The Ark, from a print in the possession of the Maryland Historical Society | |
History | |
---|---|
Kingdom of England | |
Name | The Ark |
Owner | Hired by Cecilius Calvert, second Baron or Lord Baltimore, (1605–1675) |
Launched | c. 1630 |
Fate | Lost 1635 |
General characteristics | |
Tons burthen | 400 |
Length | Approximately 132 feet (40 m) on deck [1] |
Beam | 32 feet (9.8 m) |
Draft | 14–15 feet (4.3–4.6 m) |
Depth of hold | 14 feet (4.3 m) |
Propulsion | Sail |
Sail plan | Three masted, Spritsail& spritsail topsail, fore course, fore topsail & fore topgallant, main course, main topsail and main topgallant, Lateen mizzen with square topsail. |
Complement | Approximately 40 seamen |
Armament | Unknown, but probably capable of mounting 20-25 cannon. |
The Ark was a 400-ton English merchant ship hired in 1633 by Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore to bring roughly 140 English colonists and their equipment and supplies to the new colony and Province of Maryland, one of the original Thirteen Colonies of British North America on the Atlantic Ocean eastern seaboard. On the historic trans-oceanic voyage from England in late 1633 and early 1634, The Ark was accompanied by the smaller 40-ton pinnace Dove .[ citation needed ]
On 22 November 1633 , after several delays, two ships, the Ark and Dove, sailed from the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England. Three days later a storm in the English Channel separated the Ark from Dove. When Dove disappeared from view, she was flying distress lanterns, and those aboard the Ark assumed she had sunk in the storm. A second more violent storm hit the Ark on 29 November 1633 and lasted three days, finally subsiding on 1 December. In the midst of the storm, the mainsail was split in half and the crew was forced to tie down the tiller and whipstaff so the ship lay ahull, keeping her bow to the wind and waves as she drifted. This was the last bad weather the Ark encountered on the trans-Atlantic voyage.[ citation needed ]
On 25 December 1633, wine was passed out to celebrate Christmas. The following day, 30 colonists fell ill with a fever brought on by excessive drinking and 12 died, including two of the Roman Catholic colonists. These were the only losses suffered on the voyage. On 3 January 1633/34 (see below on the start of the new year), the Ark arrived at the island of Barbados in the West Indies after a voyage of 42 days from England. About two weeks later, Dove arrived. As it later developed, Dove had been able to reach the shelter of Plymouth harbor where she rode out the storm.[ citation needed ]
On 24 January 1633/34, the ships departed Barbados. An earlier departure was intended but was delayed because Richard Orchard, master (captain) of the Dove had departed inland to collect some debts and could not be found on the intended sailing date. After making a few other stops in the Caribbean Sea, on 24 February 1633/34 the ships arrived at Point Comfort (now called Old Point Comfort) at the mouths of the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth rivers, which formed the great harbor of Hampton Roads in Virginia. This ended their ocean voyage which had lasted slightly over three months, of which 66 days were actually spent at sea. The two ships briefly stopped in Jamestown, Virginia, up the James River.[ citation needed ]
After a week's stay, the Calvert colonists then sailed northward up the large expanse of the Bay, landing on St. Clement's Island, also known as Blakistone Island, on the north shore of the Potomac River, across from Virginia's northern border, on 25 March 1634. This day was thereafter celebrated annually in the colony and free State as Maryland Day. The colonists planted a large cross, claiming the land in the name of Charles I, King of England, and holding their first communal Mass led by the accompanying Jesuit chaplain, Father Andrew White. The date 25 March has been traditionally taken to mark the end of the voyage, although, in fact, the voyage had actually ended earlier on 24 February, when the Ark and the Dove arrived at Point Comfort entering the North American continental waters. 25 March is the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a major festival day in the liturgical calendar. Until 1752, when England finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar, superseding the older and inaccurate Julian Calendar, 25 March was the start of the civil new year, [2]
Although too small for the intended settlement, St. Clement's provided a relatively secure base from which Leonard Calvert, the first Governor of Maryland and younger brother of Cecilius, could explore the area and negotiate the purchase of land for the new colony. [3] After a brief three-week stay on the island, the new Marylanders occupied a nearby Piscataway Indian village they had purchased on the St. George's (later the St. Mary's) River, several miles (kilometers) southeast from St. Clement's and about 12 miles (19 km) northwest from Point Lookout, where the Potomac River enters the Chesapeake Bay. The new English settlement was named St. Mary's City in honor of The Virgin, and later became the provincial capital, and then the county seat/courthouse in the first county to be "erected" (established), St. Mary's County.[ citation needed ]
In the early summer of 1634, the Ark returned to England. The Dove, which had been also purchased by Calvert and the gentry investors in the new colony, remained for the settlers' use in and around the Bay and coasts of Maryland.[ citation needed ]
In August 1635, the Dove sailed for England carrying timber and beaver pelts, but she never arrived home and was presumed lost in a storm. Maryland Dove is a modern replica of the vessel.[ citation needed ]
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore was an English peer, politician, and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland. Born in Kent, England in 1605, he inherited the proprietorship of overseas colonies in Avalon (Newfoundland), along with Maryland after the 1632 death of his father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1580–1632), for whom it had been originally intended in a vast land grant from King Charles I. Young Calvert proceeded to establish and manage the Province of Maryland as a proprietary colony for English Catholics from his English country house of Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire.
Baron Baltimore, of Baltimore, County Longford, was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1625 and ended in 1771, upon the death of its sixth-generation male heir, aged 40. Holders of the title were usually known as Lord Baltimore for short.
St. Mary's City is a former colonial town that was founded in March 1634, as Maryland's first European settlement and capital. It is now a state-run historic area, which includes a reconstruction of the original colonial settlement and a designated living history venue and museum complex. Half the area is occupied by the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland. The entire area contains a community of about 933 permanent residents and some 1,400 students living in campus dorms and apartments.
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America from 1634 until 1776, when the province was one of the Thirteen Colonies that joined in supporting the American Revolution against Great Britain. In 1781, Maryland was the 13th signatory to the Articles of Confederation. The province's first settlement and capital was in St. Mary's City, located at the southern end of St. Mary's County, a peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay bordered by four tidal rivers.
George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was an English peer and politician. He achieved domestic political success as a member of parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics, he resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Peerage of Ireland upon his resignation. Baltimore Manor was located in County Longford, Ireland.
William Claiborne was an English surveyor and early settler in the colonies/provinces of Virginia and Maryland and around the Chesapeake Bay. Claiborne became a wealthy merchant and planter, as well as a major political figure in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the founder of one of the First Families of Virginia. He featured in disputes between the colonists of Virginia and the later settling of Maryland, partly because of his earlier trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which provoked the first naval military battles in North American waters. Claiborne repeatedly attempted and failed to regain Kent Island from the Maryland Calverts, sometimes by force of arms, after its inclusion in the lands that were granted by a 1632 Royal Charter to the Calvert family. Kent Island had become Maryland territory after the surrounding lands were granted to Sir George Calvert, first Baron and Lord Baltimore (1579–1632) by the reigning King of England, Charles I.
Leonard Calvert was the first proprietary governor of the Province of Maryland. He was the second son of The 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632), the first proprietor of Maryland. His elder brother Cecil (1605–1675), who inherited the colony and the title upon the death of their father George, April 15, 1632, appointed Leonard as governor of the Colony in his absence.
Elihu Emory Jackson, a member of the United States Democratic Party, was the 41st Governor of Maryland in the United States from 1888 to 1892. He was born in 1837 in Delmar, Maryland and died in 1907 in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. He is buried at the Parsons Cemetery in Salisbury, Maryland, the county seat of Wicomico County. He was part owner of Pemberton Hall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
Maryland Day is a legal holiday in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is observed on the anniversary of the March 25, 1634, landing of the first European settlers in the Province of Maryland, the third English colony to be settled in British North America. On this day settlers from The Ark and The Dove first set foot onto Maryland soil, at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River. The settlers were about 150 in number, departed from Gravesend on the Thames River downstream from London. Three Jesuit priests were collected from Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England where they avoided having to give the oath of allegiance and supremacy to the King. The colony's grant was renewed to Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, (1605-1675), two years prior by Charles I of England, after first being given to his father Sir George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, (1574-1632), along with the title of "Lord Baltimore", and a first grant of the Province of Avalon, in the Newfoundland Colony,, who had served the King in many official and personal capacities as Secretary of State, 1619-1625. In thanksgiving for the safe landing, Jesuit Father Andrew White celebrated the Mass for the colonists led by the younger brother of Lord Baltimore, Leonard Calvert, (1606-1647), who served as the first governor, and perhaps for the first time ever in this part of the world on the first landing at Blackistone Island, later known as St. Clement's Island off the northern shore of the Potomac River, which was the new border between the new colony and the earlier English settlements in Virginia) and erected a large cross. The landing coincided with the Feast of the Annunciation, a holy day honoring Mary, and the start of the new year in England's legal calendar. Maryland Day on 25 March celebrates the 1634 landing at St Clements. Later the colonists and their two ships sailed further back down river to the southeast to settle a capital at St. Mary's City near the point where the Potomac flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
St. Clement's Island State Park is a publicly owned historic preservation and recreational area that encompasses St. Clement's Island, an uninhabited Potomac River island lying one-half mile southeast of Colton's Point, St. Mary's County, Maryland. The state park features a 40-foot stone cross dedicated to the beginnings of freedom of religion in the United States as well as a reconstruction of the historic Blakistone Island Light. It is the central feature of the St. Clement's Island Historic District that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The Yaocomico, also spelled Yaocomaco, were an Algonquian-speaking Native American group who lived along the north bank of the Potomac River near its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay in the 17th century. They were related to the Piscataway, the dominant nation north of the Potomac.
Andrew White, SJ was an English Jesuit Catholic missionary who was involved in the founding of the Maryland colony. A chronicler of Colonial Maryland, his writings remain a primary source on the land, the Native Americans and the Jesuit mission in North America.
Thomas Greene was an early settler of the Maryland colony and the 2nd Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1647 to 1648.
Maryland Dove is a re-creation of the Dove, an early 17th-century English trading ship, one of two ships which made up the first expedition from the Kingdom of England to the Province of Maryland. The 1978 Dove was designed by the naval architect and naval historian William A. Baker. The namesake Dove was a trading vessel that could be sailed by a crew of seven. The much larger Ark, was a passenger ship, and was sailed by a crew of 40 or more. The Dove was left behind as a local trading vessel to facilitate commerce between Maryland and the other colonies.
The Battle of the Severn was a skirmish fought on March 25, 1655, on the Severn River at Horn Point, across Spa Creek from Annapolis, Maryland, in what at that time was referred to as the Puritan settlement of "Providence", and what is now the neighborhood of Eastport. It was an extension of the conflicts that formed the English Civil War, pitting the forces of Puritan settlers against forces aligned with Lord Baltimore, then Lord Proprietor of the colony of Maryland. It has been suggested by Radmila May that this was the "last battle of the English Civil War."
St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, also known as St. Inigoes Church or The Cove Church, is a historic Catholic parish located in St. Inigoes, St. Mary's County, Maryland. It is a direct descendant of Maryland's first Catholic chapel, in St. Mary's City, whose communicants formed the first nucleus of American Catholicism. The parish fell under the umbrella of the first establishment of religious freedom in America by George Calvert and his sons, who established the Maryland colony as a refuge for persecuted Catholics.
Captain Charles Calvert was a British Army officer, colonial administrator and planter who served as the governor of Maryland from 1720 to 1727 at a time when the Calvert family had recently regained control of the Province of Maryland. He was appointed governor by his cousin Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, who in 1721 came into his inheritance over the colony.
Mary and John was a 400-ton ship that is known to have sailed between England and the American colonies four times from 1607 to 1634. Named in tribute to John and Mary Winthrop she was captained by Robert Davies and owned by Roger Ludlow (1590–1664), one of the assistants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The ship's first two voyages to North America were to what is now Maine in June 1607 and September 1608, transporting emigrants to the colonies and back to England. In 1609, Samuel Argall also used the ship to navigate a shorter route to the Colony of Virginia via Bermuda. The third voyage to Maine was on March 20, 1630, bearing 130 colonists, and the fourth on March 26, 1634, to Nantaskut in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Henry Fleete was an early English trader in the Colony of Virginia and Province of Maryland. He was a Burgess representative for the Virginia Colony, and interacted with William Claiborne during the time of conflict between Protestant Virginians and Catholic Maryland leadership. During a trading expedition with Henry Spelman of Jamestown, he was abducted and held captive by the Anacostan people for almost five years.
Leonard Calvert.