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Christopher Newport
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Christopher Newport was an English sailor and privateer. He is best known as the captain of the Susan Constant, the largest of three ships which carried settlers for the Virginia Company in 1607 on the way to found the settlement at Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, which became the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was born in 1561, and died in 1618.
He made several voyages of supply between England and Jamestown; in 1609, he became Captain of the new supply ship Sea Venture, which met a hurricane and was shipwrecked on Bermuda.
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Christopher Newport was an English sailor and privateer. He is best known as the captain of the Susan Constant, the largest of three ships which carried settlers for the Virginia Company in 1607 on the way to found the settlement at Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, which became the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was born in 1561, and died in 1618.
He made several voyages of supply between England and Jamestown; in 1609, he became Captain of the new supply ship Sea Venture, which met a hurricane and was shipwrecked on Bermuda. That event began Bermuda's permanent settlement by England. That archipelago (also known officially as the Somers Isles after Sir George Somers, Admiral of the Virginia Company, who also survived the Sea Venture wreck) is still a territory (the current term for what were previously called possessions, dependencies, or colonies) of the United Kingdom almost 400 years later.
Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia is named for Newport.
Early career
For almost twenty years, Newport worked as a privateer who raided Spanish freighters off and on in the Caribbean. The spoils from these missions were shared with London merchants who funded them. Over the years he commanded a series of privateer ships, including the Little John, the Margaret, and the Golden Dragon. In August 1592, he captured a Portuguese ship, the Madre de Deus, off the Azores, taking the greatest English plunder of the century. His ship returned to port in England carrying five hundred tons of spices, silks, gemstones, and other treasures.
In 1605, after another mission to the Caribbean, he returned to England with two baby crocodiles and a wild boar to give as gifts to King James I who had a fascination with exotic animals.
Expedition which established Jamestown
It was Newport's experience as well as his reputation which led to his hiring in 1606 by the Virginia Company of London. The company had been granted a proprietorship to establish a settlement in the Virginia Colony by King James I.
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Five months at sea
In December 1606, Newport set sail from London for Virginia. After an unusually lengthy trip of 144 days sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from England by way of the Canary Islands, the three ships, the Susan Constant (sometimes known as the Sarah Constant), the Godspeed, and the Discovery (smallest of the three), reached the New World at the southern edge of the mouth of what is now known as the Chesapeake Bay.
First landing
With their crews of 105 men and boys, they made landfall at Cape Henry on April 26, 1607, at what is now First Landing State Park, before heading up to what is now Jamestown. A party of the men led by Newport explored the area, named the southern cape for Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King James I, and the northern cape Cape Charles, for Prince Charles, the younger brother of Prince Henry. It was during this four-day expedition in the New World that the settlers held the first democratic election on what is now American soil and held the first trial by jury, acquitting John Smith of charges of mutiny. They set up a cross near the site of the current Cape Henry Memorial, located at what is now Fort Story. This site came to be known as the "first landing".
Exploration, seeking a site
As soon as land was in sight, sealed orders from the Virginia Company were opened which named Captain John Smith as a member of the governing Council of the Colony. On the voyage over, Smith had been placed under shipboard arrest, charged for "concealing a mutiny" by the aristocrat Wingfield. Smith had been scheduled to be sent back to Britain with Newport to answer this charge.
Upon arrival, the group then proceeded in their ships into the Chesapeake Bay to what is now called Old Point Comfort in the City of Hampton. In the following days, the ships ventured inland upstream along the James River seeking a suitable location for their settlement as defined in their orders. The James River and the initial settlement they sought to establish, Jamestown (originally called "James Cittie") were named in honor of King James I.
Smith so proved himself worthy when accompanying Captain Newport exploring the Powhatan Flu (River) up to Richmond (the Powhatan Flu would soon be called the James River), that a few weeks after arriving at Jamestown he was allowed to assume his seat on the council.
Selecting Jamestown
Arriving on May 14, 1607, Captain Edward Maria Wingfield, president of the council, chose Jamestown Island for their settlement largely because the Virginia Company advised the colonists to select a location that could be easily defended from ocean-going navies of the other European states that were also establishing New World colonies and were periodically at war with England, notably the Dutch Republic, France and especially Spain. The island had excellent visibility up and down what is today called the James River and it was far enough inland to avoid enemy ships. The water immediately adjacent to the land was deep enough to permit the colonists to anchor their ships yet have an easy and quick departure if necessary. An additional benefit of the site was that the land was not occupied by Native Americans, most of whom in the area were affiliated with the Powhatan Confederacy.
Challenging conditions
It soon became apparent why the Native Americans did not occupy the site, and the inhospitable conditions severely challenged the settlers. Jamestown Island is a swampy area, and furthermore, it was isolated from most potential hunting game such as deer and bears which like to forage over much larger areas. The settlers quickly hunted and killed off all the large and smaller game that was to be found on the tiny peninsula. The low, marshy area was infested with mosquitoes and other airborne pests and the brackish water of the tidal James River was not a good source of drinking water.
The settlers who came over on the initial three ships were not well-equipped for the life they found in Jamestown. They consisted mainly of English farmers and two or three German and Polish woodcutters hired in Royal Prussia. Many suffered from saltwater poisoning which led to infection, fevers and dysentery. As a result of these conditions, most of the early settlers died of disease and starvation.
Despite the immediate area of Jamestown being uninhabited, the settlers were attacked, less than a fortnight after their arrival on May 14, by Paspahegh Indians who succeeded in killing one of the settlers and wounding eleven more. By June 15, the settlers finished the initial triangle James Fort.
First and Second Supply missions to Jamestown
In June 1607, a week after the initial Fort at Jamestown was completed, Newport sailed back for London on the Susan Constant with a load of pyrite ("fools' gold") and other supposedly precious minerals, leaving behind 104 colonists, and the tiny Discovery for the use of the colonists.
Newport returned twice from England with additional supplies in the following 18 months, leading what was termed the First and Second Supply missions. Despite original intentions to grow food and trade with the Native Americans, the barely surviving colonists became dependent upon the supply missions.
Third Supply: ill-fated Sea Venture
Newport made a third trip to America in 1609, as captain of the Sea Venture and "Vice Admiral" of the Third Supply mission. However, the nine ships encountered a massive three day long storm, and became separated. The flagship of the mission, the Sea Venture, being new, was leaking like a sieve, having lost her caulking. Sir George Somers, who had taken the helm, deliberately drove her upon a reef to prevent her foundering. In an incident which is often credited as the inspiration for Shakespeare's play The Tempest, the passengers and crew found themselves stranded on the still-vexed Bermoothes (Bermuda). In addition to Newport and Somers, notable personages aboard the Sea Venture included Sir Thomas Gates, John Rolfe, William Strachey, and Sylvester Jordain.
This began the permanent settlement of Bermuda, which had been discovered a century before, but which mariners had avoided as best as they could. Situated, as it is, astride the historical return route to Europe from the West Indies and the North American Atlantic Seaboard, many sailors failed, and numerous ships had been wrecked on Bermuda's reefs in the century before the Sea Venture, helping to give the archipelago its other early name, the "Isle of Devils". Eventually, the survivors of the Sea Venture (150 colonists and crewmembers, and one dog) constructed two smaller ships, the Deliverance and the Patience, from parts of the Sea Venture and the abundant native Bermuda cedar. These were sailed on to Jamestown, carrying most of the survivors (a number had been lost at sea as the result of an ill-considered mission to reach Jamestown aboard the Sea Ventures rigged lifeboat, others had died in Bermuda, and yet others born). Two (living) men, Carter and Waters, were left behind to hold the rights of the English claim to Bermuda.
Arriving at Jamestown 10 months later than planned, those aboard the Deliverance and Patience learned that the failure of the Sea Venture, carrying most of the Third Supply Mission's supplies, to arrive, combined with other factors, had resulted in the death of over 80% of the colonists during the Starving Time from the fall of 1609 until their arrival in May 1610.
Newport and the survivors of the Sea Venture had precious few supplies to share with the Jamestown survivors. Both groups felt they had no alternative but to return to England. Several weeks later, they boarded the ships, and started to sail downstream and abandon Jamestown.
However, as they approached Mulberry Island, they were met by a new supply mission arriving from England sailing upstream. Heading this group equipped with additional colonists, a doctor, food, supplies was a new governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, who forced the remaining settlers to stay, thwarting their plans to abandon the colony.
The colony was still critically short of food. If anything, this had been worsened by the addition of the hungry bellies which arrived with De La Warr. Somers returned to Bermuda with the Patience (which had been constructed to carry the food the Sea Venture survivors had stockpiled during their months in Bermuda) intending to obtain more foodstuffs, but died there of a "surfeit of pork". His nephew, Captain of the Patience, returned with the ship to Lyme Regis, instead of to Jamestown. A third man, Chard, remained behind with Carter and Waters. The Virginia Company, in effective possession of Bermuda (or the "Somers Isles", as the archipelago was now known) since the wreck of the Sea Venture, was given official control when its Third Charter, of 1612, extended the territorial limits of Virginia far enough across the Atlantic to include the archipelago (control was passed to a spin-off of the Virginia Company, the Somers Isles Company, in 1615).
Final arrival at Jamestown
As Christopher Newport arrived once again back at Jamestown for what would prove to be his last time, after so many trips, he also would have had no way of knowing that he was finally bringing ashore the key to Jamestown and the Virginia Colony's permanency.
Among the colonists with him was a survivor of the Sea Ventures shipwreck whose wife and young son had perished. His name was John Rolfe. In his possession were some untried seeds for a new strain of tobacco and some also untried marketing ideas.
Although his voyage to this arrival at Jamestown with Newport had also followed a long, painful, and most circuitous route, within a short time, John Rolfe would successfully cultivate and export his new, sweeter strains of tobacco. His ideas and work with tobacco resulted in the cash crop which guaranteed the colony's economic success.
Later voyages, death
Years later (1613–1614) Newport sailed for the British East India Company to Asia. He died in Java (now part of Indonesia) in 1617 on a voyage to the East Indies.
Legacy
- Newport News Point, where the mouth of the James River joins the harbor of Hampton Roads, later part of the independent city of Newport News, Virginia, is widely believed to have been named for him, although the exact history of the subject remains in some dispute. However, it is more likely that it was named for settlers from Ireland with the surname of Neuce. There is also a town in Flanders named Nieu Poort, the site of a recent battle between the Dutch and Spaniards, which had been won by the Dutch with the assistance of English soldiers.
- In 2005-2006 playwright Steven Breese wrote Actus Fidei (An Act of Faith), based on the life and times of Captain Christopher Newport, as part of the Jamestown 2007 Festival. This play received its world premiere in the Spring of 2007 at Christopher Newport University.
- A biography on Captain Newport, by A. Bryant Nichols Jr., was published in 2007.
- A statue commemorating Captain Newport was recently unveiled at his namesake University, CNU. The statue has been the subject of some controversy, as it depicts Newport with both hands, while it is historically documented that Newport lost one of his hands at sea. The creator of the statue says, in an interview, the we should "not remember our heroes as mutilated."
Further reading
- A. Bryant Nichols Jr., Captain Christopher Newport: Admiral of Virginia, Sea Venture, 2007
- David A. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of A New Nation, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003
- Breese, Steven, Actus Fidei, Steven Breese and Associates, 2007
- Smith, John, The Generall Historie of Virginia [“G.H.” London, 1623].
- Wingfield, Jocelyn R., Virginia’s True Founder: Edward Maria Wingfield, etc, [Charleston, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4196-6032-0].
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