The lost colony

Part 2

by Ellen Barry

Who gets to be famous? There are those Pilgrims you've heard so much about, who in 1620 fled the degenerate Church of England and their braying neighbors in Nottinghamshire. After settling in Plymouth, they suffered from scurvy and nearly starved every winter for several years running. They learned to plant their corn with fish heads, and celebrated their survival with a large feast. Among the pilgrims were such local celebrities as the bold Miles Standish and Squanto, friend to all Pilgrims. Familiar? You probably colored in these celebrities with a pack of Crayolas.

Now consider the Popham Colony, which was settled in 1607 by a branch of the Virginia Company, which had also founded Jamestown. Led by George Popham, an aging but well-connected nobleman, and Raleigh Gilbert, a rake of 25, the Popham colonists chose to found their colony, Fort St. George, at a wind-whipped spot on Atkins Bay that was described, with typical 17th-century incoherence, as "almost an island of good bigness." The enterprise began in a spirit of breathless excitement; several months after arriving, Popham sent back a rhapsodic letter to King James with the good -- although not, ultimately, accurate -- news that a boundless body of water could be reached in a brisk seven-day hike westward. "This cannot be any other than the Southern ocean, reaching to the regions of China," he gurgled. "There are in these parts shagbarks, nutmegs and cinnamon, besides pine wood and Brazilian cochineal and ambergris, with many other products, and these in great abundance."

But even as Popham was announcing, in flowery Latin, the imminent dispatch of large hauls of tropical spices, his colony was running into some problems. Winter was one. Personnel was another; historians' descriptions of the administrative team read like a treatment for a decent half-hour sitcom. President Popham was described by the colony's sponsor as "timorously fearful to offend," and his admiral, Raleigh Gilbert, as "desirous of supremacy and rule, a loose life, prompt to sensuality, little zeal in religion, humorous, headstrong and of small judgement and experience, other ways valiant enough." Fort St. George became hopelessly factionalized.

More important, relations with neighboring Indian tribes were fraying, possibly because the last Englishmen in the area had abducted five Indians, apparently dragging them aboard a vessel by their hair. Some accounts -- perhaps apocryphally -- relate wanton cruelty by the settlers and counterattacks by the Indians. For whatever reason, it appears that the Indians became less available for Squanto-like relief work.

Then Popham, who was at least 50, and likely in his 60s, and possibly as old as 78, dropped dead. And when Raleigh Gilbert -- whom Brain describes as "no dummy" -- received word in September that he had inherited a large estate in England, the enterprise collapsed completely. "All our hopes have been frozen to death," wrote Popham's sponsor, Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Fourteen months after they officially claimed New England in the name of King James II, the colonists of Fort St. George resorted to Plan B, and hauled ass back to the Old World.

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Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.