Here are some of the names from Greenvilles’ list, as they were written down at the time: Edward Kelley, R. Courtney, Hugh Rogers, Thomas Fox, Darby “Glande,” Edward Nugent, John “Costigo” (Costigan), James Lafie, Francis Norris, Richard Moore, Richard Ireland, Matthew Lyne, Dennis Barnes, “Denice” Carroll, Robert Young, Thomas Hesket, Richard Humphrey and R. Griffin. Many of these, undoubtedly, were natives of Ireland. This is said to have been the first English colony that settled in America, the previous expedition having returned with its entire company.
They entered Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic by what is now known as New Inlet, and then landed at Roanoke Island, thence crossed over to the mainland to the eastern portion of North Carolina, just south of Norfolk, Va. They followed the course of the Chowan River for a short distance, and soon came in contact with the Indians. Hakluyt’s work contains an interesting narrative of the voyage and of the explorations of the party in Virginia, written by Ralph Lane, in which long accounts are given of their encounters with the savage Indians. In his account of one fight, on the first of June, 1586, he refers to the bravery of “one of my Irish boys,” who shot Pemisapan, the king of the Indians, “athwart the buttocks with my petronell.” The Irish boy’s shot did not, however, bring down the Indian king, and the wily redskin, with a number of his warriors, managed to escape into the dense forest.
But then, another Irishman, who was not afraid to face the Indian band singlehanded, was there to finish the work of the youthful adventurer from Erin, “for,” writes Lane, “in the end an Irishman serving me, one Nugent, and the deputy provost undertook him”—that is to say, volunteered to capture or kill the Indian king—“and I, in some doubt lest we had lost both the king and my man, by our own negligence to have been intercepted by the savages, we met him returning out of the woods with Pemisapan’s head in his hands.”
The place where the bold Irishman, Edward Nugent, and the nameless youth thus earned such prominent mention in early American history has been located as in Chowan County, near the present town of Edenton, N. C.
It seems that in all of the early voyages of the English to the American continent the adventurous Irishman was present. On Raleigh’s first voyage the largest ship was commanded by a Captain Butler, and Captain Edward Hayes commanded a vessel in the expedition of Sir H. Gilbert to Newfoundland in 1583. Sixteen years earlier, 1567, Robert Barrett and John Garrett commanded ships in the expedition to Mexico under Sir John Hawkins. There is nothing to show that these captains were of the Irish nation, but their names have been for centuries so common in Ireland that we venture to include them in this category.
In 1568, when Hawkins arrived in the Gulf of Mexico, he put ashore a company comprising 68 men under Miles Philips, a little north of Panuco. From the curiously-worded narrative of Miles Philips, entitled “The voyages from Panuco, thence to Mexico, and afterwards to sundry other places, having remained in the counterey 15 or 16 yeeres together, and noted many things most worthy of observation,” which is contained in Hakluyt’s third volume, we glean some interesting information.
The whole company was captured by a band of Indians and Spaniards, and immediately haled before the governor, who “visited them with the terrors of the Inquisition.” John Gray, John and Thomas Browne, John Mooney, James Collier and John Rider were sentenced to receive 200 lashes on horseback and to serve eight years in the galleys; others of the company received various terms of servitude, while others were condemned to serve as servants or slaves in the monasteries. Three were condemned to be burned to ashes, and the inhuman sentence was carried out in the market place of the City of Mexico on the day preceding Good Friday in the year 1575.
The three unfortunates were George Riuely (Reilly), Peter Momfrie and “Cornelius.” Philips was unacquainted with the full name of the latter, but in order to distinguish him from another of the party who bore the same Christian name, he refers to him as “Cornelius the Irishman.” In relating the circumstances of his subsequent escape, Philips stated that several of the adventurers, after the expiration of their terms of servitude, remained in Mexico, married native women, and some prospered in the new country.
The same volume of Hakluyt (page 286) contains the story of “The Fourth Voyage, made to Virginia in 1587, wherein was transported the Second Colony,” written by the commander, Captain John White. The narrative runs in part:
“On the first day of July (1587) we weighed anchor at Musketo’s Bay, upon the fourth side of St. John’s Island, where were left behind two Irishmen of our company, Darbie Glaven and Dennis Carrell, thence bearing along the coast of St. John’s till evening.” The vessels anchored in the bay for the purpose of securing a supply of salt, which Simon Fernando, who was with Raleigh on the first expedition, had informed White could be procured on the island. The two hardy Irishmen, Glaven and Carrell, were selected to go ashore and procure the necessary supply. They proceeded inland, but, during their absence, Fernando, for some reason that does not appear, persuaded the commander to weigh anchor, and before the two unfortunates had returned to the shore, the vessels were far on their way. It would be interesting if we could follow the fortunes of the two Irish castaways among the Indians of the Danish West Indies, but history contains no further account of them.