Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (13 page)

For the remainder of 1588 Ralegh and Grenville were probably too much occupied with naval defence to help the colony. However, a potentially useful step was taken in March the following year with the formation of a tripartite agreement between Ralegh, chief governor of 'Affamacomock...alias Virginia', on the first part; Thomas Smith, William Sanderson and seventeen others, all merchants, on the second; with John White and twelve others, on the third. In return for investment in the project the merchant group would be admitted to freedom of the 'City of Ralegh' with the right to trade.
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 Had the colony survived, the injection of extra capital would have been useful, but as it turned out nothing was done to relieve the settlers that year. According to White, he took the next step himself in 1590. Learning that one of the leading privateers, John Watts, had prepared three ships for an expedition to the Caribbean recently stayed by order of the Council,White proposed that Ralegh intercede with the Queen to allow Watts to sail on condition that his ships take supplies to Virginia. This was agreed, although the necessary bond was apparently never signed. To complicate matters,William Sanderson, possibly acting on behalf of Ralegh, persuaded Watts to allow his own ship, the Moonlight, to accompany the expedition. Although Watts agreed to this, his ships left the Moonlight behind when they sailed. Furthermore, he refused to allow White to take with him any other passengers or supplies.
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 White was left no time before sailing to complain about this to Ralegh. He thought, rightly as it turned out, that the 'governors', masters and sailors of Watts' ships had no intention of helping the settlers and were only concerned with taking prizes.

On 20 March 1590 Watts' little fleet - the Hopewell, the Little John and the John Evangelist - with White aboard the Hopewell, sailed from Plymouth for the West Indies. After spending the next four months chasing prizes in the Caribbean the Hopewell and the Moonlight finally reached Virginia. On 15 August they saw a great cloud of smoke rise near the place where White had left the colony three years before, and this gave him hope that some of the settlers were still alive and expecting his return. White landed the next day and made for the smoke, but 'found no man nor signe that any had belie there lately'. Next day they landed on Roanoke itself, after an unhappy accident in which seven sailors were drowned. It was only by persuasion of White himself and their captain that the sailors were prepared to continue with the search for the colonists. By then it was so dark that they overshot the place where White had originally left the planters, but they saw a great fire to the north and rowed towards it. On reaching it they let fall their grapnel and sounded a trumpet-call and 'many familiar English tunes of songs'. There was no response. They then returned to the spot where White had left the colony, seeing the footprints of many Indians along the way. On a tree were carved the letters 'CPO'. White explained that he had agreed with the settlers that if they left that place they should carve the name of the place to which they were going, with a maltese cross if they were in distress. There was no such cross. However, in the village was a large tree with the bark torn off and the word CROATOAN carved upon it 'without any crosse or signe of distresse'. The sailors told them that they had found a number of chests dug up and broken open, including some belonging to White. Although he was saddened by this news, he was pleased to learn that the settlers were safe at Croatoan, where Manteo had been born 'and the Savages of the Iland our friends': an optimistic conclusion to draw from the evidence.

Next morning, they decided to sail for Croatoan; but the wind got up so strongly that they lost the third out of their original four anchors. As the weather got 'fouler and fouler' and they found themselves short of victuals and water, they decided to go south and winter in the Indies, returning to Virginia in the spring. This was agreed by the whole company in the Hopewell but not by their consort, the Moonlight, which set a course directly for England. For two days the Hopewell ran on a course for Trinidad until the wind changed to the west and blew so forcefully that they were hardly able to bear any sail. Faute de mieux they set a course for the Azores, which they reached on 18 September. Here they joined elements of the English fleet lying in wait for the Spanish flota. This evaded them, but even so the haul in terms of prize-money was satisfactory, including as it did the Buen Jesus, appraised in value at £5,806 10s. 4d. White then returned to England, reaching Plymouth on 24 October.

He ended his life in Ireland, having achieved none of his objectives. The Hopewell had spent some five months seeking prizes and about four days searching for the lost settlers. White was devastated by the loss of colony, daughter and grandchild. He recorded the names, all 117 of them, in the 1589 edition of Hakluyt's Principal Navigations. It is easy for historians, seated in library or study, to blame White for showing so little determination, letting Fernandez ignore instructions in 1587, failing to get ships out to the settlers in 1589, and sailing off to the Caribbean and then to England in 1590. We do not have to contend with Atlantic weather or with sailors determined to seek prizes. Even so, the conclusion must be that he fell short of the qualities needed by a successful colonizer.

What happened to the settlers, the Lost Colonists? After 1590 they were largely forgotten. Ralegh seems to have sent out some ships around 1599, and in 1602 he despatched Samuel Mace, a Weymouth sea captain, to the coast of Virginia to collect plants and to search for the colonists. Mace collected a good deal of sassafras but bad weather prevented any further search.
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 Some light was shed upon the fate of the colonists after the foundation of the Jamestown colony in 1607. The Indian chief Powhatan confessed to Captain Smith, the Governor of the new colony, that he had been responsible for massacring the Roanoke settlers, who had evidently moved north to the Chesapeake region. William Strachey, in The Historic of Travell into Virginia Britania, records that 'the men women and children of the first plantation at Roanoak were by practize and comaundement of Powhatan (he himself perswaded thereunto by his priests) miserably slaughtered without any offence given him'. They had, according to Strachey, lived peaceably with the Indians for some twenty years before that.
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 It is possible also that a second group of colonists moved to Croatoan, south of Roanoke, and mingled with the friendly Indian tribe there.

Could Ralegh have done more to help the colony? In the preface to the 1589 edition of Principall Navigations Hakluyt wrote that the settlements were founded 'at the charges of sir Walter Raleigh, whose entrance upon those newe inhabitations had bene happie, if it had ben as seriously followed, as it was cheerefully undertaken'.
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 Was this intended as a criticism of Ralegh? It seems unlikely that a man of Hakluyt's rank would have openly criticized so powerful a courtier. More probably, he meant that the timing of the Roanoke project was unlucky, which certainly it was. The Spanish threat in 1587 and 1588 meant that every ship was needed in home waters, and Elizabeth's government wisely prevented ships from sailing off on privateering enterprises. Yet the embargo does not seem to have been entirely successful, for several fighting ships were sailing in the Atlantic in these years, including some of Ralegh's.
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 If he had given more single-minded attention to the relief of the colonists, it might have come about. But by 1587 he was beginning to withdraw from the project. He had already spent a great deal of money, 040,000 he claimed, and it was becoming evident that a purely military base was unnecessary for successful privateering. However, while they were abandoned in their own time, the colonists live in the memories of modern Carolinians.
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Privateering played an important role in colonization and in Ralegh's story. During the wars with France under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary it had been a popular occupation for English sea captains, but with the coming of peace in 1559 it had ceased to provide legal cover for what had often been in effect piracy. In 1579, for instance, the Privy Council had ordered Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Ralegh to face charges for 'piracies' allegedly committed off the coast of Devon on a ship from Seville carrying oranges and lemons.
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 The outcome of the case is unknown, but the Council was right to call it 'piracy'. However, in the spring of 1585 the international situation changed when the Spanish ordered the confiscation of all English shipping in Spanish ports and the imprisonment of their crews. In retaliation the English government authorized the issue of letters of reprisal to merchants suffering loss, so that they could win compensation by force at sea. Actions which had until then been condemned as piracy now acquired a dubious legitimacy. A huge bureaucracy, headed by the Lord Admiral, regulated the business, and applications for letters of reprisal were made to the High Court of Admiralty. Not surprisingly, there is no record that any applicant was refused.
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 Locally, the regulations were enforced by vice-admirals in the coastal shires, responsible for arrests of ships, examination of suspects and witnesses and execution of the sentences of the High Court. While the distinction between pirate and privateer was now clear in law, in reality the boundary was permeable and the legal authority given by letters of reprisal encouraged men to plunder where they could. According to a seventeenth-century observer the Spanish had 'good cause to remember how they were baited in the queen's time, there being never less than 200 sail of voluntaries and others upon their coasts'.
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 The effect of this upon voyages of exploration and colonization was twofold. On the one hand, the profits of privateering helped to provide capital for investment in exploratory and colonizing voyages, while on the other these profits were so attractive that men's attention was diverted from long-term objectives.

Privateers came in many shapes and sizes: noblemen like the Earl of Cumberland; courtiers like Ralegh; merchants like John Watts and William Sanderson; professional sailors like Christopher Newport, Admiral of the Virginia Company's fleet. Most of the noble amateurs and great merchants directed operations from the safety of the land, and Ralegh was no exception. The costs of a privateering voyage were heavy, including the possession or hire of a ship, fitting it out and equipping it with armaments (cannon, muskets, pikes and so on), ammunition, victuals and repairs. The only thing that came free of charge was the hire of labour. Crews usually served for victuals only, expecting to recoup their efforts from the prize money. Kenneth Andrews estimates that the total cost of setting forth a ship of 100 tons with fifty men might come to £693. The expense increased exponentially with the size of the ship, and one of 350 tons might involve an outlay of £3,425.
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On the face of it, the prize-values of captured vessels look very attractive. The value of four ships captured by Sir Richard Grenville in 1585-6 was put at £50,000.
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 But by the time deductions were made the profits due to the owners would have been much less. The Queen typically took 5 percent for customs duties, the Lord Admiral 10 percent, the crew one-third of what was left, the victuallers about as much, leaving only the final third to be distributed between the owners. A successful voyage sent out in 1591 by Ralegh and Watts, with ten other investors, or 'adventurers', brought back prizes valued at £31,150, but £16,198 went to the Queen in customs dues, to the Lord Admiral, to the crew and to transport costs, leaving only £14,952 for the twelve investors. Ralegh claimed that they had spent £8,000 between them in fitting out the ships and that their profit amounted only to about £7,000, which he said came only to 'the increase of on[e] for on[e] which is a small returne. Wee might have gotten more to have sent them.'
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It is difficult to calculate the cost of colonization, but since the Queen made no contribution it was important for settlers to exploit what sources of revenue they could. David Quinn has estimated that the voyages to Virginia in 1584, 1585, 1587 and 1590 would have cost in all about £26,000, with a further £5,000 to £7,000 per annum for running expenses. Ships and stores brought back to England and sold might have reduced the total expenditure to between £5,000 and £7,000, but that still left a large shortfall. Since little or nothing could be hoped for from trade with the newly founded colonies, privateering was the most promising source of funds. But there was still a large hole in the accounts and early modern colonies were sadly underfunded.
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Between 1585 and the Guiana voyage of 1595 Ralegh sent out at least one privateering expedition each year, some of them combining their operations with founding and supplying new settlements. Apart from his early voyage in 1578-9, he seems not to have sailed on privateering expeditions himself, providing instead the funding and organization. He was an entrepreneur rather than a frontline fighter. 1585 saw Grenville's voyage to Roanoke with the Tiger and other ships, the Tiger taking the Santa Maria de Sara Vicente on the return journey. In the following year Ralegh sent Grenville out again with two large ships and five others, and soon after this he despatched two pinnaces, the Serpent and the Mary Spark, to take prizes in the Azores. In the same year Ralegh sent the Dorothy to join an expedition - not in the end very successful - mounted by the Earl of Cumberland. 1587 saw John White's expedition in the Lion, after which Simon Fernandez went off in the hope of plunder on the homeward voyage. In the Armada year Ralegh was able, surprisingly, to despatch two pinnaces, the Brave and the Roe, which attempted to capture ships but themselves got badly mauled in the process. Ralegh sent out no expedition to Virginia in 1589, but invested in the expedition to Portugal that year, which gained him some prizes. With John Randall, Sir George Carey and others, Ralegh fitted out the Bark Randall in the same year. From the beginning of the following decade Ralegh tended, like that great nobleman pirate the Earl of Cumberland, to join combined operations organized by great merchants. 1590 saw his and White's involvement in the voyages of John Watts' Hopewell and William Sanderson's Moonlight, when the Brien Jesus was taken. In the following year Ralegh again cooperated with Watts in a West Indian voyage which brought only a slender return.
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