It has been suggested that Fort St. George (Popham Colony) be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since November 2009.

Coordinates: 43°45′12″N 69°47′18″W / 43.7532°N 69.7884°W / 43.7532; -69.7884

The site of the 1607 Popham Colony in present-day Maine is shown by "Po" on the map. The settlement at Jamestown is shown by "J"

The Popham Colony (also known as the Sagadahoc Colony) was a short-lived English colonial settlement in North America that was founded in 1607 and located in the present-day town of Phippsburg, Maine near the mouth of the Kennebec River by the proprietary Virginia Company of Plymouth. It was founded a few months after, and in the same year as, its more successful rival, the colony at Jamestown, which was established on May 4, 1607 by the Virginia Company of London in present-day James City County, Virginia.

Five years after the settlement attempt at Cuttyhunk in what is now Massachusetts, the Popham Colony was the second English colony in the region that would eventually become known as New England. The colony was abandoned after only one year, apparently more due to family changes in the leadership ranks than lack of success in the New World. The loss of life of the colonists in 1607 and 1608 at Popham was far lower than that experienced at Jamestown.

The first ship built by the English in the New World was completed during the year of the Popham Colony and was sailed back across the Atlantic Ocean to England. The pinnace, named Virginia of Sagadahoc, was apparently quite seaworthy, and crossed the Atlantic again successfully in 1609 as part of Sir Christopher Newport's nine vessel Third Supply mission to Jamestown. The tiny Virginia survived a massive three day storm en route which was thought to have been a hurricane and which wrecked the mission's large new flagship Sea Venture on Bermuda.

The exact site of the Popham Colony was lost until its rediscovery in 1994. Much of this historical location is now part of Maine's Popham Beach State Park.

Founding[link]

Popham was a project of the Plymouth Company, which was one of the two competing parts of the proprietary Virginia Company that King James had a chartered in 1606 to raise private funds from investors in order to settle Virginia. At the time, the name "Virginia" applied to the entire northeast coast of North America from Spanish Florida to New France in modern-day Canada. At the time that area was technically under the claim of Spanish crown, but was not occupied by the Spanish.

The Plymouth Company was granted a royal charter and the rights to the coast between 38° to 45° N; the rival London Company was granted the coast between 34° and 41° N. The colonists were to plant first within their respective non-overlapping areas; the overlapping area between 38° and 41° would then go to the first company that proved "strong enough" to colonize it.

Colonists[link]

The first Plymouth Company ship, Richard, sailed in August 1606 but the Spanish intercepted and captured it near Florida in November.

The next attempt was more successful. About 120 colonists left Plymouth on May 31, 1607 in two ships. They intended to trade precious metals, spices, furs, and show that the local forests could be used to build English ships. Colony leader George Popham sailed aboard the Gift of God with Raleigh Gilbert as second-in-command. The captain of the latter ship, Robert Davies, kept a diary that is one of the main contemporary sources of the information about the Popham Colony.

George Popham was the nephew of one of the financial backers of the colony, Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice of England, while Gilbert was son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and half nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh. Other financiers included Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the military governor of Plymouth; much of the information about the events in the colony comes from his letters and memoirs. Settlers included nine council members and 6 other gentlemen, while the rest were soldiers, artisans, farmers and traders.

The Gift of God arrived at the mouth of the Kennebec River (then called the Sagadahoc River) on August 13, 1607. The Mary and John arrived three days later. The Popham Colony was settled on the headland of an area named Sabino. The colonists quickly began construction of large star-shaped Fort St. George. Fort St. George included ditches and ramparts and contained nine cannons that ranged in size from demi-culverin to falcon.

Hunt's map[link]

On October 8, 1607, colonist John Hunt drew a map of the colony showing 18 buildings including the admiral's house, a chapel, a storehouse, a cooperage, and a guardhouse. Hunt was listed in the colony register as "draughtsman". It is not known if all the buildings were completed at the time. Hunt's map was discovered in 1888 in the Spanish national archives. A spy had sold it to a Spanish ambassador who had sent it to Spain. It might be a copy of the now-lost original map, and is the only known plan of the original layout of any early English colony.

Troubles begin[link]

Popham and Gilbert sent survey expeditions up the river and contacted the Abenaki, a tribe of Native Americans/First Nations belonging to the Algonquian peoples of northeastern North America. In a letter to the King, Popham wrote that the natives had told them that the area was full of easily exploitable resources. However, the colony failed to establish cooperation with the tribe; they were suspicious because earlier expeditions had kidnapped natives to show at home.

Late summer arrival meant that there was no time to farm for food. Half of the colonists returned to England in December 1607 aboard the Gift of God. Others faced a cold winter during which the Kennebec River froze. Fire destroyed at least the storehouse and its provisions. Later excavation has hinted that there might have been other fires.

Colonists divided into two factions, one supporting George Popham and the other Raleigh Gilbert. George Popham died on February 5, 1608, possibly the only colonist to die - a contrast to Jamestown which lost half its population that year. Raleigh Gilbert became "colony president" on February 5, 1608 at age 25.

The colonists completed one major project: the building of a 30-ton ship, a pinnace they named Virginia. It was the first ship built in America by Europeans, and was meant to show that the colony could be used for shipbuilding. They also finally managed to trade with the Abenaki for furs and gather a cargo of wild sarsaparilla.

When a supply ship came in 1608, it brought a message that Sir John Popham had died. Gilbert sent the Mary and John to England with cargo. When the ship returned later in the summer, it brought news that Gilbert's elder brother John had died. Gilbert was therefore an heir to a title and the estate of Compton Castle in Devon. He decided to return to England. The 45 remaining colonists also left, sailing home in the Mary and John and Virginia. (The Virginia would make at least one more Atlantic crossing, going to Jamestown the next year with the Third Supply, piloted by Captain James Davis).

The colony had lasted almost exactly one year. Later colonists in the area, building on the experience of the original colonists, settled further up the Kennebec River, at the site of present day Bath, Maine, where the winter storms and tides were not as severe.

Later developments[link]

Fort Popham and the Kennebec River

French colonist Jean de Biencourt visited the abandoned site in 1611. In 1624, Samuel Maverick of the Massachusetts Bay Colony also visited the site and reported that it was "over-grown".

During the American Civil War, the Union army built Fort Popham in the area, directly on the Kennebec River at the mouth of Atkins Bay (about 500 m east of the Popham Colony site). Afterwards, some farmers moved to the area and it became farmland until 1905, at which time the US Army built up the area of Fort St. George to supply Fort Baldwin. The state of Maine bought the area in 1924, and Fort Baldwin was reactivated during World War II. After the War, the property was returned to the State of Maine.

Today much of the area that made up the Popham Colony is part of Maine's Popham Beach State Park, a popular beach and recreation area.

Modern excavations[link]

The first excavations of the area in the 1960s were unsuccessful. In 1994, Jeffrey Brain of the Peabody Essex Museum discovered the site of the colony using the Hunt's map as a guide. He began a larger excavation in 1997 and later uncovered the Admiral's house, the storehouse and a liquor storage building. He also proved that Hunt's map was very accurate. Parts of the fort, probably including the chapel and graveyard, lie on private property not open for digging and the Fort's southern portion is under a public road. The excavation was concluded in 2005.

Sources and further reading[link]

• Richard L. Pflederer, "Before New England: The Popham Colony," History Today, January 2005
• Tom Gidwitz, "The Little Colony That Couldn't," Archaeology magazine, March/April 2006
• Jeffrey Phipps Brain, Fort St. George: Archaeological Investigation of the 1607-1608 Popham Colony, Maine State Museum, 2007
• Peter H. Morrison, Architecture of the Popham Colony, 1607-1608: An Archaeological Portrait of English Building Practice at the Moment of Settlement, M.A. thesis, The University of Maine, December 2002, accessed 2009-11-12
• John Wingate Thornton, Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges : Speech at the Fort Popham Celebration, August 29, 1862, 1863

External links[link]

• Maine's Popham Colony Article with many references
• Popham, Maine's 'lost' colony, to get its modest due
• The Popham Colony Series of videos on the archaeology of the colony.
• Maine's First Ship, a project to build a re-creation of the Virginia

Pilgrim by Gheorghe Tattarescu

A pilgrim (from the Latin peregrinus) is a traveler (literally one who has come from afar) who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journeying (often on foot) to some place of special significance to the adherent of a particular religious belief system. In the spiritual literature of Christianity, the concept of pilgrim and pilgrimage may refer to the experience of life in the world (considered as a period of exile) or to the inner path of the spiritual aspirant from a state of wretchedness to a state of beatitude.

History[link]

An Indian pilgrim in Gangasagar in West Bengal, India

Pilgrims and the making of pilgrimages are common in many religions, including the faiths in ancient Egypt, Persia in the Mithraic period, India, China, and Japan. The Greek and Roman customs of consulting the gods at local oracles, such as those at Dodona or Delphi, both in Greece, are widely known. In Greece, pilgrimages could either be personal or state-sponsored.^[1]

Pilgrims at the Jordan, near Jericho, 1891

Russian Pilgrims on board S.S. Kormiloff returning from Greek Easter at Jerusalem, 1891

In the early period of Hebrew history, pilgrims traveled to Shiloh, Dan, Bethel, and eventually Jerusalem, see also Three Pilgrimage Festivals, a practice followed by other Abrahamic religions. While many religious pilgrims travel toward a specific destination, a physical location is not a necessity. One group of pilgrims in early Celtic Christianity were the Peregrinari Pro Christ, (Pilgrims for Christ), or "white martyrs". They left their homes to wander in the world.^[2] This sort of pilgrimage was an ascetic religious practice, as the pilgrim left the security of home and the clan for an unknown destination, in complete trust of Divine Providence. These travels often resulted in the founding of new abbeys and spreading Christianity among the pagan population in Britain as well as in continental Europe.

Modern era[link]

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, like many fans of Elvis Presley, visited Graceland

Orthodox pilgrim in Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine.

Many religions still espouse pilgrimage as a spiritual activity. The great Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia), is obligatory for every able Muslim. Other Islamic devotional pilgrimages, particularly to the tombs of Shia Imams or Sufi saints, are also popular across the Islamic world.

Beginning in 1894, Christian ministers under the direction of Charles Taze Russell were appointed to travel to and work with local Bible Students congregations for a few days at a time; within a few years appointments were extended internationally, formally designated as "pilgrims", and scheduled for twice-yearly, week-long visits at each local congregation.^[3][4] International Bible Students Association (IBSA) pilgrims were excellent speakers, and their local talks were typically well-publicized and well-attended.^[5] Prominent Bible Students A. H. Macmillan and J. F. Rutherford were both appointed pilgrims before they joined the board of directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania; the IBSA later adopted the name Jehovah's Witnesses and renamed pilgrims as traveling overseers.^[6][7]

Pilgrims to the Shrine of the God "Subramania" in the Palni Hills Madura District, S. India, 1905

A modern phenomenon is the cultural pilgrimage, which while also about personal journey, involves a secular response. Destinations for such pilgrims can include historic sites of national or cultural importance, and can be defined as places "of cultural significance: an artist's home, the location of a pivotal event or an iconic destination."^[8] An example might be a baseball fan visiting Cooperstown, New York. Destinations for cultural pilgrims include examples such as Auschwitz concentration camp, Gettysburg Battlefield, the Ernest Hemingway House or even Disneyland.^[8] Cultural pilgrims may also travel on religious pilgrimage routes, such as the Way of St. James, with the perspective of making it a historic or architectural tour rather than a religious experience.^[9]

Secular pilgrims also exist under communist regimes. These devotional but strictly secular pilgrims visited locations such as the Mausoleum of Lenin or Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, or the Birthplace of Karl Marx. Such visits were sometimes state-sponsored.

Notable pilgrims[link]

Pope John Paul II was known as the "pilgrim pope" for his travels.

Many national and international leaders have gone on pilgrimages for both personal and political reasons.

• Bridget of Sweden
• Columba
• Egeria
• Godric of Finchale
• Ignatius of Loyola
• James, son of Zebedee
• Judah HaLevi
• Junichiro Koizumi
• Mahatma Gandhi^[10]
• Malcolm X
• Margery Kempe
• Mansa Musa
• Mustapha Kartali
• Pope John Paul II
• Ruslan Gelayev
• Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama and Rangjung Rigpe Dorje
• Piligrim
• Thomas the Apostle

See also[link]

• Pilgrimage
• Christian Pilgrimage
• The Hajj
• The Pilgrim's Progress

References[link]

Literature[link]

• Documentation, of a modern pilgrimage to Rome. Kerschbaum & Gattinger, Via Francigena. DVD. Vienna: Verlag EUROVIA, 2005. ISBN 3-200-00500-9

External links[link]

Traditional folk song about a pilgrim

Look up pilgrim in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pilgrims

• The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela Wiki
• Pilgrimages to Jerusalem Descriptions of pilgrimages to Jerusalem from the 3rd-20th centuries
• Medieval Pilgrims' Clothing Illustrations of 13th-16th century pilgrims, and links to photos of 16th century clothing made for pilgrimage

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, c. 1583

Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539 – 9 September 1583)^[1] of Devon in England was a half-brother (through his mother) of Sir Walter Raleigh.^[1] Adventurer, explorer, member of parliament, and soldier, he served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth^[1] and was a pioneer of English colonization in North America and the Plantations of Ireland.

Early life[link]

Gilbert was the fifth son born to Otho Gilbert of Compton and Greenway, Galmpton, Devon, by his marriage to Katherine Champernowne. His brothers Sir John Gilbert and Adrian Gilbert, and his half brothers Carew Raleigh and Sir Walter Raleigh, were also prominent during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James. Katherine was a niece of Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, who introduced her young kinsmen to the court. Gilbert's uncle, Sir Arthur Champernowne, involved him in efforts to establish plantations in Ireland between 1566 and 1572.^[2]

Sir Henry Sidney became Gilbert's mentor, and he was educated at Eton and the University of Oxford, where he learned to speak French and Spanish and studied the arts of war and navigation. He went on to reside at the Inns of Chancery in London in about 1560–1561.

Gilbert's mottoes, Quid non? ("Why not?") and Mutare vel timere sperno ("I scorn to change or to fear"), indicate how he chose to live his life. He was present at the siege of Newhaven in Havre-de-grâce (Le Havre), Normandy, where he was wounded in June 1563. By July 1566 he was serving in Ireland under the command of Sidney (then Lord Deputy) against Shane O'Neill, but was sent to England later in the year with dispatches for the Queen. (See Early Plantations (1556–1576) and Tudor conquest of Ireland). At that point he took the opportunity of presenting the Queen with his A discourse of a discouerie for a new passage to Cataia (A Discourse of a Discovery for a New Passage to Cathay) (published in revised form in 1576),^[3] treating of the exploration of a Northwest Passage by America to Asia. Within the year he had set down an account of his strange and turbulent visions, in which he received the homage of Solomon and Job, with their promise to grant him access to secret mystical knowledge.^{[citation needed]}

Military career in Ireland[link]

Sir Humphrey Gilbert Stamp

Gilbert never returned to Ireland and, after the assassination of O'Neill in 1569, he was appointed to the profitless office of governor of Ulster and served as a member of the Irish parliament. At about this time he petitioned the Queen's principal secretary, William Cecil, for a recall to England - "for the recovery of my eyes" - but his ambitions still rested in Ireland, and particularly in the southern province of Munster. In April 1569 he proposed the establishment of a presidency and council for the province, and pursued the notion of an extensive settlement around Baltimore (in modern County Cork), which was approved by the Dublin council. At the same time he was involved with Sidney and the secretary of state, Sir Thomas Smith, in planning a large settlement of the northern province of Ulster by Devonshire gentlemen.

Gilbert's actions in the south of Ireland played a significant part in the outbreak of the first of the Desmond Rebellions. A kinsman of his, Sir Peter Carew (another Devonshire man), was pursuing a provocative, and somewhat far-fetched, claim to the inheritance of certain lands within the Butler territories in south Leinster. The Earl of Ormond - a bosom companion of the Queen's from her troubled youth and head of the Butler family - was absent in England, and the clash of Butler influence with the lawful authority of Carew's claim created havoc.

Gilbert was eager to participate and, after Carew's seizure of the barony of Idrone (in modern County Carlow), he pushed westward with his forces across the River Blackwater in the summer of 1569 and joined up with his kinsman to defeat Sir Edmund Butler, a younger brother of the Earl's. Violence spread in a confusion from Leinster and across the province of Munster, when the Geraldines of Desmond went into rebellion. Gilbert was then created colonel by Lord Deputy Sidney and charged with the pursuit of the rebel James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. The Geraldines were driven out of Kilmallock, but returned to lay siege to Gilbert, who drove off their superior force in a sally, during which his horse was shot from under him and his buckler transfixed with a spear. After that initial success, he showed courage in striking out into rebel territory, and managed to march unopposed through Kerry and Connello, taking 30-40 castles without the aid of artillery.

During the three weeks of this campaign, all enemies were treated without quarter and put to the sword - including women and children - which explains, perhaps, the swiftness with which so many castles had been abandoned before Gilbert's aggression. A particularly gruesome spectacle was devised by him to cow the rebel supporters:

The heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies and brought to the place where he incamped at night, and should there bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie ledying into his owne tente so that none could come into his tente for any cause but commonly he muste passe through a lane of heddes which he used ad terrorem...[It brought] greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kindsfolke, and freinds...^[4][5][6]

John Perrot used a similar practice at Kilmallock a few years later. Gilbert is also said to have sent Captain Apsley into Kerry to inspire terror.

Gilbert's attitude to the Irish may be captured in one quote from him, dated 13 November 1569: "These people are headstrong and if they feel the curb loosed but one link they will with bit in the teeth in one month run further out of the career of good order than they will be brought back in three months."

In time, Ormond returned from England and called in his brothers, which caused the Geraldine resistance to weaken. In December 1569, after one of the chief rebels had come in to the government and confessed his treason, Gilbert received his knighthood at the hands of Sidney in the ruined Fitzmaurice camp, reputedly amid heaps of slain gallowglass warriors. Fitzmaurice stayed out in rebellion (only coming in to submit in 1573), and one month after Gilbert's return to England he retook Kilmallock with 120 foot, defeating the garrison and sacking the town for three days, leaving it "the abode of wolves".

Member of parliament and adventurer[link]

In 1570 Gilbert returned to England, where he married Anne Aucher, who bore him six sons and one daughter. In 1571 he was elected to parliament as a member for Plymouth and in 1572 for Queenborough and controversially argued for the crown prerogative in the matter of royal licenses for purveyance. In business affairs, he involved himself in an alchemical project with Smith, whereby iron was to be transmuted into copper and antimony, and lead into mercury.

By 1572 Gilbert had turned his attention to the Netherlands, where he fought an unsuccessful campaign in support of the Dutch Sea beggars at the head of a force of 1500 men, many of whom had deserted from Smith's aborted plantation in the Ards of Ulster. In the period 1572–1578 Gilbert settled down and devoted himself to writing. In 1573 he presented Elizabeth I with a proposal for an academy in London, which was eventually put into effect by Sir Thomas Gresham upon the establishment of Gresham College. Gilbert also helped to set up the Society of the New Art with Lord Burghley and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, both of whom maintained an alchemical laboratory in Limehouse.

The rest of Gilbert's life was spent in a series of failed maritime expeditions, the financing of which exhausted his own fortune and a great part of his family's. He backed Martin Frobisher's trip to Greenland, which yielded a cargo of a mysterious yellow rock, subsequently found to be worthless. In pursuit of one of his own projects, he sailed from Plymouth for North America in November 1578 with 7 vessels in his fleet, which was scattered by storms and forced back to port some 6 months later; the only vessel to have penetrated the Atlantic to any great distance was the Falcon under Raleigh's command.

Return to Ireland[link]

In the summer of 1579, Gilbert and Raleigh were commissioned by the lord deputy of Ireland, William Drury, to attack his old foe, the rebel James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, by sea and land and to intercept a fleet expected to arrive from Spain with aid for the Munster rebels. At this time Gilbert had three vessels under his command: the Anne Ager (or perhaps, Anne Archer or Aucher - named after his wife) of 250 tons, the Relief, and the Squirrell of 10 tons. The latter vessel, a small frigate, was notable for having completed the voyage to America and back inside three months under the command of a captured Portuguese pilot.

In pursuit of his Irish commission, Gilbert set sail in June 1579 after a spell of bad weather, and promptly got lost in fog and heavy rains off Land's End, an incident that caused the Queen to doubt his seafaring abilities. His fleet was then driven into the Bay of Biscay, and the Spanish soon sailed into Dingle harbour, where they made their rendez-vous with the rebels. In October he managed to put into the port of Cobh in Munster, where he delivered a terrible beating to a local gentleman, smashing him about the head with a sword. He then fell into a row with a local merchant, whom he slew on the dockside.

Gilbert was one of the leading advocates for a north-west passage to the land of Cathay (present-day China), noted in great detail for its abundance of riches by Marco Polo in the 13th century. Gilbert made an elaborate case to counter the calls for a north-eastern route. During the winter of 1566 he and his principal antagonist Anthony Jenkinson (who had sailed to Russia and crossed the country down to the Caspian Sea), argued the pivotal question of polar routes before Queen Elizabeth. Gilbert claimed that any north-east passage was far too dangerous: "the air is so darkened with continual mists and fogs so near the pole that no man can well see either to guide his ship or direct his course." By logic and reason a north-west passage must exist, and Columbus had discovered America with far less evidence; it was imperative for England to catch up, settle in new lands and thus challenge the Iberian powers. Gilbert's contentions won support and money was raised, chiefly by the London merchant Michael Lok, for an expedition. The fearless Martin Frobisher was appointed captain and left England in June 1576, but the quest for a north-west passage proved fruitless: he returned with a cargo of black stone and an Inuit.

Newfoundland[link]

It was assumed that Gilbert would be appointed President of Munster after the dismissal of Ormond as lord lieutenant of the province in the spring of 1581. At this time Gilbert was member of parliament for Queenborough, Kent, but his attention was again drawn to North America, where he hoped to seize territory on behalf of the crown.

The six year exploration license Gilbert had secured by letters patent from the crown in 1578 was on the point of expiring, when he succeeded in 1583 in raising significant sums from English Catholic investors. The investors were constrained by penal laws in their own country, and loth to go into exile in hostile parts of Europe; thus, the prospect of an American adventure appealed to them, especially when Gilbert was proposing to seize some nine million acres (36,000 km²) around the river Norumbega, to be parcelled out under his authority (although to be held ultimately of the Crown).

The Catholic investment didn't work out - partly because the Privy Council insisted that the investors pay their recusancy fines before departing, partly because of efforts by Catholic clergy and Spanish agents to dissuade their interference in America - but Gilbert did manage to set sail with a small fleet of five vessels in June 1583. One of the vessels - the Bark Raleigh, owned and commanded by Raleigh himself - had to turn back owing to lack of victuals. Gilbert's crews were made up of misfits, criminals and pirates, but in spite of the many problems caused by their lawlessness, the fleet did manage to reach Newfoundland.

Plaque commemorating Gilbert's founding of the British Empire

On arriving at the port of St. John's, Gilbert found himself temporarily blockaded by the fishing fleet under the organization of the port admiral (an Englishman) on account of piracy committed against a Portuguese vessel in 1582 by one of Gilbert's commanders. Once this resistance was overcome, Gilbert waved his letters patent about and, in a formal ceremony, took possession of Newfoundland (including the lands 200 leagues to the north and south) for the English crown on 5 August 1583.^[1] This involved the cutting of turf to symbolize the transfer of possession of the soil, according to the common law of England. The locals presented him with a gift of a local dog, whom he named Stella for the North Star. He claimed authority over the fish stations at St. John's and proceeded to levy a tax on the fishermen from several countries who worked this popular area near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Within weeks his fleet departed, having made no attempt to form a settlement, due to lack of supplies.^[1] During the return voyage, Gilbert insisted on sailing in his hardy old favourite, HMS Squirrel.^[1] He soon ordered a controversial change of course for the fleet. Owing to his obstinacy and disregard of the views of superior mariners, the ship Delight ran aground and soon sank with the loss of all but sixteen of its crew on one of the sand bars of Sable Island.^[7] Delight was the largest remaining ship in the squadron (an unwise choice to take the lead in uncharted coastal waters) and contained most of the remaining supplies. Later in the voyage a sea monster was sighted, said to have resembled a lion with glaring eyes.

After discussions with Edward Hayes and William Cox, captain and master of the Golden Hind, Gilbert had decided on 31 August to return.^[1] The wind was in their favor as they sped back to Cape Race in two days and were soon clear of land. Gilbert had injured his foot on the frigate Squirrel and, on 2 September, came aboard the Golden Hind to have his foot bandaged and to discuss means of keeping the two little ships together on the voyage.^[1] Gilbert refused to leave the Squirrel, while the vessels continued on the Atlantic crossing.^[1] After a strong storm, they had a spell of clear weather and made fair progress: Gilbert came aboard the Golden Hind again, visited with Hayes, and insisted once more on returning to the frigate Squirrel, even though Hayes insisted she was over-gunned and unsafe for sailing.^[1] Nearly 900 miles away from Cape Race, they encountered high waves of heavy seas, "breaking short and high Pyramid wise", said Hayes.^[1]

On 9 September, the frigate Squirrel was nearly overwhelmed but recovered.^[1] Despite the persuasions of others, who wished him to take to one of the larger vessels, Gilbert stayed put and was observed sitting in the stern of his little frigate, reading a book. When the Golden Hind came within hailing distance, the crew heard him cry out repeatedly, "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land!" as he lifted his palm to the skies to illustrate his point.^[1] At midnight the frigate's lights were extinguished, and the watch on the Golden Hind cried out that, "the Generall was cast away".^[1] The Squirrel had gone down with all hands.

It is thought Gilbert's reading material was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, which contains the following passage: "He that hathe no grave is covered with the skye: and, the way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance."^[1]

Legacy[link]

• Gilbert was father to Ralegh Gilbert, who was to become second in command of Popham Colony. One of his later relatives was the architect C. P. H. Gilbert.

• Gilbert was part of a remarkable generation of Devonshire men, who combined the roles of adventurer, writer, soldier and mariner - often in ways as equally loathsome as admirable. AL Rowse wrote of him:

Gilbert was certainly an interesting psychological case, with the symptoms of disturbed personality that often go with men of mark, not at all the simple Elizabethan seaman of Froude's Victorian view. He was passionate and impulsive, a nature liable to violence and cruelty - as came out in his savage repression of rebels in Ireland - but also intellectual and visionary, a questing and original mind, with the personal magnetism that went with it. People were apt to be both attracted and repelled by him, to follow his leadership and yet be mistrustful of him.^[8]

He was outstanding for his initiative and originality, if not for his successes, but it is in his efforts at colonization that he had most influence. Ireland ended up as a brutal disaster (although Ulster and Munster were in time colonized), but the American adventure did eventually flourish. The formality of his annexation of Newfoundland eventually achieved reality in 1610; but perhaps of more significance was the reissue to Raleigh in 1584 of Gilbert's patent, on the back of which he undertook the Roanoke expeditions, the first sustained attempt by the English crown to establish colonies in North America.

• Gilbert Sound near Greenland was named after him by John Davys.

• At Memorial University of Newfoundland, a court of the Burton's Pond Apartments are named "Gilbert Court" in his honor.

Popular culture[link]

• In Fire in the Abyss by Stuart Gordon (1983), Humphrey Gilbert is the main character, and is transported four hundred years into the future.^[9]
• In Philip José Farmer's The Gate of Time (1966), Gilbert is not displaced forward in time but sidewise into an alternate timeline.

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Payne, Edward John, Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America (vol. 1, 1893; vol. 2, 1900)
• Ronald, Susan, The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire (Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2007; ISBN 0-06-082066-7)

External links[link]

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• The Modern History Sourcebook has the account of the Newfoundland voyage
• Letters patent to Gilbert
• Early Newfoundland Settlement Schemes