Looking, then, at what was certainly done by the Popham Colony, we must allow that, during the short period they occupied the rugged peninsula of Sabino, and making due allowance for a hard winter, the destruction of their storehouse, and the sickness that followed, they deserve credit for enterprise and industry in constructing a vessel fit to encounter the storms of the Atlantic, and make a safe voyage to England. There she must have attracted much attention, being the pioneer ship built in North America. When, therefore, we consider the value of Popham's enterprise, the building and voyage of the "Virginia of Sagadahoc" is one of its most important results. It was not equalled by the Plymouth colony in the first ten years of its existence; and it was not till the third year of the existence of its powerful neighbor of "Massachusetts Bay," that a ship, fit to cross the ocean, was constructed.
Wishing you a pleasant day and a numerous company, I am,
[2] Strachey says, "the chief shipwright was one Digby, of London." He also speaks of "the carpenters."--Chap. x.
[_Boston Daily Advertiser, April 21, 1866._]
_To the Editors of the Boston Daily Advertiser_:--
By the courtesy of some unknown friend, I have received your paper of the 11th inst., containing a notice of Prof. Patterson's Address at the last Celebration at Fort Popham. As it presents some matters needing amendment, I trust your greater courtesy will allow space in your columns for a few observations.
Your correspondent has confessed a partiality for the literature growing out of the first colonial occupation of the soil of New England under English enterprise; and forthwith, in a style of pleasantry, bearing with it the edge of ridicule, speaks of the efforts of its writers as scarcely better than advocates indulging in "historical waggery," whose pages "we read," as in other fiction, "to be amused."
But without attempting to reply with smiles alone to such attempts at smiling away the force of historic verities, it is pertinent to say, that when your correspondent speaks of the "false theory" of the believers in the Popham Colony, it would have been quite as lucid a mode of treatment, if he had stated the "theory" itself. We had supposed that we were dealing with _facts_; and were not responsible for any deductions drawn therefrom, either by affection or prejudice. And the _facts_, though prominent, may be comprised in a short enumeration: That in 1607 an English colony, under President George Popham, was founded at the mouth of the Kennebec;--was inaugurated and continued with the sacred services of the Christian religion;--was an actual possession of the region afterwards known as New England, under a Royal Charter never denied nor abrogated;--and, though intended, as the documents show, to be perpetual, it came to an end within a year, by reason of the death of its two chief supporters;--and was followed by a succession of occupancies, that proved title, as against the former and never-renewed claims of France.