#41 Set Fair For Roanoke Part 3

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It is July 1585. Sir Richard Grenville, in command of the first English expedition of colonization to reach the territory that is now the United States, has arrived at the Outer Banks of North Carolina with five ships, only two of which were part of his original fleet. The flagship Tiger has run aground, and in the course of refloating her a large part of the expedition’s supplies had been lost. Thomas Cavendish commands the Elizabeth, which made it to a pre-planned rendezvous on the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico. They have two small Spanish ships captured in the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, and a new pinnace for shallow water exploration, built from scratch. Unbeknownst to Grenville and Cavendish, there are thirty Englishmen wandering around the barrier islands not far to the north, unceremoniously dumped there by George Raymond, captain of the Red Lion, who had blown off the colony to privateer between Newfoundland and the Azores. They also didn’t know, yet, that the Roebuck and the Dorothy, thought lost since a storm off the coast of Portugal, had found their own way and were anchored offshore not far to the north waiting for Grenville and Cavendish to show up. And, finally, the most important thing they didn’t know was that the re-supply ships, under the command of Amias Preston and Bernard Drake — no relation to Francis — had been ordered by Elizabeth I to sail for Newfoundland instead of North Carolina, so that they could harass the economically important Spanish cod-fishing operation.

Now it was time to pay a visit to the chief of the Secotans, Wingina, whose portrait by John White is the featured image for this episode.

Selected references for this episode

James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 41.
0:10.5	I am your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on October 7th, 2021 in New Orleans.
0:20.4	Today is exactly the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto,
0:26.5	in which the Catholic League, led by Spain and Venice, soundly defeated the naval forces of
0:34.0	the Muslim Ottoman Empire. The League's 212 galleys and 60,000 sailors and soldiers
0:42.2	defeated the 278 galleys and galleats and 84,000 sailors and soldiers of the Ottoman Empire,
0:52.0	destroying, 187 Muslim vessels vessels at the cost of only 13 galleys lost.
1:01.6	In the course of this almost unbelievably lopsided victory, the Holy League freed 12,000 Christian slaves, most of whom pulled the oars in the Ottoman fleet.
1:15.6	That victory cemented Philip the Second's reputation is Catholicism's greatest champion on
1:21.7	earth, if that still needed to be proved, established that the Ottomans were not invincible, and to some
1:29.7	degree made it possible for Spain to turn the attention of its Navy to the Atlantic.
1:35.8	A tenuous connection to the history of the Americans, to be sure, but I could not let Lepanto's
1:40.9	450th anniversary pass without saying something.
1:47.4	If you are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States,
1:54.1	from the beginning without presentism.
1:57.8	We believe there is dignity in our national story, along with tragedy, triumph, brilliance, hypocrisy, magnificence, magnificence,
2:07.7	depravity, corruption, venality, genius, defeat, and glory.
2:16.5	I hope you listen along. This episode is Set Fair for Roanoke
2:22.7	part three. If you haven't started at the beginning, which I'd love you to do,
2:28.5	you might listen to at least the last two episodes before this one, since they all tie it together. As we move forward through the
2:37.4	timeline of the history of the Americans, things are getting more complicated because the history
2:43.1	of the area that is today's United States gets more dense. For the first nine months of this
	...

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