In the meantime some controversies had arisen between the governor and the assistants over the selection of two of their number to return with the ships as factors for the company to their associates in London. For none desired to go. After much persuading by the governor, Christopher Cooper agreed to be one of the two. But the next day, through the persuasions of “divers of his familiar friends,” he changed his mind, and withdrew his acceptance. Thereupon the whole company with “one voice” requested the governor himself to go. He, it was argued, could better and sooner than any other obtain the supplies and necessaries for the comfort and development of the colony. But he refused. He could not so soon return he declared, leaving behind so many whom he “partly had procured through his perswasions to leave their native countrey” and embark in this venture, without discredit. At his return in England some enemies of himself and of the enterprise “would not spare to slander falsely both him and the action, by saying hee went to Virginia but politikely, and to no other end but to leade so many into a countrey in which hee never meant to stay himselfe, and there to leave them behind him.” Besides, it had been agreed that the colony should presently remove fifty miles farther up into the main. If this should be done, and he being absent, his own stuff and goods might be spoiled, or pilfered in transportation, so that at his coming back he would be forced to provide himself of all such things again; and he had already had some proof of the insecurity of his property when once absent from the colony for only three days. Now stronger pressure was brought by his associates, and they agreed to give him their bond, “under all their handes and seales” for the safe preservation of all his things at his return to Virginia, so that if any were lost or spoiled such would be made good to him or his assigns. Under this pressure and with the execution of the bond, he reluctantly reversed his decision, and made ready to go.
Since Captain Ferdinando was now impatient to be off, the governor had only half a day’s time to prepare for sailing. He left Roanoke on the morning of the twenty-seventh and at midnight boarded the fly-boat. The next morning both ships weighed anchor.
Before he left the plantation White had agreed with the assistants that should the colony move from Roanoke before his return they should carve on a tree trunk or other conspicuous post, the name of the place to which they had gone.
Of his parting from his associates, or from his daughter Eleanor and his little grandchild, nothing is said in the record. Nor of the wistful farewells as the ships sailed off for the home that the more than a hundred colonists left behind were never again to see. Here their story abruptly ends. How they lived after the ships had sailed away, and how they perished, or what was their fate, none can tell. With the departure of Governor White history closes the chapter.
The return voyage was one of hardship and adventure. At the very start, at the weighing of their anchors, twelve of the fly-boat’s men were thrown from the capstan and hurt, and for a time only five of her complement of fifteen men were able to do the ship’s work. Nevertheless she kept company with the “Lion” for about twenty days. Then seeing that Ferdinando did not mean to make any haste for home, but was determined to loiter along the way in the hope of taking Spanish prizes, she left the admiral and struck out on her own hook for England. Repeated storms were encountered on the passage; through “foure dayes together” her master could see “neither sunne nor starre”; her fresh water gave out; several of her sailors sickened and two died. At length on the sixteenth of October she made the Irish coast and came to Smerwick. A few days after her arrival the boatswain, the steward, and the boatswain’s mate died. Subsequently White took passage on another ship, sailing from Dingen for England, and landed at Cornwall on the fifth of November. The fly-boat came up three days later to Hampton. Here it was learned that the “Lion” had arrived three weeks before, at Portsmouth. Ferdinando had experienced hard luck. He and his company “were not onely come home without any purchase [seizure] but also in such weaknesse by sicknesse and death of the chiefest men, that they were scarce able to bring their ship into harbour, but were forced to let fall their anker without which they could not wey againe, but might all have perished there if a small barke by great hap had not come to them to help them.”
White at his return found the whole kingdom in a turmoil over the threatened invasion by the “Invincible Armada” of Spain,—that “mightie” navy, “as never the like before that time had sailed the Ocean sea,” comprising nearly one hundred and forty grand ships and thirty thousand fighting men, among them many grandees and gentlemen volunteers,—Philip of Spain’s now open and bold stroke for the conquest of England, and her “reduction to his Catholic religion,” in revenge for the “disgrace, contempt, and dishonour” which he had “endured of the English nation.” Raleigh, Grenville, and Lane, the latter knighted after his return from America, were all members of the council of war that Elizabeth had hurriedly called together; while other friends of American colonization were engrossed in affairs of state. Scant attention, therefore, to the needs of the distant handful of colonists could be expected at this time of peril at home. Yet Raleigh was quick to act, and generously, in their behalf. In the thick of his activities for England’s defence, he found leisure to fit out, again at his own charges, a small fleet to be despatched at the earliest moment with supplies and probably a few new colonists. Grenville was to take charge as commander of this expedition, and White, of course, was to return with him. But before the ships were ready to sail all of them were impressed by the government, and Sir Richard was required to attend Sir Walter in Cornwall and train troops there. Not long after another attempt was made. White, with Raleigh’s aid, succeeded in obtaining two barks, and with these he sailed on the twenty-second of April, 1588, bound for Virginia. But their men were more anxious to fight the Spaniards than to hasten to the colony. In an encounter at sea with Spanish ships they were worsted and were obliged to limp back ingloriously to England. So this intended voyage was abandoned.
Nothing more was done or well could be done under the condition of affairs for nearly two years. In July and August, 1588, the “Invincible Armada” was defeated and dispersed. While with Howard, the lord high admiral, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher bore off the larger glory for this signal achievement, Raleigh shared in all the dangers of the protracted sea fight. But with the return of comparative tranquility he found himself too much reduced in means to prosecute his colonial projects to the extent of his desires. He had expended in his various ventures upward of forty thousand pounds for which he had received no return. Still he continued undaunted to do what he could to accomplish his ends. With his assistance in March, 1590, an opportunity opening, White made another effort to get to the colony, and this time succeeded in reaching “Virginia.”
The opportunity was furnished by an enterprise of John Watts, a London merchant. Watts had a fleet of three ships at Plymouth in readiness to sail ostensibly for a trading voyage to the West Indies, when they were held up by a general order of government prohibiting any vessel from leaving England. White hearing of this sought Sir Walter and proposed that he should use his influence to obtain a license for these ships to proceed on their intended voyage, upon the condition that they should transport White and a few other passengers with their belongings, together with a quantity of provisions, and land them at Virginia. Thereby, White urged, the “people of Virginia [if it were God’s pleasure] might speedily be comforted and relieved without further charges unto him.” Raleigh readily obtained the desired license, the ships’ owner to be bound to him or his assigns in three thousand pounds, to carry out the agreement. But, as White afterward wrote to Richard Hakluyt, the bond was not taken according to the terms. No passengers were permitted to embark or any goods to be shipped, except White alone with his chest. He was not even allowed “so much as a boy” for his personal service. This “crosse and unkind dealing” much “discontented” him; but the fleet being all ready to sail when he went aboard there was no time to make complaint to Raleigh. It was apparent that the “governours, masters, and sailors” of the enterprise, “regarding very smally the good of their countreymen in Virginia, determined nothing less [no more] than to touch at those places, but wholly disposed themselves to seek after purchase and spoiles.”
The story of this quest, White’s last one, is White’s own “true discourse” written for Hakluyt, and presented with this title: “The fift voyage of M. John White into the West Indies and parts of America called Virginia, in the yeere 1590.”