Welcome to the History of English podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 187, Islands and Sea.

This time, as we work our way through the story of English, we're going to focus on events

in the second half of the 1620s.

England and Scotland and Wales got a new king when Charles I succeeded his father James,

and it immediately became apparent that he in Parliament were not on the same page.

Meanwhile, settlers established the first English colonies in the Caribbean on the islands of St. Kitts and

Barbados. This period also saw the publication of a couple of books from a well-known sea captain

that described the essential elements of a couple of books from a well-known sea captain that described the essential

elements of a life at sea, including the nautical terminology that was common at the time.

So in this episode, we'll also look at how the language of sailing in the sea contributed words and

phrases to the English language during the early 1600s.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is

History of Englishpodcast.com. And you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes

at patreon.com slash history of English. Now let's pick up this episode where we left off

last time. In the last episode, we looked at the establishment of the Plymouth colony in New

England and the early Dutch settlement on the island of Manhattan. This time, we're going to turn our attention back to England,

and we're also going to look at the Caribbean, as English continued its gradual spread around the world.

And the general time frame for this episode is the period from 1624 to 1630.

As we explore this period, I want to begin with a prominent English poet named John Dunn. He was one of the most important poets of the early 1600s. He's renowned

for his unique style, which is often contrasted with that of the slightly earlier Elizabethan poets

like William Shakespeare. Whereas Elizabethan poetry tended to be very elaborate and used a lot of

...