Christopher Newport

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For the liberal arts university, see Christopher Newport University.

Captain

Christopher Newport
Statue of Christopher Newport on the campus at Christopher Newport University depicts him with both arms, prior to the loss of one arm in the Anglo-Spanish War. Monumental Sculpture by Jon Hair.
BornDecember 1561 (1561-12)
Limehouse, London, England
DiedAugust 1617 (1617-09) (aged 55)
Bantam, Java
Occupations
  • Seaman
  • privateer
Known forCaptain of the Susan Constant during 1606–1607 voyage to Jamestown

Christopher Newport (1561–1617) was an English seaman and

Virginia Colony, which became the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was also in overall command of the other two ships on that initial voyage, in order of their size, the Godspeed and the Discovery
.

He made

Third Supply mission and was shipwrecked on the archipelago of Bermuda
. Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, was named in his honour.

Early life

Christopher Newport was born in

shipmaster who worked in the commercial shipping trade on the east coast of England. The maiden name of his mother Jane is unknown. Newport was christened at the Anglican St. Nicholas Church in Harwich on 29 December.[1][2][3] Newport went to sea in 1580, and he quickly rose to the rank of a master mariner and dealt with trade going into London. On 19 October 1584 he married Katherine Proctor in Harwich.[4]

Privateer

Model of the Portuguese Carrack Madre de Deus. Newport helped in the capture of this large rich vessel off the Azores in 1592

From 1585 following the outbreak of the

Anglo–Spanish War, Newport worked as a privateer who raided Spanish freighters off and on in the Caribbean. Over the years he commanded a series of privateer ships, including the Little John, the Margaret, and the Golden Dragon. In 1590, Newport participated in an expedition to the Caribbean, which was financed and organised by famed London merchant John Watts. On this voyage, Newport lost an arm during a fight to capture a Spanish galleon
.

Despite his injury, Newport continued to conduct privateer raids for almost twenty years, working with Watts. His accomplishments during this period included a successful expedition off Cuba in 1591 and raided Hispaniola and the Bay of Hondruas. A few months later Newport assisted in the capture of the Portuguese ship Madre de Deus off the Azores in 1592. This prize yielded the greatest English plunder of the century, including five hundred tons of spices, silks, gemstones, and other treasures. Christopher Newport also sailed with Sir Francis Drake on Drake's famous raid on Cadiz, Spain.[5]

Back in the Caribbean Newport captured

Spanish Jamaica in January 1603 ended in failure, after being repelled by militia under the command of Governor Fernando Melgarejo.[6] A month later Newport conducted his last big raid of the war, raiding Puerto Caballos. He continued raiding the Caribbean until May taking an additional pair of Spanish prizes near Havana before heading back to England. The spoils from all these raids were shared with London merchants who funded them.[7] By the time the war had ended in 1604 Newport had raided the Spanish Main more times than Francis Drake had.[8]

In a peaceful mission to the Caribbean, he returned to England in late 1605 with two baby

King James I
, who had a fascination with exotic animals.

Jamestown

It was Newport's experience as well as his reputation which led to his hiring in 1606 by the

James River seeking a suitable location for their settlement as defined in their orders. Newport (accompanied by Smith) then explored the Powhatan Flu (River) up to the site of present day Richmond (the Powhatan Flu would soon be called the James River), then a few weeks after arriving at Jamestown he was allowed to assume his seat on the council.[9]

First and Second Supply missions

In June 1607, a week after the initial Fort at Jamestown was completed, Newport sailed back for London on the Susan Constant with a load of pyrite ("fools' gold") and other supposedly precious minerals,[9] leaving behind 104 colonists, and the tiny Discovery for the use of the colonists. The Susan Constant, which had been a rental ship that had customarily been used to transport freight, did not return to Virginia again. However, Newport did return twice from England with additional supplies in the following 18 months, leading what were termed the First and Second Supply missions. Despite original intentions to grow food and trade with the Native Americans, the barely surviving colonists became dependent upon the supply missions. Before the arrival of the First Supply, over half of the colonists perished in the winter of 1607–08.

The Coronation of Powhatan, oil on canvas, John Gadsby Chapman, 1835

The urgently needed First Supply mission arrived in Jamestown on 8 January 1608. The two ships under Newport's command were the John and Francis and the Phoenix. However, despite replenishing the supplies, the two ships also brought an additional 120 men, so with the survivors of the initial group, there were now 158 colonists, as recorded later by John Smith.[10] Accordingly, Newport left again for England almost immediately to obtain more supplies for the colonists. On this trip Newport took Powhatan's tribesman Namontack to London, arriving on 10 April 1608. Namontack remained in London for three months and then returned to Virginia with Newport.

Third Supply
, as well as the company's new purpose-built flagship, the Sea Venture, were each to become big problems for Jamestown.

Third Supply: ill-fated Sea Venture

Sylvester Jordain's "A Discovery of the Barmudas".

Newport made a third trip to America in June 1609, as captain of the

Starving Time, Newport and the others had precious few supplies to share. Both groups felt they had no alternative but to return to England. On 7 June, they boarded the ships, and started to sail downstream and abandon Jamestown. However, as they approached Mulberry Island, they were met by a 'fourth" supply mission sailing upstream headed by a new governor, Thomas West
, who ordered the remaining settlers to return.

On his last voyage to Jamestown in 1610, Newport brought John Rolfe. Rolfe would engineer a new kind of tobacco that would become the key to the colony's eventual prosperity.[citation needed]

Later voyages, death

On 12 May 1611 Newport arrived once again back at Jamestown, accompanied by Sir Thomas Dale, departing 20 August, for what would be his last time.[4] In 1612, he joined the Royal Navy, accepting a commission first offered to him in 1606, and entered the English East India Company. In 1613, aboard the Expedition, Newport commanded the twelfth voyage of the company to the Far East.[14] In 1615 he sailed to India. In November 1616 he wrote his will, and set out on his third voyage to the East Indies (this time accompanied by his son, also called Christopher, who joined the crew). By May 1617, he was in South Africa, but he died in Java (now part of Indonesia) sometime after 15 August 1617[4] of unknown causes.

Legacy

References

  1. ^ a b "Hariwch: Remembering a hero". Harwich and Manningtree Standard. 31 August 2007.
  2. ^ "Christopher Newport - Ages of Exploration".
  3. ^ "St Nicholas Church ::: St. Nicholas Center".
  4. ^
    Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities
    . Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  5. Encyclopedia Britannica
    . Retrieved 4 November 2022.
  6. ^ C.V. Black, A History of Jamaica (London: Collins, 1975), pp. 43-4.
  7. ^ Fiske, John (1900). Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, p. 58. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
  8. ISBN 978-1844861743
    .
  9. ^ a b Fiske (1900), p. 98.
  10. ^ a b "Some Observations on the Second Supply to Jamestown, September 1608". Archived from the original on 10 August 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  11. ^ "CAPTAIN THOMAS GRAVES". ghotes.net. Retrieved 3 February 2020.
  12. JSTOR 1920592
    .
  13. ^ Rountree, Helen C. and E. Randolph Turner III. Before and After Jamestown: Virginia's Powhatans and Their Predecessors. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.
  14. ^ East India Company (1897). List of factory records of the late East India Company : preserved in the Record Department of the India Office, London. p. vii.
  15. ^ Commonwealth of Kentucky. Office of the Secretary of State. Land Office. "Newport, Kentucky". "Kentucky: Secretary of State - Land Office - Kentucky Cities and Counties". Archived from the original on 5 February 2017. Retrieved 4 September 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). Accessed 4 September 2013.

Further reading

  • A. Bryant Nichols Jr., Captain Christopher Newport: Admiral of Virginia, Sea Venture, 2007
  • David A. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of A New Nation, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003
  • Breese, Steven, Actus Fidei, Steven Breese and Associates, 2007
  • Smith, John, The Generall Historie of Virginia ["G.H." London, 1623].
  • Wingfield, Jocelyn R., Virginia's True Founder: Edward Maria Wingfield, etc., [Charleston, 2007,
    ISBN 978-1-4196-6032-0
    ].

External links

American Cyclopædia article about Christopher Newport
.
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