There arose the typical colonial
troubles -- sickness, dissensions, improvidence, quarrels with the aborigines.
Nor was the site the best obtainable. The settlers finally abandoned the
place and scattered to various points along the northern coast.
In 1669 the Lords Proprietaries sent out from England three ships, the
Carolina, the Port Royal, and the Albemarle, with about a hundred colonists
aboard. Taking the old sea road, they came at last to Barbados, and here
the Albemarle, seized by a storm, was wrecked. The two other ships, with a
Barbados sloop, sailed on anal were approaching the Bahamas when another
hurricane destroyed the Port Royal. The Carolina, however, pushed on with
the sloop, reached Bermuda, and rested there; then, together with a small
ship purchased in these islands, she turned west by south and came in March
of 1670 to the good harbor of Port Royal, South Carolina.
Southward from the harbor where the ships rode, stretched old Florida, held
by the Spaniards. There was the Spanish town, St. Augustine. Thence Spanish
ships might put forth and descend upon the English newcomers. The colonists
after debate concluded to set some further space between them and lands of
Spain. The ships put again to sea, beat northward a few leagues, and at
last entered a harbor into which emptied two rivers, presently to be called
the Ashley and the Cooper. Up the Ashley they went a little way, anchored,
and the colonists going ashore began to build upon the west bank of the
river a town which for the King they named Charles Town.
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