The first vessel fitted out by this company was captured and confiscated by the Spaniards, who, at that time, asserted a right to exclude the ships of all other nations from navigating the American seas. Not discouraged by this misfortune, the company in the following year dispatched two other vessels, having on board about two hundred persons designed to form the proposed settlement. The colonists arrived safely on the American coast in autumn, and took possession of a piece of ground near the river Sagahadoc, where they built fort St. George. Their sufferings during the ensuing winter were extreme. Many of the company, among whom were Gilbert their admiral, and George Popham their president, sank under the diseases by which they were attacked; and the vessels which brought them supplies in the following spring, brought also the information that their principal patron, Sir John Popham, chief justice of England, was dead. Discouraged by their losses and sufferings, and by the death of a person on whom they relied chiefly for assistance, the surviving colonists determined to abandon the country, and embark on board the vessels then returning to England. The frightful pictures they drew of the country, and of the climate, deterred the company, for some time, from farther attempts to make a settlement, and their enterprizes were limited to voyages for the purposes of taking fish, and of trading with the natives for furs. One of these was made by captain Smith, so distinguished in the history of Virginia. Having explored, with great accuracy, that part of the coast which stretches from Penobscot to Cape Cod, he delineated it on a map; which he presented to the young Prince of Wales, with descriptions dictated by a sanguine mind, in which enthusiasm was combined with genius. The imagination of the Prince was so wrought upon by the glowing colours in which Smith painted the country, that he declared it should be called New England, which name it has ever since retained.[48] [Footnote 48: Robertson. Chalmer. Hutchison.] The languishing company of Plymouth, however, could not be stimulated to engage in farther schemes of colonisation, the advantages of which were distant and uncertain, while the expense was immediate and inevitable. To a stronger motive than even interest, is New England indebted for its first settlement.