THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609290051
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MANTEO LENGTH: 93 lines
A letter dated 411 years ago and purportedly signed by Elizabethan explorer Thomas Cavendish recently was discovered in a Manteo boat shed.
It could have been a heart-stopper for local historians.
But the flirtation with history was brief.
The document turned out to be a note written in June during a living history interpretation at the Elizabeth II - a state-owned 16th-century representative sailing ship berthed at Ice Plant Island.
``That looks like modern hand-writing to me,'' Outer Banks History Center curator Wynne Dough said the instant he saw the modern missive.
Dough, along with Elizabethan history scholar Olivia A. Isil, visited a Chowan County residence Thursday to see the letter.
After her husband discovered the folded note about three weeks ago, Arrowhead Beach resident Lynn Miller placed it in a plastic bag for safekeeping.
``I was really excited reading that letter,'' she said Tuesday. ``You can almost go back in time. You could almost hear that ship creaking.''
Scrawled on off-white paper with a quill pen, the letter spoke of the ``God-fearing Christian Englishmen'' constructing a ``bastion'' before the arrival of Master Ralph Lane. It was written to Lt. Hugh Griffin and signed by Capt. Thomas Cavendish.
``I wrote that,'' Bill Rea, captain and site manager of the state ship, revealed Friday, chuckling at the misunderstanding. ``We were in the middle of training our living history interpreters for the season. I was sitting there with these kids in the captain's cabin. And I handed it to a kid who excitedly handed it to James.''
James Gibbs, an Elizabeth II interpreter, uses the name Hugh Griffin when role-playing.
Gibbs then took the note to a boat maintenance building where the players change clothes and pinned it on the wall, Rea said.
The state recently sold the shed to developer Malcolm Fearing, who is in the process of moving it to property elsewhere on Roanoke Island. Miller's husband, Jim, a house mover, found the letter in the shed and brought it home.
Although Miller originally thought the letter was real, she later sounded more doubtful.
``I'm skeptical myself,'' she said the day before Dough visited. ``I'm flabbergasted that I would come across something like this - if it turns out to be authentic.''
When it turned out to be four months old instead of four centuries old, Miller was a good sport.
``Thomas Cavendish never signs his name like that,'' Isil said, reaching for a book on the explorer that contains a copy of his signature. Pointing to his scroll, Isil also said the explorer spelled his name ``Caunysh.''
Bending over the creased paper spread on the living room rug, Isil and Dough agreed that ``greetings and salutation!'' and ``warmest regards'' are not of the Elizabethan era. The speech then was much more florid and formal, with drastic differences in spelling from modern English.
The historians concluded that an Elizabeth II interpreter wrote the letter.
Any authentic Cavendish writing would be ``enormously valuable,'' the historian said. Only a handful of Cavendish documents and samples of his signature exist, including the will he wrote at sea before he died.
Isil is considered the local expert on Cavendish, one of the more colorful of the Elizabethan explorers who came to Roanoke Island as part of the Grenville expedition in 1585. But she credits author David B. Quinn with providing all the information she has about Cavendish.
Isil carried Quinn's book, ``The Voyage of Thomas Cavendish 1591-1592,'' with her to compare writing samples with the not-so-long-lost letter. Published in 1975, the book contains copies of the explorer's log and an account of his second attempt to circumnavigate the globe.
Only 25 years old when he came to the Outer Banks, Cavendish was a ``very fiery man . . . very up and down,'' Isil said.
``I guess in modern terms we'd call him a manic-depressive,'' she said, adding it is unclear what caused his death in his early 30s during his final voyage. In one of his few existing letters, Isil said Cavendish wrote a friend before he died saying that he was shaking and ill. On that trip, Cavendish was attempting to reach China by way of the Strait of Magellan. He was forced to turn back, and ended up perishing at sea before reaching England.
``He died of a broken heart, so they say,'' Isil said.
And she noted that Hugh Griffin was an associate of Sir Walter Raleigh. Griffin - to whom Rea addressed his letter - was, in real life, a privateer, a legal pirate.
``What fun!'' Isil said, slapping the Quinn book shut with a smile.
After all, you never know when history is going to release another pearl.
``Genuine documents still do turn up,'' Dough said. ``Things are continually coming to light.'' ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON color photos, The Virginian-Pilot
From left, Wynne Dough, curator of the Outer Banks History Center,
Olivia A. Isil, of the Elizabethan Research Project, and Lynn Miller
of Chowan County compared this letter with writing samples of its
suspected author - Capt. Thomas Cavendish. The penmanship didn't
match up.
Partial shot of letter by CNB