American History 1483Sir Humphrey Gilbert born 1537, son of a Devon shire gentleman, who’swidow later married the father of Sir Walter Raleigh, Gilberts halfbrother, which was a British explorer, poet, historian and soldier.
Gilbertwas a soldier, navigator and explorer and was founder of the first Englishcolony in North America. He went to school at Eton and Oxford and servedunder Sir Phillip Sidney’s father in Ireland and fought Spain for theNetherlands. Gilbert was knighted in 1570 for his service campaigns inIreland. Later after the fight against Spain he composed a pamphlet for thesearch of a northwest passage to Cathay, which led to furbisher’s licensefor his explorations.
Gilbert was sure on a northern passage which wentthrew the Artic, Canada, and along the northern coast of Alaska between thePacific and Atlantic oceans. Gilberts pamphlet inspired other explorers toseek passages and other voyages for many years through out the northernregions. In 1578 Queen Elizabeth I, granted him rights to explore thecolonies in Northern America and other new found lands as well as setup acolony there. He is said to believe that America was the lost continent ofAtlantis. So eager to find a route threw the northern waters of NorthAmerica he sailed out on September 23 1578 from England but was attacked bySpain and had to return to England.
The first trip cost him all of hisfortune and so he had to serve in Ireland. After that voyage he didn’t tryto sail out again until June 11 1583 and took 5 ships with him this time. Along this journey one ship had to return to England due to leaks aboardit, but the other 4 ships kept going and eventually made it to NorthAmerica on July 30 1583. He then went to St. Johns and claimed the area forEngland. There he set up the colony that the queen gave him the task to do.
About 2 weeks after the colony was setup he left it to explore otherregion, mostly by Nova Scotia. On his way back to England along with 2other ships they ran into a terrible storm in which his ship the “Squirrel”went down and was the death of Gilbert along with one of the other shipsthat was with him. The only ship that made it back to England was “TheGolden Hind”.
