The Popham Colony : $b a discussion of its historical claims, with a bibliography of the subject — John Shaqi
The Popham Colony : $b a discussion of its historical claims, with a bibliography of the subjectPoole, William Frederick
History
The Popham Colony : $b a discussion of its historical claims, with a bibliography of the subject
Poole, William Frederick
Maine -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
The letter of Mr. Kidder relative to the "pretty pynnace of about
thirty tonne," is again referred to by your correspondent. What are we
to understand by the few notices of her history? Simply this, that on
"August 28," "the carpenters labored about the building of a small
pinnace." Their first act was to prepare the timber from the
surrounding forest,--not necessarily of "green pine," where the ridge
bears oak, maple and spruce now, and perhaps did then,--and put it
into shape for future use. It was left to season during the autumnal
months. Then, after Captain Davies returned to England, with an
account of the "forwardness of their plantation," on the 15th of
December, the seasoned timber was "framed," and the craft completed,
as the "Brief Relation" says, "notwithstanding the coldness of the
season and the small help they had." For reasons satisfactory to the
leaders of the colony, after Captain Davies returned to them, Strachey
says "they all ymbarqued in the new arrived shipp and in the new
pynnace, the Virginia, and sett saile for England." Gorges says they
"all resolved to quit the place, and with one consent to [go] away."
Sir William Alexander says, "Those that went thither ... returned back
with new hopes." The "Briefe Relation" says the news from home "made
the whole company to resolve upon nothing but their return with their
ships; ... having built a pretty bark of their own, which served them
to good purpose, as easing them in their returning;" and asserts "the
arrival of these people here in England,"--of course, the same
"people" who embarked, and in the same "ships" in which they
commenced the voyage. Any other interpretation will be a violent
perversion of language. As to any persons of the colony remaining to
be rovers on the coast in another supposed pinnace, it will be time
enough to consider that conjecture, when proof shall be brought to
change it into history. It will be "credulity" to answer such a
"demand" on our faith, as long as it is unsupported by evidence; and
we shall still believe that "The Virginia" was not, perhaps the first
craft of the Northmen, French, Basques, Dutch, or Indians, of whom we
were not thinking--but was the pioneer ship of the _English people_ in
the new world, and was a striking proof of the skill and enterprise of
the laboring colonists, with Digby, the London shipwright, as their
head in her construction.
But, whatever may be said of the enterprise or its details, whether
favorable or unfavorable, the true and single point for grave
consideration is the prominent fact, that a colony was founded at the
mouth of the Kennebec under the charter of James, 1606, which Popham
"certainly was a chief instrument in procuring," and that this was the
_first_ thus laid in New England under English sway.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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