Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America by Giles Milton Read Free Book Online Page B

enterprise. “I remember well his study,” wrote John Aubrey, who visited the palace some ninety years later, “which was a little turret that looked into and over the Thames and had the prospect which is pleasant, perhaps, as any in the world.” There was a well-beaten path to this room. Scientists and artists, metallurgists, draughtsmen, and botanists—anyone, in fact, who might have knowledge to contribute—were summoned to Ralegh’s study. Jews from Prague and mineral experts from Holland: all were welcome at Durham House, and there were often as many as forty experts living under the one roof.
    On one particularly wet afternoon in late 1584, Ralegh had left his tower early and adjourned to the hall where his household had gathered to dine. Most of the men knew each other well—Michael Butler, Laurence Keymes, Philip Amadas, and Arthur Barlowe were old friends—but there was one figure missing from the familiar crowd. Thomas Harriot, a friend of Ralegh’s since their Oxford days, had yet to be drawn downstairs. He was still in his chamber, lost in his thoughts, idling away the rainy twilight hours.
    Harriot was a young man, still in his early twenties, yet he was already on intimate terms with the highest echelons of Elizabethan society—no small achievement for someone of such humble background that no record exists of his parentage. That he should find himself in this position was due to his algebraic gift. He was a mathematical
conjurer, a wizard, who was also blessed with an imagination that spawned such side shoots that he had already solved some of the most impenetrable scientific conundrums of his day.
     
    Ralegh invested a fortune in turning Durham House into the nerve centre of his American enterprise. “I have harde it credibly reported that Master Rawley hath spent within this halfe yeere above 3,000 l ,” wrote a courtier
    Harriot was the antithesis of Ralegh in looks, dress, and temperament. If the surviving portrait of him is to be believed, he cared little for his appearance. He had a high forehead and thin hair and had allowed his wispy beard to grow to a point, accentuating his elfish chin. His skin was sallow and his face gaunt, yet his bold nose and almond eyes rescued him from ugliness. He had long extolled the virtues of a sober, monkish diet; he abhorred the debauched habits of his contemporaries at Oxford, who spent so much of their time engaged in wassailing that the university had been forced to clamp down on their antics with a series of draconian decrees. Even dress had been subjected to restrictions, and louche student bachelors were forbidden to wear jerkins “of blew, green, redd, white, or any
other lite coller.” Such decrees had made no difference to Thomas Harriot. He bought an ankle-length black robe on the day he arrived in Oxford, and wore it until the day of his death.
    Walter had been quick to spot Harriot’s genius and soon managed to enlist him in the cause of American colonisation. There were many hurdles to be overcome, not least of which was the challenge presented by the long ocean voyage. Few English mariners possessed sufficient skill to sail safely across the Atlantic, and Ralegh believed that navigation would never be reliable until “the aid of the mathematical sciences were enlisted.” Harriot, an expert in applied mathematics, was clearly the right man to train his captains. Ralegh offered him “a most liberal salary” if he would give instruction on the theory and practice of navigation. Harriot launched himself into this task with enthusiasm, and soon had his first breakthrough, solving the perennial problem of determining compass variation by a single observation of the sun. The solution was complex, innovative, and extremely important. First, he taught Ralegh’s navigators to use their compass to obtain a reading for the apparent direction of the sun at sunrise. He then instructed them to compare this with a theoretical reading for the latitude