Bartholomew Gosnold (1572 – August 22, 1607) was an English lawyer, explorer, and privateer, instrumental in founding the Virginia Company of London, and Jamestown, Virginia, United States. He is considered by Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) to be the "prime mover of the colonization of Virginia." Gosnold also led the first recorded European expedition to visit Cape Cod, on May 15, 1602.
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He was born in Grundisburgh in Suffolk, England in 1572, and his family seat was at Otley, Suffolk. His parents were Anthony Gosnold and Dorothy Bacon. He graduated from the University of Cambridge and studied law at Middle Temple.[1]
Gosnold was a friend of Richard Hakluyt and sailed with Walter Raleigh. He obtained backing to attempt to found an English colony in the New World and in 1602 he sailed from Falmouth in a small Dartmouth bark, the Concord, with thirty-two on board. They intended to establish a colony in New England, which was then known as Virginia.
Gosnold pioneered a direct sailing route due west from the Azores to what later became New England, arriving in May 1602 at Cape Elizabeth in Maine (Lat. 43 degrees). He skirted the coastline for several days before anchoring in York Harbor, Maine, on May 14, 1602.
The next day, he sailed into Provincetown Harbor, where he is credited with naming Cape Cod.[2] Following the coastline for several days, he discovered Martha's Vineyard and named it after his daughter, Martha. He established a small post on Cuttyhunk Island, one of the Elizabeth Islands, near Gosnold, now in Massachusetts. The post was abandoned when intending settlers decided to return on the ship to England since they had insufficient provisions to overwinter.
A notable account of the voyage, written by John Brereton, one of the gentlemen adventurers, was published in 1602, and this helped in popularising subsequent voyages of exploration and colonisation of the northeast seaboard of America. A second account by Gabriel Archer was not published until over twenty years later, after Gosnold's death.
Gosnold spent several years after his return to England promoting a more ambitious attempt; he obtained from King James I an exclusive charter for a Virginia Company to settle Virginia. To form the core of what would become the Virginia Colony at Jamestown, he recruited his cousin-by-marriage Edward Maria Wingfield, as well as John Smith, his brother and a cousin, in addition to members of his 1602 expedition. Gosnold himself served as vice-admiral of the expedition, and captain of the Godspeed (one of the three ships of the expedition; the other two being the Susan Constant, under Captain Christopher Newport, and the Discovery, under Captain John Ratcliffe [3]).He commanded the ship Godspeed on the voyage to Jamestown
Gosnold also solicited the support of Matthew Scrivener, cousin of Edward Maria Wingfield. Scrivener became Acting Governor of the new Colony, but drowned in a tragic accident in 1609 along with Anthony Gosnold, Bartholomew's brother, while trying to cross to Hog Island in a storm. (Ironically, Scrivener's brother Nicholas had also drowned while a student at Eton.)
Gosnold was popular among the colonists and opposed the location of the colony at Jamestown Island; he also helped design the fort that held the initial colony. He died only four months after they landed, on 22 August 1607. George Percy's 'Discourse' that was printed in the fourth volume of Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625) records Gosnold's death (...Captain Bartholomew Gosnold one of Councile, he was buryed thereupon having all the ordinance in the Fourt shote offwith manye vollyes of small shot...) and then sayse "...Oure men were destroyed with cruel dyseases as swellings, fluxes, burning fevers, and by wars and some exyted souddenlye, but for the moste part they dyeth of mere famine..."
Gosnold married Mary Goldinge, daughter of Robert Goldinge of Bury St Edmunds and his wife Martha Judd, at Latton Essex in 1595. They had several children of whom Mary married Richard Pepys kinsman of the diarist Samuel Pepys.[4]
In 2003 Preservation Virginia announced that its archaeological dig at Jamestown had discovered the likely position of Gosnold's grave. The skeletal remains of what they believe to be Gosnold were exhumed and are currently on public display in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C.
Preservation Virginia began genetic fingerprinting, hoping to verify Gosnold's identity in time for the Jamestown quadricentennial. By June 2005 researchers and The Discovery Channel sought permission to take DNA samples from the remains of his sister, Elizabeth Tilney, located in the Church of All Saints, Shelley, near Hadleigh, and they were granted the first faculty for such purposes from the English diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.[5] However, although they removed bone fragments from the church, they had difficulty in identifying the correct remains, and they were not able to conclude anything from their analysis. In November 2005 Preservation Virginia announced that, while they remained confident Tilney's remains were somewhere beneath the church floor, the tests they performed had not confirmed the link. The DNA analysis was conducted by the Smithsonian Institution.