A Guide to American History in London: 3 Ships Window

3 VIRGINIA-BOUND SHIPS WINDOW
(inside St. Sepulchre Church)
Holborn Viaduct, EC1

Inside St. Sepulchre Church, the same place that the famous Captain John Smith is buried, there is a stained glass window that celebrates the three ships that carried the first English settlers (including Captain Smith) to Virginia, where they established a settlement they called Jamestown, in honor of the then-current king, James I.

3 Ships Window

Discovery, Susan Constant, and Godspeed

These three ships, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed, set sail from Blackwall, in the East End of present-day London, in December 1606. They arrived at Virginia in the spring of 1607. Above them, in the window, are three figures. Only the central figure, Captain John Smith (below), had anything to do with settlement of Virginia.

Capt. John Smith window

An explantory sign next to th brass plaque pictured below reads:

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

This brass plate bears a copy of the original inscription on the tomb (probably destroyed during the Great Fire) of John Smith “sometime Governour of Virginia and Admiral of New England, who departed this life the 21st of June, 1631.”

The story of John Smith’s adventures in America is well known: how he was captured by the Indians & how the Princess Pocahontas “the King’s dearest daughter whom no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death, whereat the Emperor was contented that he should live to make him hatchets & her bells, beads and copper.”

Pocahontas later became a Christian & after being told later that Smith was dead, married a young English planter named John Rolfe, and died at Gravesend in 1616.

It was in St. Sepulchre’s Church that John Smith was accustomed to worship; it was at St. Sepulchre’s that he received Communion before starting on his great adventures; it was in a house on Snow Hill under the shadow of the Church tower that he breathed his last, and it was in Saint Sepulchre’s that he was laid to rest.

Plaque Transcription

To the living memory of his deceased friend
Captain John Smith,
sometime Governour of Virginia,
and Admiral of New England,
who departed this life the 21st of June 1631.
ACCORDIAMUS. VINCERE EST VIVERE.

Here lies one conquered that hath conquered Kings,
Subdu’d large Territories, and done things
Which to the World impossible would seem,
But that the Truth is held in more esteem.
Shall I report his former Service done
In honour of his God and Christendom?
How that he did divide from Pagans three
Their Heads and Lives, Types of his Chivalry?
For which great Service in that Climate done,
Brave Sigismundus, King of Hungarian,
Did give him as a Coat of Armes to wear,
Those Conquer’d Heads got by his Sword and Spear.
Or shall I tell of his Adventures since
Done in Virginia, that large Continent?
How that he subdu’d Kings unto his Yoke,
And made those Heathen flee, as Wind doth Smoke;
And made their Land, being of so large a Station,
A Habitation for our Christian Nation,
Where God is glorify’d, their Wants supply’d,
Which else, for Necessaries must have dy’d.
But what avails his Conquests, now he lies
Interr’d in Earth, a Prey to Worms and Flies?
O! May his Soul in sweet Elysium sleep,
Until the Keeper that all Souls doth keep,
Return to Judgment; and that after thence,
With Angels he may have his Recompence.

John Smith tomb