Captain Christopher Newport

In nearly forty years of Sea Voyages, Captain Christopher Newport played an important role in the evolution of England from an isolated island society to a major sea power with expanding overseas colonies, which ultimately became the British Empire. During seventeen years of successful privateering in the Caribbean, he and other English privateers enriched the English monarchy and provided financial support for the future English colonization of North America. Newport was the most important leader in the initial establishment of the Virginia Colony at Jamestown, the first permanent English-speaking colony in North America. For the first five difficult years, he kept the struggling colony alive by resupplying the colonists, bringing new colonists to Jamestown, and supervising the building of the settlement's initial palisade, storehouse, church, and dock. With his leadership skills, knowledge of navigation, seamanship experience, and ability to negotiate with the Indians, he repeatedly rescued the Jamestown colony from extinction. His later voyages to the East Indies confirmed the feasibility of trading by sea with the East and the large commercial profits that England could expect from these expeditions. His voyage to India laid the foundation for the subsequent British occupation of India. Newport's role in the shipwreck of the Sea Venture in Bermuda and the successful completion of the voyage in two smaller ships built from Bermuda cedar, led directly to the founding of the Bermuda colony, which remains a British protectorate to this day, and one of the last remnants of the British Empire.

A remarkable feature of Captain Newport's successful career is that he was a commoner with little formal education. Many of the early leaders of English voyages of exploration and colonization were sons of prominent and wealthy English families, often owners of large estates. Several of these leaders also had advanced educations. Bartholomew Gosnold, for example, was educated in law at Cambridge University, and Gabriel Archer and William Strachey attended Cambridge. We know nothing of Newport's education, but his will, and a letter he wrote to the Earl of Salisbury, secretary of the Virginia Company of London, indicates that he could write well, using ornate phrases stylish in the era.

The fact that Captain Newport was chosen to lead a major English expedition despite his lack of formal schooling or advantages of birth, is a testament to his leadership skills and to the high level of respect he won from the prominent London businessmen who developed the Virginia Company. Furthermore, his selection to lead the voyages to Virginia based on his experience and ability, rather than on his social status, exemplified the gradual erosion of the medieval social structure and the evolution of Renaissance values in England. Men were increasingly chosen for leadership positions based on their individual attributes and experience rather than titled pedigrees.

Captain Newport's ability to lead men was legendary. At the young age of twenty-nine, he was appointed to the rank of captain, and he survived nearly twenty years as a privateer, commanding men in fierce battles against the Spanish. In 1592, as Captain Newport's ship approached a large Portuguese carrack, he delivered a famous speech to his men, “Masters, now the time has come that either we must end our days or take the said Carrick.” He successfully motivated his crew to board and capture the Portuguese vessel during a long and bloody sea battle.

One of Newport's major responsibilities as admiral of the voyages to Virginia was to discipline the men under his command. He seems to have done this by persuasion and eloquence, and by example, rather than physical punishment, at a time when whippings and hangings at sea were commonly used by other sea captains to enforce their orders. Captain Newport also treated Indians with respect and attempted to win their cooperation through trading, rather than using physical force to subdue them. Unlike John Smith and other military leaders of the Virginia Colony, he did not attack the Indians or steal food supplies from them, nor did he enslave the Indians as the Spaniards had done routinely in Central and South America.

The English colonists were constantly worried about the possibility that the Spanish would attack their vulnerable settlement. This concern was largely based on an atrocious massacre of French Huguenot colonists by Spanish soldiers, which had occurred in 1565 at Fort Caroline, Florida. The massacre was ordered by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the Spanish governor of Florida, who founded St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in North America. Spanish soldiers surprised and easily subjugated the largely unarmed Huguenot settlers. The colonists - men, women, and children - were taken in small groups behind the sand dunes, where each colonist was run through with the sword and left to die. Nearly 350 Huguenot sailors and soldiers, scattered by a prolonged storm at sea, were captured by Menendez's soldiers on the beaches of Florida and also put to the sword. The Spaniards considered the French Huguenots to be infidels because they were not Catholics, but politically, the massacre was intended to warn other Europeans that the New World belonged to the Spanish.

To avoid a similar massacre, the English colonists of 1607 were advised by sealed orders from the Virginia Company to build their colony inland, along a river, rather than on the coast of the Chesapeake Bay. The orders further specified that an outpost be established at the mouth of the river manned by lookouts so “that when any fleet shall be in sight, they may come to give you warning.” Captain Newport followed the orders of the Virginia Company closely by selecting a site for the colony forty miles upriver from the Chesapeake Bay, on the James River. In addition, he maintained a lookout post located at present-day Old Point Comfort. The lookouts could advise the Jamestown colony of approaching ships by traveling on foot to Jamestown faster than a sailing vessel could sail up the river.

Unlike some leaders of the Virginia Colony or the London Trading Companies who were primarily interested in acquiring wealth quickly, Newport became committed to the long term development of the Virginia Colony. To meet this goal, he left his wife and four children during five dangerous voyages across the Atlantic, each lasting more than six months. He grew up on the sea, and remained at sea most of his life, dying at the end of a long trading voyage to the Far East, on the island of Java, aged fifty-five. In an era where a man was identified by his career, such as carpenter, blacksmith, or priest, Captain Christopher Newport was recognized as a mariner, a man of the sea.

- A. Bryant Nichols Jr.