n Island. Chasing the swift, powerful finback whales and searching for precious metals quickly proved frustrating, so Smith put most of his crew to fishing around Monhegan while he and eight others ranged along the mainland charting the coast and doing a little fur trading. Although the best season for both fishing and trading had already passed, Smith's thorough investigation resulted in a carefully drawn map of New England, with inlets, islands, harbors, soundings, sands, rocks, and other landmarks all meticulously recorded. Deeply impressed with the potential of the country, Smith sailed back to England fully determined to plan a new colony. Unfortunately, Thomas Hunt, whose vessel had accompanied the expedition, tarried after Smith sailed for England and captured twenty-four Indians, whom he sold as slaves. Outraged, Captain Smith reported that "this vile act kept him [Hunt] ever after from any more employment in these parts." Regrettably, this act would sour English-Indian relations for some time to come.
Upon his return Smith visited Sir Ferdinando Gorges, hoping for assistance in implementing his New World settlement plan. The old knight probably needed little convincing; with Gorges's backing, Smith left again in late spring 1615 with two ships, expecting to establish a small colony. He had gone but a hundred and twenty leagues when his ship "brake all her Masts, [and was] pumping each watch five or six thousand strokes," offering him no choice but to turn back. Smith reembarked on a smaller vessel, only to be captured by a French pirate shortly after leaving port. During the winter of 1615--16 he found himself sailing the Atlantic as the prisoner of a buccaneer.
Ironically, Smith probably did more to advance the settlement of New England by remaining at home than he would have in the New World. During his months of captivity, he occupied himself writing his Description of New-England, a thorough and convincingly laudatory discussion of his 1614 voyage and the territory he had explored and named New England. Published in 1616 along with a map of the region, its success was almost instantaneous. Smith filled his account with glowing stories of the riches to be recovered from the Gulf of Maine--the "strangest Fish pond I ever saw," as he called it. Fishermen began sailing to the region, and in less than a decade they had established small fishing stations from the Piscataqua to Damariscove Island. Justly, Smith has been called the father of New England.
Smith's voyage of 1614 once again galvanized Sir Ferdinando Gorges to action; the old knight sent repeated expeditions to the New England area, demonstrating that settlers could survive the cold season in the northern territories and that the Gulf of Maine could yield profitable cargoes of fish. In 1620, a group of English separatists known as the Pilgrims established the first New England settlement at Plymouth.
Smith's voyage and the subsequent publication of Description of New-England capped a long period during which Europeans yielded their old myths and unrealistic assumptions and came to understand the Gulf of Maine region in its own right. Transcribing explorers' reports into lists of profitable commodities, Old World merchants launched the first attempts at settlement based on a firmer understanding of what the land and sea had to offer. These halting early endeavors brought discouragements as colonizers encountered a harsh and unfamiliar environment and were sometimes subject to the uncertainties of European enthusiasm for New World intercourse. But this growing appreciation for the potential value of the Maine landscape was the basis for subsequent colonial development. A second important precedent for colonial Maine emerged during these years. The conflicts that prevailed throughout Maine's colonial history were already evident when Smith arrived in the Gulf of Maine: English explorers and colonizers had clashed periodically with Indians since the days of Verrazano, and the guns of imperial rivalry that first echoed off the steep cliffs of Somes Sound wou