While Smith had been ranging our coast, getting information, furs, and fish, another expedition, despatched by Gorges, under Captain Hobson, was seeking gold on Martha's Vineyard. Needless to say, he did not find it, and, as Smith laconically remarks, he “spent his victuall and returned with nothing.”[138] The tangible cash results of Smith's own voyage pointed to him as the man whom the company needed, and by them he was made Admiral of New England for life, and started on another voyage, with two ships and Captain Thomas Dermer. He never again, however, saw America. Owing to damages to his vessel, received in a storm only a few days out, he was forced to return to Plymouth; and although Dermer went on, we know nothing of his trip.[139] On Smith's next attempt, he was taken prisoner by pirates; and on his fourth start, in 1617, for some reason he never got out of Plymouth harbor. Footnote 138: Smith, _Works_, vol. I, p. 240. Footnote 139: _Ibid._, vol. II, pp. 731 _ff._ Voyages to New England now became frequent, however, and it is not necessary to mention them all. In 1615, Sir Richard Hawkins was exploring and trading for Gorges, whose agent, Richard Vines, probably spent the following winter in Maine, bringing back with him the first news of the great plague which was decimating the Indians, and which was to simplify the question of settlement. As Gorges speaks of the “extreme rates” at which he had to hire men to stay the winter quarter, it is probable that he had other parties there, in this or other winters. “This course I held some years together,” he wrote in his old age, “but nothing to my private profit; for what I got one way I spent another; so that I began to grow weary of that business, as not for my turn till better times.”[140] The surprising part is, not that he grew weary, but that he still continued the unprofitable business for a lifetime. Footnote 140: Gorges, “Briefe Narration,” pp. 57-62. In 1618, he received a letter from Captain Dermer, in Newfoundland, saying that he had there found Squanto, one of Gorges's savages, and that the Indian's description of New England had made him desirous to “follow his hopes that way.”[141] The next spring, therefore, the indefatigable Gorges sent out Captain Rocroft to meet Dermer and coöperate with him. Dermer, meanwhile, had returned to England; so Rocroft failed to meet him, and after capturing a French barque off the New England coast, sailed to Virginia, contrary to orders, and was there killed in a quarrel. Gorges reimbursed the Frenchmen for the damages suffered, and, in other respects, made a heavy loss on the voyage, from which he recovered nothing. Footnote 141: Gorges, “Briefe Narration,” p. 62. He does not give the name of the savage. The identity is established by Bradford, _History of Plymouth Plantation_ (Boston, 1861), pp. 96 _f._