This he sent to sail along with others under the
command of his step-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was setting
out upon a voyage of discovery. It was on this voyage that Sir
Humphrey found and claimed Newfoundland as an English possession,
setting up there "the Arms of England ingraven in lead and
infixed upon a pillar of wood."* But the expedition was
unfortunate, most of the men and ships were lost, Sir Humphrey
himself being drowned on his way home. He was brave and fearless
to the last. "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land," he
said, a short time before his ship went down. One vessel only
"in great torment of weather and peril of drowning"* reached home
safely, "all the men tired with the tediousness of so
unprofitable a voyage to their seeming." Yet though they knew it
not they had helped to lay the foundation of Greater Britain.
*Hakluyt's Voyages.
Nothing daunted by this loss, six months later Raleigh sent out
another expedition. This time it was to the land south of
Newfoundland that the ships took their way.
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