Christopher Newport might be forty years old. He had been of Raleigh's
captains and was chosen, a very young man, to bring to England from the
Indies the captured great carrack, Madre de Dios, laden with fabulous
treasure. In all, Newport was destined to make five voyages to Virginia,
carrying supply and aid. After that, he would pass into the service of the
East India Company, know India, Java, and the Persian Gulf; would be
praised by that great company for sagacity, energy, and good care of his
men. Ten years' time from this first Virginia voyage, and he would die upon
his ship, the Hope, before Bantam in Java.
Bartholomew Gosnold, the captain of the Goodspeed, had sailed with thirty
others, five years before, from Dartmouth in a bark named the Concord. He
had not made the usual long sweep southward into tropic waters, there to
turn and come northward, but had gone, arrowstraight, across the north
Atlantic--one of the first English sailors to make the direct passage and
save many a weary sea league. Gosnold and his men had seen Cape Ann and
Cape Cod, and had built upon Cuttyhunk, among the Elizabeth Islands, a
little fort thatched with rushes. Then, hardships thronging and quarrels
developing, they had filled their ship with sassafras and cedar, and sailed
for home over the summer Atlantic, reaching England, with "not one cake of
bread" left but only "a little vinegar." Gosnold, guiding the Goodspeed, is
now making his last voyage, for he is to die in Virginia within the year.
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