Humphrey Gilbert

Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539-1583), English navigator and soldier, who annexed Newfoundland for the English Crown and devised brilliant, if unsuccessful, colonization schemes.

A half-brother, on his mother's side, of Sir Walter Raleigh, Gilbert was born near Dartmouth about 1539; he was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford. His family wished him to become a lawyer, but he joined the army instead. He saw active service (1562-1564) in France during the French religious wars and in 1566 was commissioned a captain in the English army in Ireland. He was appointed governor of Munster, Ireland, in 1569 and in the following year was knighted. He served (1571) in Parliament and was sent (1572) to the Netherlands with an English force in an unsuccessful attempt to aid the Dutch Protestant revolt against Spain.

Gilbert spent the period from 1572 to 1578 in retirement, mainly engaged in writing. As early as 1566, and again a year later, he had petitioned Queen Elizabeth I to be allowed to seek a North East or North West Passage to the Orient. In consequence, during his period of literary activity his most important production was A Discourse of a Discovery for a New Passage to Cataia (1576). In 1578 his efforts were finally rewarded by a royal charter granting the privileges of exploration and colonization in North America. Gilbert and Raleigh fitted out an expedition the same year, but their ships were dispersed by the Spanish off the coast of Africa, and they were forced to return. A second expedition sailed from Plymouth in 1583 and, after a voyage of 50 days, reached Newfoundland, where Gilbert founded the first English colony in America near the present city of St John's. The colonists were mutinous, however, and the expedition returned to England. On the return voyage, Gilbert sailed in the small 9-metric-ton frigate, the Squirrel, rather than in his 36-metric-ton flagship, the Golden Hind. In a storm off the Azores, the Squirrel and its crew were lost in September 1583.