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Updated: May 25, 2025
December 10, 1606, ten days before the departure of this colony, the council for Virginia set down in writing regulations deemed necessary for the expedition. The command of the ships and settlers was given to Captain Christopher Newport, a famous seaman, who in 1591 had brought into the port of London the treasure-laden carrack the Madre de Dios, taken by Raleigh's ship the Roe Buck.
Then dividing about a million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating.
The vice-admiral also fell in with some rich ships, but they escaped for a like reason; and these two brave officers, that their expedition might not prove entirely fruitless, resolved to attack the harbor of Cerimbra, in Portugal; where, they received intelligence, a very rich carrack had taken shelter. * Monson, p. 181. * Camden, p. 647.
After waiting patiently for some weeks, another still larger carrack, called the Madre de Dios hove in sight. Though the Portuguese fought bravely to defend her, she was captured in the space of an hour and a-half. On going on board, the English, after hunting about for plunder, each man with a lighted candle in his hand, a cabin was entered in which there was a quantity of powder.
A similar enterprize, undertaken in 1593, seems, by its success, to have contributed very materially to the commercial intercourse between England and India; for a fleet of the queen's ships and some merchant ships having captured a very large East India carrack belonging to the Spaniards or Portuguese, brought her into Dartmouth: if she excited astonishment at her size, being of the burthen of 1600 tons, with 700 men, and 36 brass cannon, she in an equal degree stimulated and enlarged the commercial desires and hopes of the English by her cargo.
The wreck was unquestionably some Spanish or Portuguese carrack or galleon as old as I have stated; for you saw her shape when you stood on her deck, and her castellated stern rising into a tower from her poop and poop-royal, as it was called, proved her age as convincingly as if the date of her launch had been scored upon her. What was in her hold?
I suspect, however, that they must have been nearly, if not entirely, decked over in fact, that they were what are now called flush-decked vessels, while probably the carrack was a frigate-built ship, or, at all events, a ship with a high poop and forecastle.
He had been of Raleigh's captains and was chosen, a very young man, to bring to England from the Indies the captured great carrack, Madre de Dios, laden with fabulous treasure. In all, Newport was destined to make five voyages to Virginia, carrying supply and aid.
Then dividing about a million florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such cruising among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the North Pole, he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no difficulty in convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the friendship of the Dutch republic was worth cultivating.
The carrack was set on fire, and had it not been for the courage of Captain Norton, both the plundered and the plunderers would have been blown together into the air. The carrack, which was brought home in safety, was larger than any man-of-war or merchantman belonging to England.
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