Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the Elizabethan Expedition

Preparing for a Voyage

Nathan J. Probasco

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030572570
• eBook ISBN: 9783030572587
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book examines the 1583 voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to North America. This was England's first attempt at colonization beyond the British Isles, yet it has not been subject to thorough scholarly analysis for more than 70 years. An exhaustive examination of the voyage reveals the complexity and preparedness of this and similar early modern colonizing expeditions.Prominent Elizabethans assisted Gilbert by researching and investing in his expedition: the Printing Revolution was critical to their plans, as Gilbert's supporters traveled throughout England with promotional literature proving England's claim to North America. Gilbert's experts used maps and charts to publicize and navigate, while his pilots experimented with new navigating tools and practices.
Though he failed to establish a settlement, Gilbert created a blueprint for later Stuart colonizers who achieved his vision of a British Empire in the Western Hemisphere. This book clarifies the role of cartography, natural science, and promotional literature in Elizabethan colonization and elucidates the preparation stages of early modern colonizing voyages.

© The Author(s) 2020

N. J. ProbascoSir Humphrey Gilbert and the Elizabethan Expeditionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57258-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: A Single Oar

Nathan J. Probasco¹

(1)

Sioux City, IA, USA

…But heard that sundrie friends

of mine, had taken leaue

At Courte, and vvere all Shipte avvay.

this brute may thee deceyue

Thou follish Boy (quoth I)

nay Sir by svveete Sainct Iohn

(Quoth he) Sir Humfrey Gilbart sure,

and all his troupe is gone.

But vvhether, no man knovves,

Saue they that are in Barke,

Who with one mind, and one consent,

do hope to hitte one marke

—Thomas Churchyard (A discourse of the Queenes Majesties entertainement in Suffolk and Norffolk … Whereunto is adjoyned a commendation of Sir H. Gilberts ventrous journey [London: Henry Bynneman, 1578], H3r-v)

What Strange new radiance is this that shines

So suddenly in heaven’s changing face?

How is it that the heavy clouds dissolve

Into light breezes, mists disperse, and so

The sun can shine more brightly, since his path

Is cleared, on land and on the gentle sea?

The South wind drops, and now the milder East

Blows once again. To this fair breeze unfurl

The sails which England’s Humphrey Gilbert sets

Towards a world our fathers did not know

In seas they scarcely saw.

—Stephen Parmenius (De Navigatione Illvstris et Magnanimi Equitis Aurati Humfredi Gilberti ad deducendam in novum orbem coloniam suscepta, carmen έπιβατικῶν [London: Thomas Purfoote, 1582], lines 1–11; in-text translations from Parmenius’s Latin poem come from David B. Quinn and Neil M. Cheshire, ed. and trans., The New Found Land of Stephen Parmenius: The life and writings of a Hungarian poet, drowned on a voyage from Newfoundland, 1583 [Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1972])

End Abstract

On a chilly morning in late August 1583, a small fleet of three English ships embarked on a dangerous, one-thousand-mile long voyage due south from Newfoundland. For eight consecutive days the mariners sailed into the wind and against the current, greatly impeding their progress. When day broke on the 29th, “the wind rose … bringing withal rain and thick mist” that decreased visibility to a few hundred feet, until finally … “Land!” Watchmen aboard the lead vessel inaptly named Delight had failed to see what lie ahead: the shifting shoals of Sable Island—a tiny, crescent-shaped sandbar more than one hundred miles from the North American continent. Amidst the pandemonium aboard the sinking vessel, sixteen resourceful sailors managed to scramble into a small ship’s boat and cut it loose just before the Delight’s stern broke apart in the beating waves. The two remaining ships in the convoy narrowly escaped a similar fate; they steered away just before hitting the sand. Their crews diligently searched the vicinity for two days, hoping to find their one hundred crewmates from the Delight , but the region’s notoriously turbulent seas and heavy fog made it impossible to locate any survivors. The sixteen castaways were on their own.

Although the men had averted disaster once, they had little hope of survival. All they found on board their lifeboat was a single oar, leaving them at the mercy of the currents. On a pinnace of one-and-a-half tons burden meant to carry just a few sailors, they were overcrowded. Without food or “so much as a droppe of fresh water,” they had less than a week to find nourishment. Facing continued squalls in waters rarely traversed by European ships, they were unlikely to be rescued. After two days adrift, a well-respected soldier named Edward Headly suggested that the men cast lots—a practice based in Scripture that was used to determine God’s will. The four unfortunate sailors upon whom the lots fell would be thrown overboard to save the others, and Headly volunteered to draw first. Richard Clarke, master of the Delight and the highest-ranking survivor, had the final say on the matter. Headly assured him that as their superior he need not draw, but with an ethos typical of England’s Protestant sea dogs, Clarke refused to leave their fates to chance: “wee will live and dye together.” He reasoned that God could as easily save them all as he could save a few. Headly reminded him of their dire situation, but Clarke, who had pirated in these waters the previous summer, believed that they could get back to Newfoundland by catching the Gulf Stream. Even though Clarke’s calculations from the Delight indicated that the island lay more than two hundred miles due northeast, he assured the crew that their destination was a mere sixty miles away. He even promised to sacrifice himself by diving into the sea if they did not arrive by the seventh day.

As winds and currents slowly propelled the sailors northward, waves and the occasional storm battered their small boat. Headly, who had been ill prior to the shipwreck, was the first to perish on the fifth day. Another man nicknamed Brazil soon followed. Just when it seemed that the rest of the men also would succumb, they spotted land on the seventh day, thus fulfilling Clarke’s prophecy. The emaciated travelers had navigated three hundred miles of the most turbulent seas on earth without sight of either sun or stars to guide them and with nothing to sustain them but seaweed and urine. They accomplished it all with a single oar. After crawling ashore on Newfoundland’s southern coast and getting their fill of wild berries, beach peas, and fresh water, the men flagged down a French Basque whaling crew who offered them passage to Europe. The fourteen castaways arrived in England late in the year to share their harrowing story.¹

The sailors’ miraculous return home could not salvage what otherwise had been a disaster: Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s 1583 expedition to colonize Norumbega (modern-day New England). In June, Gilbert departed from Cawsand Bay near Plymouth, the same disembarkation point used by Francis Drake during his famous and highly lucrative circumnavigation that had concluded three years earlier.² Southwesterly winds kept Gilbert’s ships—including the Golden Hinde named after Drake’s flagship—anchored for weeks, which diminished his provisions and provided a window of opportunity for nineteen crewmen to desert. When favorable weather finally permitted sailing, the captain of the fleet’s largest vessel immediately withdrew to England, citing an illness among his men. Two weeks of storms scattered the remaining four ships, and in the absence of “General” Gilbert’s supervision, the pirate crew of one ship ransacked a French fishing vessel, stealing everything from clothing and provisions to sails and riggings. The fleet rendezvoused to resupply at St. John’s, Newfoundland, but the English port admiral initially refused the ships entrance because of Clarke’s attack on the island a year earlier. When Gilbert at last was granted entry, the Delight unceremoniously struck “The Narrows”—the steep rock walls leading into the harbor—and had to be towed free by fishermen. Once again on terra firma, several crewmen stole from the fishermen or plotted against Gilbert, prompting him to dispatch a ship of injured, sick, and unruly sailors back to England. The three remaining ships continued southward, but halfway to Norumbega the Delight grounded. Notwithstanding these continuous setbacks, it took a near mutiny among the remaining men to convince Gilbert to sail home. He never made it. High waves overwhelmed his ship somewhere north of the Azores, and Gilbert drowned, as did almost half of his original crewmembers.³

Due to the poor execution and tragic outcome of Gilbert’s voyage, scholars justifiably have characterized it as a false start in England’s nascent expansionist movement. In their view, Gilbert’s “farcical”⁴ visit to North America was emblematic of “the underlying limitations of English colonization”⁵ during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In the words of one historian, “Gilbert blundered his way through one enterprise after another,”⁶ culminating with his last voyage—“a chronicle of disaster from start to finish.”⁷ There is no doubt that Gilbert and his crew made a series of missteps during their three months at sea, but examining Gilbert’s three years of preparations provides a better perspective of his voyage by highlighting the groundwork for Elizabeth expeditions. Publicizing and fundraising, researching and organizing, procuring supplies and enlisting crewmembers, all required collaboration and coordination on a grand scale. While gathering provisions or soliciting investments seem prosaic compared to a sea battle or first encounter, these preliminary activities had the potential to make or break an expedition and were critical in moving forward a project. Focusing on Gilbert’s preparations provides a more complete understanding of his voyage and brings to light the considerable research, recruitment, and organizing behind England’s earliest colonizing ventures.

Despite a wealth of recently published scholarship on Elizabethan colonization, the British Empire, and the Atlantic world in general, the investigatory foundations for early modern colonizing voyages and the preliminary actions undergirding them remain relatively ill-defined. Scholarship on Gilbert’s voyage in particular is lacking.⁸ The expeditions of his contemporaries and countrymen like Drake, Sir Martin Frobisher, and Sir Walter Ralegh have commanded numerous recent studies, some of which include details on preparations.⁹ Yet there exists no sustained study of the preparations for an Elizabethan expedition, a gap in the scholarship that conceals the activities of a range of individuals involved in the busy world of overseas voyaging. The success of Gilbert’s voyage, like other English expeditions of the era, hinged upon the ability of his supporters to utilize their contacts and personal expertise. Gilbert surrounded himself with some of the most accomplished, brilliant, and well-connected courtiers, public servants, and scholars in late sixteenth-century England: Sir Francis Walsingham—the expansionist Secretary of State, Gilbert’s principal patron, and his link to Elizabeth; Ralegh—Gilbert’s half-brother, a favorite of the queen, and an influential financier; Sir Philip Sidney—the “ideal courtier,” investor, and son of Gilbert’s mentor; Sir George Peckham—the gentleman merchant-venturer and would-be Catholic émigré; the two Richard Hakluyts—researchers and promoters without equal; and Dr. John Dee—the do-all Welsh cartographer, g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: A Single Oar
• 2. A Chronicle of European Exploration: Establishing Gilbert’s Claim to North America
• 3. Diverse Texts for Diverse Audiences: The Promotional Literature of Gilbert’s Expedition
• 4. Proving Cartography’s Worth: The Maps of Gilbert’s Expedition
• 5. Experience over Theory: The Nautical Science of Gilbert’s Expedition
• 6. Competition Drives Innovation: Assembling Gilbert’s Expedition
• 7. A New and Improved England: The Proposed Composition of Gilbert’s Colony
• 8. Conclusion: The Mid-Elizabethan Transition
• Back Matter