Early Career
For almost twenty years, Newport worked as a privateer who raided Spanish freighters off and on in the Caribbean. The spoils from these missions were shared with London merchants who funded them. Over the years he commanded a series of privateer ships, including the Little John, the Margaret, and the Golden Dragon. 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 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.
Read more about this topic: Christopher Newport
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Mormon colonization south of this point in early times was characterized as “going over the Rim,” and in colloquial usage the same phrase came to connote violent death.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)