ABSTRACT
The surprising emergence of fact from apparent fiction is nowhere so well illustrated as in the career of Captain John Smith as represented in his own writings. His astonishing adventures in war and exploration, his claim to pre-eminence in the Virginia Company’s settlement of Jamestown in 1607, his strenuous attempts, in which he failed, to get further employment as a leader of colonial projects in America, and above all the fact that his encounter with the Indian maiden Pocahontas has become part of American folklore — all these and other factors have caused modern American historians, from Henry Adams onwards, to treat the story of his life with a degree of scepticism. Smith had some capital and a lot of experience of seamanship and warfare. Through a mutual acquaintance he met Bartholomew Gosnold, who was now connected with a new venture bound for Virginia.
