The Arrival of the Englishmen in Virginia

About this illustration

Creator

Theodor de Bry

Date created

1585–1586

License

This work is believed to be in the public domain. Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment and to understand their rights to fair use.

Source

Original image housed by Documenting the American South / UNC Libraries

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“The Arriual of the Englishmen in Virginia.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of English ships arriving in North America, published in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. The image shows several ships approaching what appears to be the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The five ships closest to the coast are sinking, an artistic representation of the dangers of sailing to a coast historically known as the “graveyard of the Atlantic.”

The text accompanying the image describes the arrival of the ship that brought Hariot’s expedition around 1585–1586:

The sea coasts of Virginia are full of Islands, where by the entrance into the mainland is hard to find. For although they be separated with diverse and sundry large Division, which seem to yield convenient entrance, yet to our great peril we proved that they wear shallow, and full of dangerous flats, and could never pierce up into the mainland, until we made trials in many places with our small pinnace. At length we found an entrance upon our men’s diligent search thereof. After that we had passed up, and sailed there in for a short space we discovered a mighty river falling down in to the sound over against those Islands, which nevertheless we could not sail up any thing far by Reason of the shallowness, the mouth there of being annoyed with sands driven in with the tide therefore sailing further, we came unto a Good big island, the Inhabitants thereof as soon as they saw us began to make a great and horrible cry, as people which never before had seen men apparelled like us, and came a way making out cries like wild beasts or men out of their wits. But being gently called back, we offered them of our wares, as glasses, knives, babies [dolls], and other trifles, which we thought they delighted in. So they stood still, and perceiving our Good will and courtesy came fawning upon us, and bade us welcome. Then they brought us to their village in the island called, Roanoke, and unto their Weroans or Prince, which entertained us with Reasonable courtesy, although they were amazed at the first sight of us. Such was our arrival into the part of the world, which we call Virginia, the stature of body of which people, their attire, and manner of living, their feasts, and blankets, I will particularly declare unto you.

Theodor de Bry was a Flemish-born engraver and publisher who based his illustrations for Hariot’s book on the New World paintings of colonist John White. These depictions of the landscapes and residents of North Carolina provided Europeans with some of their earliest notions of what the North American continent looked like.