S THE SEA. 



good ship has almost always sailed with a definite and positive mission. The history of but 

 a single vessel involves the history, more or less, of hundreds of people ; it may mean that of 

 thousands. So the history of the ocean is that also of lands and peoples, far off or near. 

 Subjects the most diverse are still intimately connected with it. In the space of a few years' 

 time, war and peace are strangely contrasted ; brilliant discoveries are succeeded by 

 disastrous failures, and heroic deeds stand side by side with shameless transactions. Take 

 only a few of the succeeding pages, and we shall find recorded in them the stories of the 

 early colonisation of America, and of the disastrous voyages in quest of the fabled El Dorado, 

 followed by the brave and daring deeds of one of our greatest naval heroes ; these again by 

 the establishment of the great commercial company which once ruled India, succeeded by 

 stories of pirates on the sea, and " bubble " promoters ashore. Sketches of maritime affairs 

 must be " in black and white," so great are the contrasts. But let us turn to our first 

 subject, the early voyages to, and colonisation of, the great New World. 



About one hundred men formed the first little colony landed in Virginia from the 

 expedition of Greenville in 1585. Raleigh, at his own expense, sent a shipload of supplies 

 for them next year, but before it arrived the settlers, and the very Indians of whom such 

 flattering accounts had been given, had quarrelled, and so many of the former had fallen 

 as to imperil the existence of the colony; the survivors thought themselves fortunate 

 when Drake unexpectedly arrived off the coast, and took them away. When Greenville 

 reached the settlement, a couple of weeks after, they had left no tidings of themselves, 

 and, wishing to hold possession of the country, he landed fifteen men, well furnished with all 

 necessaries for two years' use, on the island of Roanoake. This voyage paid its expenses by 

 prizes taken from the Spaniards, and by the plunder of the Azores on the way home, 

 where they spoiled "some of the towns of all such things as were worth carriage/' 



Raleigh, next season, fitted out a third expedition of three vessels, with one hundred 

 and fifty colonists, under the charge of John White, who was to be Governor, with twelve 

 chosen persons as assistants : their town was to be named after himself. After narrowly 

 escaping shipwreck, they arrived off Roanoake, and White, taking the pinnace, went in search 

 of the fifteen men left in the preceding year, but " found none of them, nor any sign 

 that they had been there, saving only the bones of one of them, whom the savages had 

 slain long before." Next day they proceeded to the western side of the island, where the}'- 

 found the houses which had been erected still standing, but the fort had been razed. 

 They "were overgrown with melons of divers sorts/' and deer were feeding on the 

 melons. While they were employed repairing these, and erecting others, one George 

 Howe wandered some two miles away, when a party of half-naked Indians, who were engaged 

 in catching crabs in the water, espied him. " They shot at him, gave him sixteen wounds 

 with their arrows, and after they had slain him with their wooden swords, they beat his head in 

 pieces, and fled over the water to the main." Captain Amadas had taken an Indian 

 named Manteo to England with him, and this man, now with White, was sent to the 

 island of Croatoan, where his tribe dwelt, to assure them of the friendship of the English, 

 and an understanding was established. It was ascertained that the men left the preceding 

 year had been treacherously attacked by hostile natives, and that two had been killed, and 

 their storehouse burned; the remainder had succesfully fought through the Indians to 



