The History of the Americans

It is July 1585. Sir Richard Grenville, in command of the first English expedition of colonization to reach the territory that is now the United States, has arrived at the Outer Banks of North Carolin...

Sir Walter Ralegh’s first attempt to settle the Outer Banks of North Carolina — the first Roanoke colony, under the command of Sir Richard Grenville — got off to a rough start. A storm off Portugal h...

In the spring of 1584, Sir Walter Ralegh (the spelling he used), now the chief organizer and promoter of English settlement in North America, dispatched two ships to the Outer Banks of North Carolina ...

In this episode we discuss the planning for the first English colonization of North America in the context of England’s strategy to resist Spanish hegemony and Protestantism’s defense against Catholic...

In this episode we chase Francis Drake and the Golden Hind from the equator, just off the west coast of South America, all the way around the world and back to England. Along the way Drake claims the ...

When last we left Drake and company, it was August 1578, and the fleet had spent a good part of the southern winter in the protected harbor at Port Saint Julian, in today’s Argentina, about a hundred ...

On September 26, 1580, some fisherman not far from shore in the English Channel saw a small ship, riding low in the water, moving cautiously toward Plymouth Sound.  A man aboard the ship hailed the fi...

This episode is the second of our series on Sir Francis Drake.  Last week, we revisited the catastrophic battle of San Juan d’Ulua in the harbor near Vera Cruz, Mexico between the English trader, smug...

This episode introduces Sir Francis Drake, and describes the moment when he declared a personal war on Philip II of Spain, a war that would change everything. Sir Francis Drake was essential to the h...

Queen Elizabeth I, who came to power at the impossibly young age of 25 in 1558, was of critical importance to the English project in North America, and therefore to the history of the Americans. She w...