Originally, the colony was governed by a council of seven men, and Captain Smith had been named by the Virginia Company to serve on this council. Ironically, he was arrested for mutiny on the voyage to Virginia, narrowly escaping being hanged, and arrived at Jamestown a prisoner.
Native Americans led by Opechancanough captured Smith in December 1607 while he was seeking food along the Chickahominy River, and they took him to meet Chief Powhatan (Opechancanough's older brother) at Werowocomoco, the main village of the Powhatan Confederacy.
He also passed on to Smith his hatred for the Turks. In the summer of 1600, the twenty-year old Smith set out again for the Continent, looking for what he called "brave adventures" and a confrontation with the Turks. But before he could fight the Sultan, a chance meeting turned him into a pirate.
So, when Captain John Smith – a member of the Jamestown colony – voyaged throughout the Chesapeake Bay, his primary goals were to discover precious metals and the Northwest Passage. He also set about mapping the area, learning about Indigenous peoples, and claiming land for the English crown.
In reality, Pocahontas too young for romance when she met Smith, and she didn't prevent his death. The pair did have a relationship, but it was possibly more like brother and sister and political in nature, according to historian David Silverman of George Washington University.
The marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe in 1614 changed the demographics of Virginia residents. Their only child, Thomas Rolfe, was the first descendent in a line that now spans over seven generations.
During her religious instruction, Pocahontas met widower John Rolfe, who would become famous for introducing the cash crop tobacco to the settlers in Virginia. By all English accounts, the two fell in love and wanted to marry.
Smith was accused of ignoring ice warnings from other ships and failing to reduce the ship's speed to fit the conditions at hand.
While we cannot know for sure how he spent his final moments, it is known that Captain Edward Smith perished in the North Atlantic along with 1517 others on April 15, 1912. His body was never recovered.
Captain Smith having done all man could do for the safety of passengers and crew remained at his post on the sinking ship until the end.
During the trip, Smith was arrested for mutiny. According to Smith, the gentlemen on board were jealous of his military and naval experience and looked down on him because of his rural upbringing. He said they accused him of plotting to seize power for himself.
John Smith is generally regarded to have been a very successful leader, and in fact is often credited with helping to save Jamestown from collapsing...
Unfortunately for the Native Americans, Smith believed that the English should treat them as the Spanish had: to compel them to "drudgery, work, and slavery," so English colonists could live "like Soldiers upon the fruit of their labor." Thus, when his negotiations for food occasionally failed, Smith took what he ...
He was exploring the Chickahominy River region in December 1607 when he was captured by Chief Powhatan's men.
Pocahontas married John Rolfe, not John Smith.
She ended up marrying John Rolfe, who started growing tobacco in 1613 and introduced the first successful crop of the New World expedition.
Robert Hichens: How 'man who sank the Titanic' spiralled into depression before being jailed for attempted murder. The man at the wheel of the Titanic when it struck a fateful iceberg in 1912 has not been remembered well throughout history.
On today's date in 1912, the body of James McGrady, a saloon steward aboard the RMS Titanic, was interred in Halifax, N.S., where he's buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Recovered in the preceding weeks, McGrady's body was the last body recovered from the tragic sinking that took place about two months prior.
In all only 337 bodies of the over 1500 Titanic victims were found, only one in five. Some bodies sank with Titanic. Winds and currents quickly scattered the remainder.
Iceberg warnings went unheeded: The Titanic received multiple warnings about icefields in the North Atlantic over the wireless, but Corfield notes that the last and most specific warning was not passed along by senior radio operator Jack Phillips to Captain Smith, apparently because it didn't carry the prefix "MSG" ( ...
The sea's surface shone like glass, making it hard to spot icebergs, common to the North Atlantic in spring. Nevertheless, Captain Smith kept the ship at full speed. He believed the crew could react in time if any were sighted. (Related: go on the trail of Titanic in the UK.)
Due to the size and speed of the Titanic it was not able to avoid the iceberg. Some historians suspect that if the order hadn't been given to stop the engines, the Titanic may have been able to swing around and out of the way of the iceberg.
Myth 4: Pocahontas and Smith fell in love.
In fact, the two were so far apart in age that any such relationship would have been disturbing: Pocahontas was around 12 during her repeated visits to Jamestown in 1608, whereas Smith was 28.
She married the tobacco planter John Rolfe in April 1614 at the age of about 17 or 18, and she bore their son Thomas Rolfe in January 1615.
While some sources claim that Thomas died in 1680, others claim that the exact year is unknown. Some evidence purports that Thomas Rolfe died in James City County, Virginia; however the records of the county were destroyed in 1685 during a fire.