that were deemed
essential: a yearning for adventure and a hatred of Spain. Grenville had swashed his buckle from a very early age, riding into Hungary to serve the Emperor Maximilian in his fight against the Turkish sultan’s janissaries. As he grew into adolescence, his hotheadedness got the better of him; his first mention in the official records is for stabbing a London gentleman in an affray, “giving him a mortal wound six inches in depth and one and a half in breadth.” Grenville was most fortunate to have been pardoned by the queen.
With his ruddy cheeks and lapis-blue eyes he looked very much the West Country sea captain. His character, too, was not untypical of that class of Devon adventurers whom he could count among his close relatives. He was restless, loyal, intensely proud, and he had no time for self-doubt or introspection. But he was also plagued by a disturbingly fickle temper that revealed itself in his erratic and impulsive behaviour. Grenville’s father having been drowned in the
Mary Rose
disaster when young Richard was still a toddler, the lad had grown up without a steadying paternal hand to curb his excesses.
Age did not temper his fiery outbursts; indeed, he became increasingly unhinged as he grew older, fired by the same demonic energy that had cost Sir Humfrey Gilbert his life. “He was of so hard a complection,” wrote one, “[that] he would carouse three or foure glasses of wine, and in a braverie take the glasses betweene his teeth and crash them in peeces and swallow them downe, so that oftentimes the blood ran out of his mouth.” On the American expedition he was rarely loved by his men, more often feared, and his impetuous behaviour frequently caused his subordinates to despair. He was forever being accused of carelessness in command of his ship, although the numerous scrapes he got into were perhaps a result of inexperience. Apart from a short hop across the English Channel, Grenville’s maiden voyage to America was also his first attempt at seamanship.
He saw no earthly reason why a long sea voyage should necessitate discomfort. Even when the ship’s food was at its most putrid and stinking, he insisted on dining off “plate of silver and gold,” and he
was accustomed to listening to music as he dined—a trait that must have delighted his gentlemen colleagues until they learned that his favourite instrument was the “chirimia” or clarion, a shrill trumpet that had a sound not dissimilar to a cockerel being strangled. Most commanders used it to signal the beginning of a battle: Grenville used it to announce the entree. Everyone knew when he was at his table, for the hellish cacophony of “chirimias, organs and others” penetrated the thickest of the ship’s timbers.

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