After 400 years it is astonishing that America is rediscovering a lost hero, a man who perhaps more than any other single individual is responsible for the establishment of British North America, a man who history ought to have recognized in one sense as at least the Founding Grandfather of these fair colonies. It was the vision, enthusiasm and organization of Bartholomew Gosnold, of Otley, Suffolk, that resulted in the Virginia Company and the settlement of Jamestown now 400 years ago.

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Born in 1571, Bartholomew Gosnold came from an East Anglian manorial family that traveled in the orbit of the Earl of Essex. Since 1401 the Gosnolds had tenanted and then owned Otley Hall and the manor of Otley some eight miles northwest of the Suffolk seaport and county town of Ipswich. Bartholomew and his siblings grew up a few miles away in Grundisburgh Hall and were educated with their cousins at Otley Hall by the manorial tutor.

Gosnold was sent to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1587 and then to London to study law at the Middle Temple in 1592. Somewhere along the way, however, Gosnold became fascinated by the sea, and in particular by the stories drifting back to England from early voyages to the New World.

In 1590 Richard Hakluyt, the famed geographer, arrived as the rector of Wetheringsett, just a few miles from Otley. Having already published two influential books on English explorations in North America, Hakluyt was the foremost geographer of his day and a vocal champion of English colonization of the unsettled Atlantic coast of North America. Hakluyt and Gosnold became acquainted, and Hakluyt’s lectures at Middle Temple certainly influenced Gosnold’s emerging dreams of the New World.

Gosnold’s uncle Robert, lord of the manor of Otley, got Gosnold aboard the Earl of Essex’s expedition to the Azores in 1597. Then, for a year or so, he joined Essex in privateering against the Spanish. He made himself something of a small fortune in a short period of time.

Thereafter, Gosnold began a campaign to plant an English colony in north Virginia (which at the time stretched from Florida to Canada). His old patron Essex had gotten himself beheaded in an abortive palace coup against Queen Elizabeth in 1601; Gosnold’s long-time friend the Earl of Southampton was imprisoned in the Tower for the same ruckus. Nonetheless, Gosnold succeeded in winning the earl’s financial backing.

By 1602 the expedition was ready to set sail in a single vessel, Concord, captained by Gosnold. There were 32 on board, 20 being putative settlers of this new colony. Concord had a keel length of 39 feet and a breadth of 17 1/2 feet, and it leaked. Gosnold pioneered a more northern route across the Atlantic instead of sailing south of the Azores before turning west, as was customary. He made the crossing in seven weeks, making landfall at Cape Elizabeth, off what is now Portland, Maine.

From there, Gosnold sailed Concord south in search of a propitious settlement site. When he traced the peninsula that is Cape Cod, Gosnold named it for the profusion of cod in the surrounding waters. South of the cape, he found the islands. Martha’s Vineyard was named for the abundance of wild grapes, and for Gosnold’s firstborn daughter who had died as an infant in 1598. The island in Buzzard’s Bay, now called Cuttyhunk, Gosnold named Elizabeth’s Island after the Queen. There, the party landed and built a fort. However, encountering hostile Indians and realizing that they lacked provisions to last until they would be resupplied, they abandoned the nascent settlement after a month. Gosnold returned to England with a cargo of cedar and sassafras, his hopes for colonization in the New World disappointed but undeterred.

Gosnold arrived back in England ostensibly a failure; no colony had been established. Ben Jonson satirized Gosnold’s attempt in the play Eastward Ho! Perhaps more famously, however, Shakespeare is said to have based the geography of The Tempest on Gosnold’s voyage, with Prospero’s island drawn from Gosnold’s descriptions of Martha’s Vineyard.

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