At length three vessels were fitted out for the expedition, one of twenty tons, one of forty, the third of one hundred tons, and they were put under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, a navigator experienced in voyages to the New World. Orders being put on board inclosed in a sealed box, not to be opened until their arrival in Virginia, they set sail from Blackwall on the 19th of December, 1606. For six weeks they were detained by headwinds and stormy weather in the Downs, within view of the English coast, and during this interval, disorder, threatening a mutiny, prevailed among the adventurers. However, it was suppressed by the interposition of the clergyman, Robert Hunt. The winds at length proving favorable, the little fleet proceeded along the old route by the Canaries, which they reached about the twenty-first of April, and on the twenty-sixth sailed for the West Indies, upon arriving at which it appears that Captain Smith was actually in command of the expedition, for,[38:A] writing afterwards in 1629, he says: "Because I have ranged and lived among those islands, what my authors cannot tell me, I think it no great error in helping them to tell it myself. In this little Isle of Mevis, more than twenty years ago, I have remained a good time together, to wood and water, and refresh _my men_." This isle was, on this occasion, the scene of a remarkable incident in his life, and one which appears to have escaped the notice of our historians. "Such factions here we had as commonly attend such voyages, that a pair of gallows was made; but Captain Smith, for whom they were intended, could not be persuaded to use them. But not any of the inventors but their lives by justice fell into his power to determine of at his pleasure, whom, with much mercy, he favored, that most basely and unjustly would have betrayed him." After passing three weeks in the West Indies they sailed in quest of Roanoke Island, and having exceeded their reckoning three days without finding land, the crew grew impatient, and Ratcliffe, captain of the pinnace, proposed to steer back for England. At this conjuncture a violent storm, compelling them to scud all night under bare poles, providentially drove them into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. The first land that they came in sight of, April 26th, 1607, they called Cape Henry, in honor of the Prince of Wales, eldest son of King James, as the opposite point, Cape Charles, was named after the king's second son, then Duke of York, afterwards Charles the First. A party of twenty or thirty, with Newport, landing here, found a variety of pretty flowers and goodly trees. While recreating themselves on the shore they were attacked by five of the savages, who came creeping upon all-fours from the hills like bears, and with their arrows wounded two, but retired at the discharge of muskets.[39:A]