Radio Script #794

Little Talks on Common Things

February 9, 1969

In my conversations with people from all parts of Maine I have been surprised to find so many who have never been to Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec in the town of Phippsburg. Of course the present stone fort is not the original structure, but it is in sight of the place where in 1607 was built the first English fortification in New England. thirteen years earlier than Plymouth. and only a few weeks later than the settlement at Jamestown.

The Royal Charter of 1606 had established two companies for the purpose of promoting English settlement, the one called the London Company, which set up the colony at Jamestown; the other the Plymouth Company which eventually fostered the Pilgrim Colony of 1620.

The chief promoters of the Plymouth Company were Sir John Popham. Chief Justice of England. and his friend. Sir Ferdinando Gorges. In 1605 the Englishman George Weymouth had carefully explored the Maine coast and a short distance up the Kennebec. Popham and Gorges believed more exploration was justified, with a view to sending settlers to that region.

When Weymouth had returned to England in 1605, he had brought five Indians. On August 12, 1606 Gorges and Popham included two of those Indians with a crew of 29 Englishmen. on a ship to go to the Kennebec. Unfortunately the ship was waylaid and captured by the Spanish. and the men were taken to Spain where some -strangely enough. including the two Indians — were freed. some imprisoned, and several died. Eventually 15 of the crew and the two Indians returned to England.

Becoming alarmed at no news from their ship. Gorges and Popham sent Captain Pring in another vessel to rendezvous with it at the mouth of the Kennebec. Of course Pring found no sign of the ship or its men. But he did carefully explore the coast, and he found the Kennebec to be a larger and more important river than Weymouth had supposed. He discovered that it afforded better trade facilities with the Indians because of its waterway into the interior, and he recommended to the Council at Plymouth that lands at the mouth of the Kennebec offered an excellent site for a colony.

On May 31, 1607 two ships. the “Gift of God” and the “Mary and John”, sailed from Plymouth. England. to found the colony for which Sir John Popham had raised the funds. Unlike the voyage of the Pilgrims thirteen years later, the colony founders included no women. It was to be entirely a male venture, with the women to be sent for after the place was established. Captain George Popham, Sir John’s nephew. commanded the Gift of God, and Raleigh Gilbert was skipper of the Mary and John Gilbert was the son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and a nephew of Walter Raleigh.

On August 9, 1607 Gilbert arrived at St. George’s harbor, from which he had a boat rowed across to what is now New Harbor on the Pemaquid peninsula. On August 10 Gilbert’s boat with 20 men and Popham’s shallop with 30 men passed around Pemaquid Point and visited an Indian camp on the west side of the peninsula. On August 12 both ships headed westward down the coast toward the place where, before they left England. it had been decided they should set up the colony. Both vessels made their way into the river, whose rather intricate mouth had been carefully mapped by Weymouth and Pring. On August 17. by shallop and boat, the two captains proceeded up the river in search of a suitable spot for their plantation, going as far as Merrymeeting Bay. Their final choice was a spot near the mouth of the river, where their two vessels lay at anchor. There on August 19, 1607, on a spot only a few hundred yards west of the present Fort Popham, they decided to plant the new settlement. The very next day, August 20, they began building a log fort. George Popham was named head of the co lony.

Within a few days, under the direction of the ship’s carpenter of the Mary and John, the men went into the woods and cut timber for the construction of a vessel that would serve their needs after the two ships in which they had come returned to England. This resulted in their building the first ship constructed in the New World by white men, and so far as is known the first ocean-going ship built by anyone on this continent.

Deciding that it would be desirable to make more extensive exploration of the river, in the prospect of trade with the Indians. before winter should obstruct the stream by ice. they explored up stream as far as the falls at Augusta during the month of October.

In December the Mary and John returned to Plymouth. England. There the crew reported that the colonists had successfully established themselves in a fertile country, with majestic rivers, stately harbors and native people friendly, if they were discreetly dealt with. The report did, however, mention some disharmony among the colonists. because in the words of the report. “lack of understanding among them existed as to what they were directed to do”. Gorges regarded the colonists as on the whole unfit for their task, saying that they were disturbed by “childish factions”.

Information about the colony after departure of the Mary and John is very meager. Most of what we do know comes from Strachey’s “History of Travel into Virginia Brittania”, published in 1616. He states that the colonists built fifty houses within the pallisade enclosure. Strachey is probably in error. The small number of men required no such number of houses. The plan of the fort found two centuries later in Spain shows only 14 structures. In his book “The Sagadahoc Colony”, Thayer says: “We get a view of the colonists as at least in part a low class of men, inclined to be lawless and given to base and wicked deeds”. Another historian, Purchase. states: “After the departure of the Gift of God, soon following the sailing of the Mary and John, only 45 men remained at the settlement.” It is clear that such a lessening of members, even before a single winter had passed, was the most discouraging fact that the return of the ships revealed to the anxious Gorges in England.

On Feb. 5, 1608 the chosen president of the colony, George Popham, died. The colony gave him suitable burial within the enclosure of the fort, which they had named Fort St. George. George Popham’s death had been preceded, six months earlier. by the death of his uncle and one of the colony’s two patrons, Sir John Popham. That was a severe blow, but the little band at the mouth of the Kennebec was not forgotten at home. In the spring of 1608 two ships brought them welcome supplies from England. But there is no evidence that any new settlers came on those ships. only supplies.

Raleigh Gilbert succeeded the deceased George Popham as head of the colony. Another ship, arriving in September, 1608, brought the news that Gilbert’s older brother, Sir John Gilbert, had died. As heir to the estate, Raleigh Gilbert felt obliged to return to England. Among the little band remaining. there was now no one who possessed the qualifications to administer the colony. To continue the enterprise was out of the question. Accordingly Fort St. George and the hopes it symbolized were abandoned, and by the middle of September there began the dismantling of the fort and the removal of its guns and stores to the anchored ships near by. When the autumn foliage of October came to its height, the place was deserted.

In all the accounts that have come down to us there is not a hint that the departure brought any sorrow to the little group. They had spent one winter at Fort St. George and they had no relish for another. The colony thus failed. and the honor of the first permanent settlement in New England had to wait for twelve more years for the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth.

Why was an attempt to found a colony made so far north? Weymouth, Pring and other voyagers well knew the severity of Maine winters. What was the attraction that outweighed the grueling weather? There were in fact two attractions. First was the great value of the fisheries. Even before the discovery by Columbus. European fishermen. especially the Basques, had regularly come to the North Atlantic fishing grounds from Newfoundland to Cape Cod to supply the urgent demand of the Catholic countries of southern Europe for dried fish. We know that both Monhegan Island and the mainland at Pernaquid were important drying stations for those European fishermen long before the founding of the Popham Colony. To get in on the lucrative fish trade was one reason why Gorges and Popham chose the mouth of the Kennebec for settlement.

The second impetus was the Indian furs. Furs were not common to the Indians who came in contact with the settlers at Jamestown. On the other hand. the New England Indians were skilled trappers and hunters before the white men came. Furs brought back to England by Weymouth. Pring and other voyagers convinced Gorges and Popham that fortunes could be made in that trade. It is thus apparent that fish and fur dictated a settlement in Maine despite the severe winters.

I have already indicated that the death of the two Pophams and Gilbert’s recall to England hastened the end of the colony. But there were other reasons also for its failure. As I have already stated. the men who made up the group were of such low quality that there was no one to take the places of George Popham and Raleigh Gilbert. Still another obstacle was the aloofness, if not outright hostility of the Indians. They remembered that only three years earlier, in 1605. Weymouth had kidnapped five of their number and had transported them to England. Although at least one of them later returned, and he may well have been the one who in the spring of 1621 greeted the PIlgrims in English words, he was not at Fort St. George in 1608. Hence the expected progress with Indian trade did not quickly develop.

The factor in the failure that looms large on mature consideration is that not only did the supply ships in the first spring bring no new settlers. It is even more important that neither they nor the half dozen subsequent ships brought any women. The history of American colonization has made it abundantly clear that no settlement could permanently survive without families.

In 1907, the 300th anniversary of the Popham settlement, there was placed on the site of old Fort St. George a tablet that has this inscription: “The First English Colony on the Shores of New England Was Founded Here August 29, 1607, under George Popham.”

Despite its short life. the Popham Colony had political significance. Without it. England could not, under her own laws, have laid claim to priority of title to New England. It was a maxim of English law that IIprescription without actual possession does not give title”. Though that colony was abandoned, there never was a time thereafter, even including the period between 1608 and 1620, that Englishmen were not living somewhere along the New England coast. especially in the fishing season. There is indeed evidence that by no means all of the Popham Colony returned to England. Some of them went to Pemaquid and Monhegan, and it was they, along with others, who in the winter of 1622 saved the Pilgrims from starvation.

And that is the story of the attempted first settlement of Englishmen in all New England, an attempt that, though unsuccessful, eventually succeeded in its fruits far beyond the dreams of its founders. It paved the way for others, and having firmly established Britain’s claim to this part of the New World. pointed toward the day of Anglo-Saxon supremacy over the claims of other nations.

(Principal source for this broadcast was Harry Burrage: “Beginnings of Colonial Maine”.)

Year: 1969