The History of the Americans

The English established a colony on the coast near today’s Phippsburg, Maine in 1607, only a couple of months after the founding of Jamestown. It would survive just over a year.  The Popham or Sagadah...

It is 1580. Virtually no Spaniards have returned to New Mexico or the American southwest since the return of the remnants of the Coronado and Soto expeditions in 1542.  Neither had found a third great...

In this episode we look at the tangled debate over the location of Drake’s “fair and good bay.” Was it in California? Or do we only believe that because of unbelievably unscrupulous behavior by famou...

This November, it has been 400 years since the traditional First Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony – Patuxet in 1621. But the history of that collaborative feast of the English and the Wampanoag Indians...

This episode is off the timeline. We look at the various crimes against humanity to be found on “History Twitter,” the idea of pursuing a “useable” history and the perils therein, whether we should re...

In this episode we wrap up loose ends before moving on down the timeline: What happened after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and what happened after John White left the Roanoke Colony in August 15...

At some point in the second week of August, 1588, a merchant ship from one of the cities of the Hanseatic League, sailing through the North Sea off the east coast of England, found itself surrounded, ...

On August 28, 1587, John White, the leader of the last Roanoke Colony, climbed on board Edward Spicer’s flyboat and returned to England. His mandate was to secure supplies and more settlers to reinfor...

This episode looks at the fate of the 15 settlers Sir Richard Grenville had left on Roanoke Island in 1586, and the expedition of 1587, which Sir Walter Ralegh, John White, and more or less everybody ...

We are back in the summer of 1585, and careful listeners could hear the ever louder drums of war between Spain and England. In this episode we tell the story of Drake’s voyage to the West Indies in 15...