After the resounding farewell to the last of the visiting Indians, Gosnold's company set about dividing the food-supply into two lots, under the direction of Captain Bartholomew Gilbert, commissary of the expedition. The twenty prospective settlers took stock of their allotment with dismay, for it appeared that they would have only enough to last them for about six weeks. The ship's crew, likewise, had a supply only for the same number of weeks, but they were bound for England and could make it do. There immediately "fell out a controverie" -- a wrangling discussion as to how the twenty settlers could hold out until the return of the ship with a further supply of provisions. There were some, Archer reported, as he was possibly one of them, who voiced the conviction that Captain Gilbert had no intention at all of returning as planned, with additional settlers and with an adequate food-supply for all -- purchased -- optimistically -- with the proceeds of the cargo they were going to ship back to England with Gilbert. They maintained that he secretly intended to sell the cedar and sassafras with which they were loading or about to load the ship, and pocket the money himself, leaving Gosnold and those remaining with him in the settlement to starve, like Sir Walter Ralegh's colonists in the southern part of Virginia (modern North Carolina). Others of the company, more fair-minded, probably disputed these allegations as slanderous, expressing at the same time optimism as to their ability to cope with the food situation.
To those who have read tales of our later American pioneers, able to live from nature's bounty in the forests, it seems strange that these first English voyagers to America should have felt themselves, in the midst of a land of plenty, so dependent upon the maggoty flour and other spoiling foods transported from England. Had they been capable of a quicker adjustment to a new environment at Jamestown and at Plymouth, instead of dying of scurvy and malnutrition, they would have begun immediately to live as the Indians lived.
Present residents of Gosnold's Martha's Vineyard replenish their larders continually, gathering the foods free for the taking that the Indians enjoyed centuries ago, in fine independence of cultivated and transported provisions. In season, there are all sorts of fish, including five to ten pound bluefish, and twenty to forty pound bass, to be had by casting from the shore; later, there are great schools of pollock easily caught; in the spring herring run so plentifully that many eat only the roe, discarding the bony body which is sometimes uses as fertilizer. In the summer several sorts of berries grow wild in the woods in great profusion. In the hunting season, there are deer for a few lucky hunters, and rabbits for the stew-pot in unlimited supply, duck, geese, and occasionally a pheasant. Clams, both soft and hard-shell, the latter being locally known as quahaugs, may be dug along the beaches throughout the year. In the winter season there are "bay" scallops, although few of the island-born like them. Until quite recently, lobsters swarmed around the island. To these, which are still the Vineyard's natural foods in the middle of the twentieth century, the Indians added nuts, including acorns, green herbs and edible roots such as ground-nuts, which our civilized generation does not bother to gather from the woods.
Gosnold's party would have needed, of course, the Indians' staple cultivated food, corn (maize), to carry them through the lean months of early spring, when even the Indians of the Pilgrims' day suffered food shortages. Supplies of this commodity would have been plentiful in the untroubled period of Gosnold's visit, as it was the custom of Indians to store away a superabundance of dried corn against contingencies. In 1634, for instance, Governor Winthrop of the Bay Colony sent to Narragansett for corn and obtained five hundred bushels. He was disappointed, as "the Indians had promised him one thousand bushels, but their store fell out less than expected." Gosnold's Indian neighbors could easily have supplied the white-men with enough corn to see them through the winter, if the settlers had enough in trade goods to give in exchange for it; but Gosnold, because of his inability to converse with the Indians, did not learn of this food. One of the pleasures of life that he missed was clam chowder, thickened Indian fashion with corn-meal.
Gosnold's immediate task was to fill up the hold of the Concord with such commodities as would bring a profit in England. The first of these in importance was sassafras root, which Captain Edward Hayes had suggested as a commodity easily obtained, and sold to offset the expense of fitting out for the voyage. Gosnold's men and the Indians loaded on board a ton of it, the value of which in London, as reported by Brreton, was three shillings a pound, or three hundred and thirty-six pounds sterling for the long ton. Sir Walter Ralegh said that sassafras was worth ten, twelve and twenty shillings a pound before the Concord's cargo was brought in. But he undoubtedly exaggerated its value for the sake of his argument that the dumping of the Concord's cargo on the market in London would depreciate the value of sassafras root to the point where it would no longer be profitable to import. His fears were groundless, as the merchants of Bristol, knowing the price to be three shillings organized by Robert Salterne (who was with Gosnold in 1602) and aided by Richard Hakluyt, which returned to Bristol with both the fifty ton and twenty-six ton vessels of the expedition loaded with sassafrass root.
The medicine made by infusing the powder ground from the root's bark, or cortex, was in great demand as a specific for the cure of the disease then commonly known as "French oox" a disease named syphilis by Fracastoro in 1530, but not so known in England until long after Bartholomew Gosnold's day. The use of this medicine, however, was not limited to that deplorable pox, but was regarded as a general curative of great value. It is in fact a diaphoretic, and would have helped in any illness where an induced profuse sweating hastens recovery. It was certainly a great advance over blood-letting as a general cure.
One of the documents used in planning Gosnold's voyage, printed in the second edition of Brereton's Relation, has a note on the subject reading as follows:
Sassafras, called by the inhabitants Wynauk: of whose soveraigne and manifold ventures, reade Monardes the Phisician of Sivile [Seville], in his booke entitled in English: The joyful newes from the West Indies."
This English transulation of Monardes; work made by a John Frampton, had been published in 1577.
As the sassafras tree, indigenous to America, ranked high for a while in importance, along with potatoes and tobacco, among America's first gifts to the old world, Hakluyt's more extended remarks on the subject is his Discourse of Western Planting are noteworthy.
Moreover, Doctor Monardas that excellent physician of Civill [Seville] writing of the trees of the West Indies, maketh mention of a tree called sassafras which the Frenchmen found Florida. Folio 46 of his book has the following; From the Florida they bring a root and wood of a tree that groweth in those parts of great virtues and excellencies, healing therewith grievous and variable diseases; it may be three years pat that I had knowledge of this tree, and a Frenchman that had been in those parts showed me a piece of it and told me marvels of the virtues thereof, and how many and variable diseases were healed with the water which was made of it; and I judged that which now I do find to be true and have seen by experience. He told me that the Frenchman which had been in the Florida at the time when they came into those parts had been sick the most of them from grievous and variable diseases, and that the Indians did show them this tree and the manner how they should use it, and so they did and were healed of many evils, which surely bringeth admiration that one only remedy should work so variable and marvelous effects. The name of this tree, -- it is called 'Parrane" [Pauame in Frampton's Monardes], and the Frenchmen call it 'sassafras'; to be brief, the Doctor Monardus bestoweth eleven leaves in describing the soverignties and excellent properties thereof.
For Gosnold, sassafras roots had to be accepted as a poor substitute for the gold that he had hoped to find in the land discovered by Verrazzano in 1524. Archer appended to his May 28th description of Elizabeth's Isle -- obviously not a place where gold might be found -- this ratheer despairing note: "These Indians call Gold Wassador, which argueth there is thereof in the Countrey." Archer's logic was good, but his premise quite wrong. New England Indians had no word for gold. When Experience Mayhew translated the Psalms inot "Massachusetts" Indian a hundred years after Gosnold had come and gone, he retained the English word "gold" in his Indian text, as was his custom with words for which the Massachusetts Indians had no equivalent. Archer did not get the word Wassador from his contact with the local Indians, but from the description of southern Virginia written by Master Ralph Lane. This description is cited in another of the documents used in preparing for the voyage, printed at the end of Breretons Relation. The reference to gold reads in part:
The constant report of many of the Salvages of the worshipfull Master Ralfe Lane then governour of the English colonie in Virginia of the rich mine of Wassador or Gold at a place by them named Chauntis Temoatam, twentie dayes journey overland from the Mangoaks [dwelling to the westward], ... is much to be regarded and considered by those that intended to prosecute this new enterprise of planting nere unto those parts.
Needless to add, the foothills of the Alleghenies, to which Lane referred, were far, far from Cuttyhunk.
There was disappointment also in the hope confidently expressed by Captain Edward Hayes and the Reverend Mr. Hakluyt, that a copper mine might be found on this voyage, but the exploreers found that it had come from some distant region. While Gosnold's men were entertaining one of the visiting parties of fifty Indians, Brereton had made signs to one of them asking the source of copper. The Indian, taking a piece of it in his hand, made a hole with his finger in the ground and pointed to the mainland from whence they came. He was undoubtedly pointing beyond the nearby mainland to the present state of Maine, where in the early years of white settlement a good deal of free copper was to be found lying about.
Indians, it should be pointed out, could not or at least did not produce sufficient heat to smelt copper ores, and therefore could use only the fragments found loose in the soil. These could be beaten with stone hammers into very thin plates. The ornaments of the Indians, while showy, were made of this thin sheet-copper, and did not require much metal. Their chains were made of small pieces rolled into a tube, the joined edges somehow cemented. These tubes, some the length of a finger and some only about an inch long, were strung on strings to form chains, or held together by a knotted network of rectangular designs, making of the shorter pieces a bandolier, or collar, worn about the body and a "hand-full broad" -- four inches. Brereton reported that four hundred of the short tubes were necessary to make such a collar. He also mentioned earrings, plain plates of this copper worn as a breast-plate, and drinking cups made of the same material. Copper arrow-heads were also observed, but these were probably for show rather than use in actual hunting, where arrow-heads were lost by the score and by the hundred. Uncounted thousands of arrow-heads have been picked up on the surface of Martha's Vineyard by farmers and amateur searchers, apparently with never a copper one among them. Archaeologists have found a few elsewhere.
Some have assumed that copper for these ornaments was brought by trading Indians from as far away as Lake Superior. But this seems hardly necessary as a supposition, because the free bits of copper referred to above were to be found not only in Maine, but also in the nearby enemy territory of the Narragansetts, in the country around the present inland city of Bristol and farther north, in the state of Connicticut. The copper found in Indian graves in these parts by archeologists is said to be of European origin, but when these archaeologists assume a French Trade in these parts before Gosnold's day they would seem to be quite mistaken. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Indians visited by Gosnold, Champlain, and others in the first decade of the seventeenth century were in possession of any sort of European trade goods, although it is possible that the Indians got some copper from the wrecks of Spanish and French vessels headed for Newfoundland and stranded in storm or fog on the southern shores of the islands or on Cape Cod. However this may be, the fact pertinent here is that Gosnold returned to England without any store of Copper.
On June 10th, Gosnold sailed the Concord over to the little islet called Hill's Hap (Peniskese) to fill the hold with great cedar logs -- according to Ralegh's letter about the cargo brought back, there were in all twenty-six of them. This was a valuable addition to their freight. Captain Edward Hayes had included cedars among the trees that would "make masts for the greatest shippes in the world: Excellent timbers of Cedar, and boords for curious [beautifully wrought] building." The elder Hakluyt had writeen: "Sawed boords of Sassafras and Cedar, to be turned into small boxes for lades and gentlewomen, would become a present [immediate] trade." While the selling price of the twenty-six cedar logs in the Concord's hold is unknown, it is possible that they brought the value of the whole cargo up to five hundred pounds sterling or more, topping the costs of fitting out the voyage.
Archer's narrative reports that the Concord on this excursion "was gone cleane out of sight." This is somewhat puzzing, as Hill's Hap is only about a mile and a half from Cuttyhunk. However, the Corcord may have sailed around to the north side of it, or, more likely, the usual June mists of this vicinity may have set in, making visibility poor. Then, too, Gosnold may have gone farther afield for his logs than he at first intended -- perhaps to the little hilly island which Archer called Hap's Hill, at the mouth of one of the rivers flowing into the north part of Buzzards Bay. This more distant islet seems also, as Archer described it, to have been covered with cedar trees. In any case, Gosnold;s trip to fell and load cedar logs, intended to take one day only, lasted three days.
Archer and nine men had been left in the fort with provisions for three meals only, Gosnold having promised to return the next day. Archer seems to have yielded to panic when Gosnold "came not, neither sent." He and his companions were left to sustain themselves as best they could with the edibles that could be gathered. Archer sent four of the company to "seek out for crabbes, Lobsters, Turtles, etc.", but this project went awry, and they were forced to eat "Alexander [horse-parsley, eaten like celery] and Sorrell pottage", and ground-nuts. This, with the smoking of tobacco, "gave nature a reasonable content." But nothing could ease the strain of being marooned with no proper food available, a thousand leagues from their homes in want for our Captaine", Archer wrote, "that promised to returne, as aforesaid, strooke us in a dumpish [melancholy] terrour, for that hee performed not the same in the space of almost three days." At last they heard Captain Gosnold "to lewre", or call loudly to them, probably our of the mists, "which made musike as sweeter never came unto poore men."
On June 13th, a Sunday, the day after Gosnold's return and five days after the shortage of provisions had been revealed, Archer bluntly put it, "to make revolt." In other words, although having promised Gosnold to remain with him in America, they renounced that role and demanded the privilege of returning to England with Captain Gilbert. Brereton said of them that they were gentlemen who had "nothing but a saving voyage [neither winning nor losing] in their minds." The game, in short, was not worth the candle -- the prospects for profit were outweighed by the risks involved.
Eight men in all seem to have abandoned the project, out of twenty, "so as captaine Gosnold", Brereton continued, "seeing his whole strength to consist but of twelve men, and they but meanly provided, determined to returne for England." This is substantially what Archer wrote.
Three more days were "spent in getting Sasafrage and firewod of Cedar", Archer remarks plaintively, "leaving House and little Fort by ten men in nineteen dayes sufficient made to harbour twenty persons at least with their necessary provision." Obviously, Archer had had a hand in building the fort.
On June 17th, the fourth day after the "revolt", they set sail. Doubling the rocky point of Elizabeth's Isle, they passed the brilliant Dover Cliff again on their way back to the place on Martha's Vineyard, five leagues from the fort on Cuttyhunk, where they had seen the nesting fowl in the sandy cliffs. There they laid in a supply of young cranes, heron, and geese, "which now were growne to pretie bigness", to eke out their provisions for the homeward voyage.
The next day, they made their way out safely into the open sea again, "cutting off" their shallop -- setting it adrift as no longer needed for landing parties. Then with what Brereton calls "indifferent faire winde and weather", they sailed back across the Atlantic, coming to anchor five weeks later, on July 23rd, before Exmouth. Why they passed Falmouth and Plymouth to run up to Exmouth is not explained. But a few days later they went on to Portsmouth, near Southampton.
Both Brereton and Gosnold -- Gosnold in a letter written to his father some weeks after their return -- expressed devout thanks for the good health enjoyed by the voyagers. Brereton wrote in his relation:
For the agreeing of this Climat with us (I speake of my selfe, & so I may justly do for the rest of our company) that we found our health & strength all the while we remained there, so to renew and increase, as nothwithstanding our diet and lodging was none of the best, yet not one of our company (God be thanked) felt the least grudging [symptom] or inclination to any disease or sicknesse, but were much fatter and in better health than when we went out of England.
Gosnold, in the letter to his father, spoke of the good health of the natives he had seen, and then continued:
....for our selves (thankes be to God) we had not a man sicke two dayes together in all our Voyage; whereas others that went out with us, or about that time on other Voyages (especially such as went upon reprisall) were most of them infected with sicknesse, whereof they lost some of their men, and brought home a many sicke, returning nothwithstanding long before us.
Scurvy, of course, was the scourge of voyages of that day, but Gosnold's company did not fall prey of it. This perhapsmay be attributed in part to fresh foods sent to the Concord at the outset of the voyage from the broad acres of the Gosnolds in the valley of the Finn River, easily shipped down the Deben to Gosnold's point of embarkation, and also in part to the eating of green, leafy salads, and berries while the vompany of voyagere were on the islands.
Gosnold's letter to his father was dated September, 1602. It adds but little ot knowledge of the voyage and is strangely barren of intimate personal references. Bartholomew apologized for his failure to get home to see his father in person. The reasons for this delay were not given in the letter, but he probably was overwhelmed by the troubled situation to be discussed elsewhere. He referred with some feeling to the shortage of food and the haste in returning made necessary by that shortage. A ton of sassafras, he explained, had been obtained rather easily -- enough to cloy the market in England. Then he again referred to their haste:
....further, for that we had resolved upon our returne, and taken view of our victuall, we judged it then needefull to use expedition; which afterward we had more certaine proofe of; for when we came to an anker before Protsmouth, which was some foure dayes after we made the land, we had not one Cake of Bread, nor any drinke, but a little Vinegar, left: for these and other reasons we returned no otherwise laden than you have heard.
In other words, no gold, no silver, not even copper to make his family wealthy!
Gosnold's failure to effect a settlement on this voyage of 1602 is not entirely to be regretted. It is abundantly clear that circumstances beyond his control changed this expedition, planned to start a plantation, in a trading voyage. This, however, in the grand scheme of things, was fortunate mischance. The truth of the matter is that the time was not repe for an English settlement on the coast of "northern Virginia." If Gosnold had succeeded in starting a trading colony of small dimensions, it surely would have been wiped out in the troubled second decade of the century.
Gosnold's actual accomplishment was that he had shown the way to the part of the American coast that was to become New England. He had shown the feasibility of a short, direct crossing that ordinarily could be sailed in about six weeks. He had demonstrated the healthfulness of the climate and the dertility of the soil to be cultivated here. He had shown that the land had products available at any time, which could readily be sold in England.
These things became known to the English public, and more especially to the great merchants of England, through the publicatin of Brereton's Relation. This report brought about the expedition of Captain Pring in the year following and set up a goal and destination for other voyagers. This new knowlege, enlarged, became the stock in trade of Captain John Smith, who made a desperate effort, with support from Sir Ferdinando Gorges, to reach the "abounding country" of Gosnold's discovery. But Smith likewise was balked by fate.
A few years later, Smith did his utmost to persuade the Pilgrims to settle in this region under his leadership. They declined his services, but thought that his books and his maps would lead them to his land of wealth. In short, it may truthfully be said that, although Bartholomew Gosnold failed to begin the English colonization in New England in 1602, nevertheless his work did not die with him, but brought his desire into being long after his death in "southern Virginia."
