Christopher Newport
| Captain Christopher Newport | |
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| Born | December 1561 Limehouse, London, England |
| Died | August 1617 (aged 55) Bantam, Java |
Christopher Newport (1561–1617) was an English seaman and privateer. He is best known as the captain of the Susan Constant, the largest of three ships which carried settlers for the Virginia Company in 1607 on the way to found the settlement at Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, which became the first permanent English settlement in North America. He was also in overall command of the other two ships on that initial voyage, in order of their size, the Godspeed and the Discovery.
He made several voyages of supply between England and Jamestown; in 1609, he became Captain of the Virginia Company's new supply ship, Sea Venture, which met a hurricane during the Third Supply mission, and was shipwrecked on the archipelago of Bermuda. Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, was named in his honor.
Christopher Newport was born in Limehouse, an important trading port on the River Thames in December 1561. He was the son of a shipmaster also named Christopher Newport who worked in the commercial shipping trade on the east coast of England. The maiden name of his mother Jane is unknown. Newport was christened at Harwich on December 29. Newport went to sea in 1580, and he quickly rose to the rank of a master mariner and dealt with trade going into London. On October 19, 1584 he married Katherine Proctor in Harwich.
From 1585 following the outbreak of the Anglo–Spanish War, Newport worked as a privateer who raided Spanish freighters off and on in the Caribbean. Over the years he commanded a series of privateer ships, including the Little John, the Margaret, and the Golden Dragon. In 1590 whilst capturing a Spanish galleon Newport lost an arm but despite this for almost twenty years, Newport raided Spanish freighters in the Caribbean and Atlantic waters, in particular Watts' successful expedition off Cuba in June and July 1591. In August 1592, he captured a Portuguese ship, the Madre de Deus, off the Azores, taking the greatest English plunder of the century. His ship returned to port in England carrying five hundred tons of spices, silks, gemstones, and other treasures. In his last mission of the war he raided Puerto Caballos in 1603, the spoils from all these missions were shared with London merchants who funded them. In 1605, after another mission to the Caribbean, he returned to England with two baby crocodiles and a wild boar to give as gifts to King James I who had a fascination with exotic animals.
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