I may be the only one, but I like this guy...

Another wonderful day at work. I am not feeling as overwhelmed as I was last week, because while I am still learning new things every day, I am also realizing that “Hey, I know what they’re talking about!” I am not just listening in as my coworkers debate bits of trivia but can now offer my own opinion. For example, a number of my coworkers have strong opinions on Captain John Ratcliffe (you may know him as the evil pompous man in burgundy in Disney’s Pocahontas). I kind of like the guy because he’s a pretty interesting character and he gets a bad rap. The only records that we have on him were written by his enemies…I think that there is more to the story if you can draw your own opinion.

Now realistically, Ratcliffe was the captain of the pinnace Discovery, the smallest of the three ships at 20 tons. John Smith really doesn’t like him (which might also play a role in why I like him), calling him “a poore counterfeited imposture” simply because he went by two names: John Ratcliffe and John Sicklemore, most likely because his mother was widowed and remarried. Weak, Smith, real weak.

Others of his time didn’t like him either, partly because he wanted to give up on the colony and return to England shortly after arriving in Virginia. If you were taken from your nice comfortable home in England (one of the few to have such living arrangements), spend 144 days at sea due to “contrary winds” when the voyage should really only take about 70 days, only to arrive at balmy, swampy Jamestown where you are immediately met by curious and unhappy Indians? Oh, and then throw in disease and the lack of food. Send me home, that’s for sure!!

Well, eventually Ratcliffe gets his wish and is sent back home to England but only after he contributes significantly to ousting the first President, Edward Wingfield, by calling him out for stealing provisions while the men of the colony are dying of hunger and disease. How dare he, huh? After serving about a year as President himself, and being accused of widespread brutality and unfavorable ruling (by Wingfield, of course), he is basically forced by his enemies onto a ship returning to England. John Smith says his return home was a good thing for Ratcliffe, “least the Company should cut his throat.” Either way, Ratcliffe only enjoyed about a year in England before returning back to Virginia, where he must stay while Smith returns to England to seek treatment for a gunpowder accident that injures his hip.

Ratcliffe’s death. While leading a trade expedition with his men, the group of English are ambushed by Powhatan. Ratcliffe doesn’t handle it in the best way, allowing about 16 of his men to be slaughtered and returning hostages (son and daughter of that particular local chief) that could have been used to spare his own life. So what happens to good ole John? Here is the eyewitness account (Henry Spellman):

…when the Slye owlde kinge espied A fitteinge Tyme
Cutt the all of onely suprysed Capte: RATCLIFFE Alyve
who he caused to be bownd into a tree naked with a fyer
before And by woemen his flesh was skrped from his bone
with mussel shelles and before his face throwne into the
fyer. And so for want of circumspection miserably perished.

A brief translation--Ratcliffe was turned over to the women of the tribe who then stripped him naked and bound him to a tree. A fire was set before him and his skin scraped from the bone with mussel shells and tossed into the fire so he could watch himself be burned alive. After all the skin and muscle was removed, his body (still alive) was then tossed in. Now if anyone deserved a death like that, I have a strong argument for John Smith. What a crummy guy...but I’ll save that for the next “Who’s Who.”