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On May 12th, 1994 John Smith, then the leader of the Labour Party, died suddenly and tragically at the young age of 55. Wyn Grant reflects on his political legacy and what might have been had things turned out differently.
- Early Life and Military Exploits
- Founding of Jamestown
- John Smith and Pocahontas
- Leadership of Jamestown
- Anglo-Powhatan Wars
- Later Life and Death
- Sources
Born around 1580 in Willoughby, a town in Lincolnshire, England, Smith left home at age 16 after his father’s death. He sailed to France, where he joined volunteer forces fighting for Dutch independence against Spain. He later served on a pirate ship in the Mediterranean Sea before heading to Austria in 1600 to join the forces of the Holy Roman Emp...
In 1607, Smith’s military reputation helped earn him a spot in the group of men assembled by the Virginia Company to form an English colony in North America. With a charter from King James I in hand, 104 settlers sailed from England aboard three ships in December 1606. During the four-month sea voyage, expedition leaders arrested Smith for planning...
The new colony struggled with food shortages and disease, and in the fall of 1607 Smith began conducting expeditions to Native American villages to secure food. That December, a Powhatan hunting party captured Smith during one of these trips and brought him before Wahunsenacawh (commonly known as Chief Powhatan), the leader of most of the indigenou...
In September 1608, Smith was elected president of Jamestown's governing council. He instilled greater discipline among the settlers, enforcing the rule"He who will not work shall not eat." Under Smith's guiding hand, the colony made progress: The settlers dug the first well, planted crops and began repairing the fort that had burned down the previo...
In the months after his departure, Chief Powhatan ordered his men to attack the Jamestown fort, beginning the first of the Anglo-Powhatan Wars, and Jamestown endured the so-called "starving time" over the winter of 1609-10, during which several hundred colonists died. Though Smith wanted to return to Jamestown, the Virginia Company refused to send ...
When he was released, Smith was unable to find anyone in England to back further voyages across the Atlantic. He focused on writing about his experiences, published works such as The Generall Historie of Virginia (1624) and The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith(1630). Though Smith was known to exaggerate his own explo...
Bill Warder. Captain John Smith. National Park Service. Bernard Bailyn. The Barbarous Years - The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012) John Smith. Jamestown Rediscovery: Historic Jamestowne.
May 12, 2019 · When we lost John Smith, we lost a leader who would have taken Labour and Britain down the path of radical and necessary reform of our constitution and political culture.
Apr 2, 2014 · Who Was John Smith? English soldier John Smith eventually made his way to America to help govern the British colony of Jamestown.
Sep 30, 2024 · John Smith, English explorer and early leader of the Jamestown Colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America. He played an equally important role as a cartographer and a writer who vividly depicted the natural abundance of the New World, encouraging prospective English settlers.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 12, 1994 · Faced by the media demanding instant policy, a political agenda subservient to the news agenda, he was infuriatingly passive. He was keeping his eye on the long term, thank you.
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Jul 17, 2022 · In fact, rather than a rolling programme, Smith’s strategy was to divide the Parliament into two distinct phases. The first up to the 1994 European Elections had three main priorities: First, complete the One Member One Vote (OMOV) reforms for electing the Leader and Parliamentary candidates;
