"We are as near to heaven by sea as by land."
The sailors of Gilbert's expedition have been called "no better than pirates" (Bancroft), but at worst they were able to cherish the abiding faith of their master as expressed in those words. The seamen who sailed (1530) with William Hawkins in that "tall and goodlie ship of his own," the _Paul_, to the coasts of Africa and Brazil, and with Drake in the _Pelican_ in that famous voyage around the world, and with Raleigh's expedition to the coast of North Carolina, were recruited from among these fishermen, to whom adventure was as the breath of life. And the men who did the actual work of building the _Virginia_ were of the same class.
As the reader remembers, the first charter of Virginia as a colony provided for two colony-planting companies. One, the London Company, settled its colonists in what is now the State of Virginia, while the other, the West-of-England or Plymouth Company, was to people the northern coast. In May, 1607, the Plymouth Company sent two vessels to establish a fishing colony on what is now the coast of Maine. One of the vessels was a "fly-boat" called the _Gift of God_. A fly-boat was a flat-bottomed, shoal-draft vessel handy for exploring inland waters. The other was "a good ship" named the _Mary and John_. These ships shaped their course to an island off the coast then well known to the fishermen, and now called Monhegan, "a round high Ile," where they arrived on August 9. On the 18th they located their settlement on a peninsula, on the west side of the mouth of the Kennebec, which was "almost an island." There they erected dwellings, a storehouse, and a church, with a fort enclosing all. Then "the carpenters framed a pretty pinnace of about 30 tons, which they called the _Virginia_, the chief shipwright being one Digby of London." A plan of the fort as "taken by John Hunt, the VIII day of October in the yeere of our Lorde 1607," is reproduced in Brown's _Genesis of the United States_. This chart is important because it shows under the guns of the fort a small vessel which was, no doubt, the "pretty pinnace" _Virginia_.
While the dimensions of the _Virginia_ were not recorded, we can get a fair idea of her size from Charnock's _History of Marine Architecture_ (II, 431), where a smack named the _Escape Royal_, in 1660, was of 34 tons burden and 30 feet 6 inches long by 14 feet 3 inches wide, and 7 feet 9 inches deep. The 30-ton _Virginia_ was not far from these dimensions. She carried a spritsail and a jib. As the sail spread was insufficient for driving the vessel in light airs and confined waters, oars were provided. The hull was partly decked, enough to protect the cargo.