Corporal Gabriel West & Sgt. Hugh Griffin – The First English Settlement in the New World
Please join me as we go back in history to the year 1584, to the East Coast of what is now the United States. In that year, Queen Elizabeth the First, then the Queen of England, sent Sir Walter Raleigh in command of three seafaring expeditions to what they called the New World. These expeditions landed on the central coast of what is now North Carolina and became the first English settlements in North America. They called the region Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth the First, the maiden Queen of England. The Cultural Resources Division of the North Carolina Division of History has recreated a model of the seafarers’ ship, called Elizabeth the Second, which carried these small groups of soldiers across the ocean in 1585. In-character actors, talking as real people living in 1585, are on site near Roanoke, North Carolina. I first spoke with a man who called himself Sgt. Hugh Griffin. He claimed to be in charge of the small outpost, one of several they established on their arrival a few days before.
Originally Broadcast: July 1, 1995
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