White Lion and the
Treasurer immediately set sail for Virginia, where they hoped to sell their cargo. According to a letter written by the colony’s secretary, John Rolfe, to the Virginia Company of London treasurer, Sir Edwin Sandys, the
White Lion arrived first and landed at Point Comfort sometime late in August, having lost its “consort shipp” on the passage from the West Indies. Rolfe described the ship as a “Dutch man of Warr,” perhaps because it bore Dutch letters of marque. “He brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes,” Rolfe wrote, which the governor, Argall’s successor Sir George Yeardley, and the cape merchant, Abraham Peirsey, “bought for victualle [food] … at the best and easyest rate they could.” Some of the Africans were then transported to Jamestown and Flowerdew Hundred, a plantation on the upper reaches of the James River that Peirsey was in the process of purchasing from Yeardley. John Pory, John Rolfe’s successor as secretary, indica
São João Bautista was attacked by two English ships, the
Treasurer and
White Lion. They were sailing with letters of marque, which provided official sanction from foreign governments to prey on Spanish and Portuguese ships, stealing valuable cargo. When it arrived in Vera Cruz, the
São João Bautista carried only 147 slaves, having lost 203 along the way. Many of these people likely died from disease; others may have taken their own lives or been killed in the English ships’ attack. The remainder between forty-five and fifty enslaved Africans had been stolen by the
Treasurer and
White Lion. The two ships promptly sailed for Virginia, with the