Captain John Smith was an adventurer. In 1596, at age 16, Smith left his home in England to fight against Spain in support of Dutch independence from the Spanish Crown. Two years later he signed on as a crew member of a Mediterranean merchant ship. In 1600 he joined Austrian forces fighting the Turks in Hungary. Captured by the Turks, Smith was enslaved and transported to Istanbul. He escaped by murdering his master, returned to Hungary and rejoined the fighting. Released from military duty with a large reward, Smith made his way back to England in 1604.The twenty-five-year-old Smith soon grew restless. The Virginia Company had recently been granted a charter by King James I to colonize Virginia and Smith eagerly joined the expedition which left England in December 1606. The voyage lasted four months during which the abrasive Smith so irritated his fellow colonists that they placed him in irons. Arriving in Virginia in April 1607, the expedition leaders opened a locked box containing the names of seven men selected by the Virginia Company to govern the new colony. We can only imagine their shock when they discovered Smith's name on the list.
The inexperienced colonists struggled for their survival in the harsh environment they now called home. Disease, severe weather, Indian attacks, laziness, internal squabbling and starvation all threatened to destroy the colony. Smith's firm leadership (he was soon elected president of the colony) held the colonists together and narrowly avoided extinction. Wounded by an explosion of gunpowder, Smith sailed to England in late 1609 to recover. He never returned to Virginia.
He did return to the New World, however, as part of an expedition to explore Maine and Massachusetts in 1614 giving the area the name New England. His independence and abrasiveness disqualified him from any further royal sponsorship and he spent the rest of his life in England writing of his adventures. He died in 1631 at age 51