A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown by Woodward Hobson

Author:Woodward, Hobson [Woodward, Hobson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781101060322
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 9185756
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2009-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

Plans to develop an upriver settlement were delayed by an event that occurred soon after the expedition returned to Jamestown. The colonists had long feared they would encounter the Spanish in the New World, and now for the first time it came to pass. The sight of the sail of a Spanish caravel off Point Comfort caused the soldiers of the fort to immediately prepare for war. On board the approaching ship, most of the sailors were just as tense. All but three of them were confused as to why their commander was directing their vessel to approach an English fort. Only Captain Diego de Molina, Ensign Marco Antonio Perez, and pilot Francisco Lembri knew that the true purpose of their voyage up the coast from the Caribbean was to spy on the English colony. The rest had been told their mission was to search for a lost munitions ship.

The Spanish claimed the New World wholly for themselves and were still on uneasy terms with their former enemy. They saw the establishment of an English settlement on the Virginia coast as a dangerous precedent. Three years earlier Spain almost launched an attack on Jamestown. A fleet was outfitted in 1608, but the ships were diverted to the war in the Netherlands and the plan went no further. Now in the spring of 1611 the Spanish had decided they were content to allow England to pour capital into an enterprise that was yielding little return. The Spanish Council of War was still interested in knowing the strength of the colony, however, and on its orders the caravel Nuestra Señora del Rosario had headed north from Havana to scout Jamestown.

The misinformed Spanish sailors were mystified by their captain’s insistence that they sail toward the fort, and equally baffled by his suggestion that the English ship they saw anchored there might be the lost Spanish vessel. The soldiers at Point Comfort fired a warning shot as the Spaniards approached, and the caravel anchored and responded with a shot of its own. Molina, Perez, Lembri—an Englishman formerly named Limbrecke who had been living in Spain for many years—ordered ten armed men to join them in a longboat and row to shore. As they neared the beach, the oarsmen saw sixty or seventy men near the fort and asked Molina to turn around. The captain responded sharply, according to an official report by one of the sailors: “Don Diego said no one should say a word or he would break his head.” The longboat continued on until it was just off the beach. There the Spaniards saw footprints of boots they identified as English or Flemish. The sailors refused to leave the longboat, and only Molina, Perez, and Lembri splashed into the surf. As the longboat pushed off, fifty Englishmen emerged from hiding, surrounding the three Spaniards on the beach, disarming them and leading them to the fort.

Inside the Point Comfort palisade, the Spaniards told Commander James Davis that they wanted to search the James River for the lost vessel.

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