Times to consider - Captain John Smith and Jamestown

Captain John Smith, based on an engraving done in 1616.

John Smith Map of 1616 (colorized by Preservation Virginia).

Click to enlarge.

Captain John Smith (1580-1631) was your classical Elizabethan adventurer.  Born to respectable yeoman parents, he was a man of his times.  

John Smith (baptized 6 January 1580 – 21 June 1631) was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, Admiral of New England, and author. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, and his friend Mózes Székely.

Jamestown was established on May 14, 1607. Smith trained the first settlers to work at farming and fishing, thus saving the colony from early devastation. He publicly stated, "He that will not work, shall not eat", alluding to 2 Thessalonians 3:10. Harsh weather, lack of food and water, the surrounding swampy wilderness, and attacks from Native Americans almost destroyed the colony. With Smith's leadership, however, Jamestown survived and eventually flourished. Smith was forced to return to England after being injured by an accidental explosion of gunpowder in a canoe.

Smith's books and maps were important in encouraging and supporting English colonization of the New World. Having named the region of New England, he stated: "Here every man may be master and owner of his owne labour and land. ...If he have nothing but his hands, he may...by industries quickly grow rich." Smith died in London in 1631.

Smith's exact birth date is unclear. He was baptized on 6 January 1580 at Willoughby, near Alford, Lincolnshire, where his parents rented a farm from Lord Willoughby. He claimed descent from the ancient Smith family of Cuerdley, Lancashire, and was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth, from 1592 to 1595.

Smith set off to sea at age 16 after his father died. He served as a mercenary in the army of Henry IV of France against the Spaniards, fighting for Dutch independence from King Philip II of Spain. He then went to the Mediterranean where he engaged in trade and piracy, and later fought against the Ottoman Turks in the Long Turkish War. He was promoted to a cavalry captain while fighting for the Austrian Habsburgs in Hungary in the campaign of Michael the Brave in 1600 and 1601. After the death of Michael the Brave, he fought for Radu Șerban in Wallachia against Ottoman vassal Ieremia Movilă.

Smith reputedly killed and beheaded three Ottoman challengers in single-combat duels, for which he was knighted by the Prince of Transylvania and given a horse and a coat of arms showing three Turks' heads. However, in 1602 he was wounded in a skirmish with the Crimean Tatars, captured, and sold as a slave. He claimed that his master was a Turkish nobleman who sent him as a gift to his Greek mistress in Constantinople, Charatza Tragabigzanda, who fell in love with Smith. He then was taken to the Crimea, where he escaped from Ottoman lands into Muscovy, then on to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth before travelling through Europe and North Africa, returning to England in 1604.

All this by the age of 24 and with his most important accomplishments still before him.

Smith's whole life was a miracle of escapes and reverses of fortune.  Captain John Smith accompanied the Virginia Company expedition intended to establish a commercial colony in Virginia and setting sail December 20th, 1606.

During the voyage, Smith was charged with mutiny, and Captain Christopher Newport (in charge of the three ships) had planned to execute him. These events happened approximately when the expedition stopped in the Canary Islands for resupply of water and provisions. Smith was under arrest for most of the trip. However, they landed at Cape Henry on 26 April 1607 and unsealed orders from the Virginia Company designating Smith as one of the leaders of the new colony, thus sparing him from the gallows.

Among a throng of gentlemen adventurers, Smith was one of the very few among the 104 settlers who knew anything about farming, mapping, war, or governance under emergency conditions.  He is credited with seeing the colony through its first most difficult years.

The landing in Virginia on April 26th, 1607 occurred under difficult circumstances.  The terrain was riparian and swampy.  The temperatures were hot and muggy in the summer (with all the related insect life) but the North Atlantic was in the midst of the Little Ice Age and therefore the winters were very hard.  The area was well settled by Native Americans but the tribal relations and alliances were unsettled in the region, exacerbated by the difficult weather patterns.

It took all Smith's skills in soldiering, farming, and diplomacy to hold the colony together and see it through very lean times when more people died than survived each year.  Only replacements from the Virginia Company in London ensured that headcount increased over time.  

Captain Smith's storied and disputed encounter with Pocahontas occurred in 1607.

Source.

Click to enlarge.

As the colony grew and as the company in London attempted to exert more control and direction from a distance, the place for Captain John Smith, savior though he was of the venture, became less tenable.  In 1609, a mere two and a half years after his arrival, Smith was wounded by an accidental gunpowder discharge and returned to England to recover.  He never returned to Virginia.

But that was by no means the end of his adventures.  He returned to the colonies in 1614, this time to the area which he named New England, a trip both commercial and exploratory.  He made two further journeys to New England, one late in 1614 when his ship was dismasted and another voyage in 1615 when he was captured by French pirates in the vicinity of the Azores Islands.

This was a recurrent event in Smith's action filled life.  He was captured and eventually escaped from the Ottomans.  He was captured and escaped from the Native American Powhatan Confederacy.  He was captured and escaped from French pirates.  He eventually managed to escape and returned to England where he remained until his death in 1631.

In addition to all these adventures, Smith authored several travelogues and studies, including A True Relation of Virginia, published anonymously in 1608. 

The Proceedings of the English Colony In Virginia was published in 1612 and combined a mapping of the Chesapeake area with botanical, wildlife and ethnographic observations.  His third publication was A description of New England published in 1616.

New Englands trials was published in 1620 covering various events and explorations of the New England coast.  This was followed by the much lengthier The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, which was published in 1624.  

In 1626 he published An accidence or The path-way to experience: Necessary for all young sea-men, or those that are desirous to goe to sea, briefly shewing the phrases, offices, and words of command, essentially an instruction manual for maritime war.  

In 1630 he published his autobiography, the title of which was virtually a chapter in itself, The true travels, adventures, and observations of Captaine Iohn Smith, in Europe, Asia, Affrica, and America from Anno Domini 1593 to 1629: his accidents and sea-fights in the Straights: his service and strategems of warre in Hungaria, Transilvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, against the Turks, and Tartars: his three single combats betwixt the Christian Armie and the Turks : after how he taken prisoner by the Turks, sold for a slave, sent into Tartarias: his description of the Tartars, their strange manners and customes of religions, diets, buildings, warres, feasts, ceremonies, and living: how hee flew the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Cambia, and escaped from the Turkes and Tatars: together with a continuation of his Generall history of Virginia, Summer-Iles, New England, and their proceedings, since 1624 to this present 1629: as also of the new plantations of the great river of the Amazons, the iles of St. Christopher, Mevis, and Barbados in the West Indies / all written by actuall authors, whose names you shall finde along the history.

His final publication was the year he died, Advertisements for the unexperienced planters of New-England, or any where.

What a life.  But it was an era that fostered big characters.  Where Jamestown had Captain John Smith, Plymouth Plantation had Captain Myles Standish (also experienced in the Low Countries Wars).  In the same period there was Sir Walter Raleigh venturing and mapping and fighting.    

In some ways, though, Smith stands out for his pragmatism and all roundedness.  He was never only one thing, he was always many things simultaneously.  What is amazing to me, beyond the serial escapes across his life, is how well he documented his ventures in a time when publishing was just beginning to flourish.  He was truly a man of his times, undiminished by latter day pinheads trying to constrain a Whitmanesque man of multitudes into small a singular pieces.