He ranged the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, and “got for trifles neer 1100 Bever skinnes, 100 martins and neer as many Otters.” Most of these were acquired within a distance of twenty leagues, he said, for “Eastwards our commodities were not esteemed, they were so neare the French who affords them better.” At Sagadahoc, at the mouth of the Kennebec, there was competition from an English vessel belonging to Sir Francis Popham, son of the chief justice. This fur-trading ship “had there such an acquaintance, having many yeares used only that porte, that the most parte there was had by him.” And of course to the southwest were the two French trading vessels.
The country, Smith later reported, was populated by “Moos, a beast bigger than a Stagge; Deere, red and Fallow; Bevers, Wolves, Foxes, both blacke and other; Aroughconds (raccoons), Wild-cats, Beares, Otters, Martins, Fitches, musquassus (muskrats) and diverse sorts of vermine, whose names I know not.”
“Of the Musk Rat,” he predicted, “May bee well raised of their goodnesse. Of Bevers, Otters, Martins, Blacke Foxes, and Furres of price, may yearely be had 6 or 7000: and if the trade of the French were prevented, many more.”
With the title of Admiral of this “New England,” of which he had drawn an exceptionally detailed and accurate map, Captain Smith was sent out the next year by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and others of the Plymouth Company. This time he never reached his objective, being captured by pirates and once more experiencing perils enough for many another adventurer’s lifetime. With his usual luck and ingenuity however he managed to escape, and returned to England to write about his ventures.
Unable to get any further backing for his colonization schemes John Smith never returned to America. Thus it never came about that he encountered the Dutch interlopers for whose original presence in “Virginia” he had been responsible through his friendship with Henry Hudson. However, one of Smith’s companions on his last voyage, Thomas Dermer, was sent out again by Gorges in 1619. And Dermer paid a visit to the Dutch at Manhattan.
After arriving in America and sending a cargo of furs and fish from Sagadahoc back to England, Dermer set out in a small open pinnace of five tons burden to follow the coast south to the Chesapeake. The account of his voyage is almost as interesting as one of Captain John Smith’s epics.
Among other adventures on his way down the coast, Dermer “redeemed” two Frenchmen from the Indians. These men, after having been shipwrecked off Cape Cod and captured with others by the Indians, had survived three years of being “sent from one sachem to another to make sport with.” Dermer himself was taken during a fight with the savages but successfully contrived an escape with the aid of some hatchets which his compatriots used as ransom bait.
Following a winter at the plantations on the James River, Dermer then returned to New England via Manhattan where he stopped off, probably upon the urging of Jamestown officials, to see what the Dutch traders were about. There he discovered a “multitude” of factors busy with furs, and he found plenty to indicate that the Hollanders were permanently settling themselves in the land.
The English fur trader pointed out to them that they were on English soil, but the Dutchmen replied that “they understood no such thing, nor found any other nation there; so that they hoped they had not offended.” Since he was in no position to challenge them further Dermer contented himself by warning them not to continue their occupation as his own countrymen would soon take possession of what they, the Dutch squatters, were calling “New Netherland.”
Whereupon Thomas Dermer withdrew, eventually to have his story laid before the English merchants at home, while the Hollanders promptly went about widening the coastal head of the wedge they had driven between southern Virginia and northern Virginia, the country now called New England by the Englishmen.