FAMOUS SEAFARERS AND EXPLORERS

Sir Walter Raleigh

Nationality: He was English, born in 1554 at Hayes Barton, on the edge of Woodbury Common, near East Budleigh, Devon. There is a famous painting by Sir John Everett Millais called "The Boyhood of Raleigh" which shows Raleigh and a friend talking to a fisherman on Budleigh Salterton sea wall.

Years of exploration: In 1578 Raleigh sailed to America with his half brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert but he never actually landed in North America - later he just organised and put up the money for the expeditions. Queen Elizabeth I wouldn't let him go off on expeditions because he was such a favourite of hers. So it was his ships and the men he commanded who actually went to the "New World" and brought back the new discoveries.

In 1585 he sponsored the first English colony in America on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina but he did not sail with them. When the colony failed, he sent another one in 1587.

In 1595 and 1616 he did sail to explore in South America in what is now Guyana, looking for El Dorado, the city of gold, but he couldn't find it because it did not exist.

Countries discovered: Sir Walter Raleigh didn't discover ANY countries. He set up English colonies in North America and looked for the city of gold in South America.

Names of ships:

These are the names of some of the ships that Raleigh used to set up his colony:

• Dorothy, owned by Raleigh and possibly captained by Barlowe.
• Elizabeth, a vessel of 50 tuns; Thomas Cavendish, Captain.
• Lyon (Red Lyon) of Chichester, "a hundred tunnes or thereabouts"; George Raymond, Captain.
• Roebuck, a flyboat of about 140 tuns; John Clarke, Captain.
• Tyger, a ship of "seven score tun, " the admiral of the fleet; commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, with Simon Fernandez chief pilot and master.

• Golden Royal of Topsham (110 tuns), owned by Drake and Amyas Preston.
• Good Companion, consort of Golden Royal.
• Job (70 tons), owned by Raleigh; Andrew Fulforde, captain.

• Commander (2000 tuns), owned by Carey;
• Swallow, a bark of 70 tuns owned by Carey.
• Gabriel, a pinnace of 30 tuns owned by Carey.

Portraits of Raleigh:

Any other information: He lived between 1554 and 1618. People think that Sir Walter Raleigh was the man who discovered potatoes and tobacco in America and brought them back to England but it was one of his employees, Thomas Hariot, who brought back the first potato to the British Isles. This is what Hariot said about potatoes: "...a kind of roots of round forme, some of the bignes of walnuts, some far greater, which are found in moist & marish grounds growing many together one by another in ropes, or as thogh they were fastnened with a string. Being boiled or sodden they are very good meate."

Raleigh made smoking popular in England but it was either Sir John Hawkins or Thomas Hariot who first discovered the American Indians using tobacco and brought it back to England.

He was put in prison in the Tower of London in 1603 on a false charge of plotting against King James I. He was let out in1616 to sail to South America to find gold in El Dorado. He came back empty handed after a fight with the Spanish so the King chopped off his head in 1618.

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