Christopher Newport

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The Anglo-Dutch fleet at Cadiz, 1592

Christopher Newport (baptized on 29. December 1561 in Harwich , England ; † 15. August 1617 or shortly thereafter in Bantam on Java , then to the Dutch East Indies was an English belonging) sailors and pirate , who co-founded the colony of Jamestown in Virginia viewed becomes.

Life

Statue of Christopher Newport at Christopher Newport University

Newport was born in 1561 to Christopher Newport, a shipmaster of the same name , and his wife Jane. On November 3, 1580, he sailed from Harwich to Brazil on board the merchant ship Minion of London . After differences of opinion between the crew and the ship's captain Stephen Hare, he left the ship with some crew members in 1581 at Baya ( Bahia ). He probably returned to Harwich around 1582 and married Katherine Proctor there on October 19, 1584. In the following year the conflicts between England and Spain began in the course of which the regents of both countries issued letters of invasion to private sailors in order to harm their opponents.

Newport quickly made a name for himself as a good seafarer. He became the captain of a ship in 1590 after having raided Spanish settlements and ships for a few years as a privateer on behalf of the English Queen Elizabeth I. Among other things, he was involved with the fleet of Sir Francis Drake in the attack on the Spanish fleet off Cádiz and fought there against the Spanish Armada . He had his first command on the Little John , the ship of a merchant from London, with which he continued to take part in the raids in the Caribbean . During this time he lost his right arm in combat. He led another command on the Golden Dragon and in 1592 he managed to caper the Portuguese ship the Madre de Dios, which was laden with treasures . He also became a co-owner in the mid-1590s angry Neptune .

Newport was commissioned in 1606 by Bartholomew Gosnold and his sponsor Sir Thomas Smyth of the Virginia Company to carry out a colonization mission in the " New World ". So he set sail in December 1606 and left London, where he was in command of the Discovery , the Godspeed and the Susan Constant . The small fleet that was supposed to bring the English settlers to North America arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia on April 26, 1607 . They went ashore at Cape Henry where Newport, as a member of a seven-man leadership group, founded a new colony a little inland on the James River , following the sealed instructions of the Virginia Company , which they named "Jamestown". Newport's job was to ship settlers to America and to transport trade goods and mining products to England.

In the last years of his life he made three long trade trips in the service of the East India Company to the Far East and accompanied the first English ambassadors to Persia and India.

Christopher Newport University in Newport News , Virginia, founded in 1961, was named after Newport .

literature

  • Amy Williams Boykin: Christopher Newport (=  Just in time biographies ). Foxhound Pub., Glen Allen, VA 2003, ISBN 1-58796-008-7 .
  • Newport, Sir Christopher. In: Frank E. Grizzard, D. Boyd Smith: Jamestown Colony. A political, social, and cultural history . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, Calif 2007, ISBN 978-1-85109-637-4 , pp. 151-152 ( online ).
  • A. Bryant Nichols: Captain Christopher Newport. Admiral of Virginia . Sea Venture, Newport News, Va 2007, ISBN 978-0-615-14001-8 .
  • Don Jordan, Michael Walsh: White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America . Mainstream, Edinburgh 2008, ISBN 978-1-84596-193-0 ( online - Chapter III. - The Merchant Prince).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Melissa Albert: Christopher Newport - British sea captain on britannica.com
  2. ↑ a b c d Christopher Newport (1561 – after August 15, 1617). on encyclopediavirginia.org
  3. ↑ Sean M. Heuvel: Christopher Newport University (=  College History Series ). Arcadia Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7385-6838-6 , pp. 7 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
personal data
SURNAME Newport, Christopher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English navigator and pirate
DATE OF BIRTH baptized December 29, 1561
PLACE OF BIRTH Harwich , England
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1617
Place of death Bantam on Java