Newport, Christopher

Related Category: British and Irish History: Biographies

1565?–1617, English mariner, commander of early voyages to Virginia. He commanded a privateering expedition to the West Indies (1592) that returned to England with the Spanish vessel Madre de Dios, the richest prize ever taken by the Elizabethan privateers. He was employed by the London Company to command their expeditions to Virginia. On the first voyage he sailed from England with Capt. John Smith and other colonists in Dec., 1606, and arrived near the site of Jamestown in May, 1607. He returned to England in July and sailed again for the colony in October with the “first supply” of emigrants and provisions, reaching Jamestown in Jan., 1608, to find the colonists greatly reduced and in dissension. Later that year he brought the “second supply” from England and explored the country beyond the falls of the James River. On his fourth voyage from England (1609), Newport was wrecked on the Bermudas with Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers and did not reach Virginia until May, 1610. In 1611 he made his last voyage to Virginia, taking Sir Thomas Dale to the colony. In his later years Newport made three voyages for the East India Company, dying at Bantam, in present Indonesia, on the last.