David Ingramwas one of the companions of Sir John Hawkins, when he was forced to take refuge from a storm in the Mexican harbour of San Juan de Ulua, in the autumn of 1568. After several days of amicable traffic for the slaves brought by Hawkins from Africa, the English ships were suddenly attacked by an overpowering Spanish force. Hawkins succeeded in gathering most of his men into two of the vessels, and in fighting his way out of the harbour. The escape from danger was only temporary, however, for the two ships were so overcrowded that it quickly became evident that they could not possibly make the voyage across the Atlantic to England. About a hundred men were therefore set on shore, on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Three of these men succeeded in making their way across the central and eastern portion of what is now the United States. A French fur-trader found them somewhere on the eastern Maine coast and carried them back to Europe.One of these trans-continental wanderers, David Ingram, wrote an account of his adventures, in which he mingled much fiction with some probable truth. The paragraphs reprinted here contain the most plausible portion of his narrative. There are numerous contemporary manuscript copies of Ingram’s narrative, testifying to the curiosity which it excited at the time. It was first printed in 1582 by Hakluyt, who omitted it from his subsequent publications because of its dubious veracity.
David Ingramwas one of the companions of Sir John Hawkins, when he was forced to take refuge from a storm in the Mexican harbour of San Juan de Ulua, in the autumn of 1568. After several days of amicable traffic for the slaves brought by Hawkins from Africa, the English ships were suddenly attacked by an overpowering Spanish force. Hawkins succeeded in gathering most of his men into two of the vessels, and in fighting his way out of the harbour. The escape from danger was only temporary, however, for the two ships were so overcrowded that it quickly became evident that they could not possibly make the voyage across the Atlantic to England. About a hundred men were therefore set on shore, on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Three of these men succeeded in making their way across the central and eastern portion of what is now the United States. A French fur-trader found them somewhere on the eastern Maine coast and carried them back to Europe.
One of these trans-continental wanderers, David Ingram, wrote an account of his adventures, in which he mingled much fiction with some probable truth. The paragraphs reprinted here contain the most plausible portion of his narrative. There are numerous contemporary manuscript copies of Ingram’s narrative, testifying to the curiosity which it excited at the time. It was first printed in 1582 by Hakluyt, who omitted it from his subsequent publications because of its dubious veracity.