Adverse winds kept him long upon the
coast of England, and with disappointment came discord and murmuring
among the voyagers. The preacher suffered with weakening disease, but his
soothing counsels alone preserved peace among this wild company. Instead
of following Gosnold's former voyage immediately across the Atlantic,
they sailed by the Canaries and West Indies; and while in full route, the
dissensions among the great men raged so furiously that Captain John
Smith was seized and committed to close confinement on the false charge
that he intended to murder the council and make himself King of Virginia.
Arriving at length near the coast of America, their false reckoning kept
them in suspense so alarming that Ratcliffe, commander of one of the
barks, was anxious to bear away again for England.
But heaven, by its storms, contributed more to the settlements of
Virginia than men by their infatuated counsels (1607). A furious tempest
drove them all night under bare poles, and on April 26th they saw before
them the broad inlet into the Bay of Chesapeake. The cape to the south
they honored with the name of Henry, from the Prince of Wales, a noble
youth, whose character gave the fairest promise of a career of
high-souled action, whose love to Raleigh was only succeeded by his
father's hatred, and whose early death gave England cause for unaffected
mourning.
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