Four hundred years ago, Captain George Waymouth sailed from England to the coast of Maine in search of a suitable site for an English colony.
He and his crew spent twenty-nine days in May and June of 1605 sounding and exploring a very small area of the coast, which included an anchorage at the Georges Islands and the discovery of a "great river." Which river? This question has been an ongoing controversy, even to the present day. Our best information comes from James Rosier, who was aboard the ship Archangell as a "gentleman" employed to document the voyage. His narrative, A True Relation, gives us one of the earliest written accounts of the natural resources of northern New England and the Native people who resided here. But because Waymouth hoped to return with financial backing to establish a new colony, Rosier's glowing account is cagey about certain geographic specifics—obviously, they didn't want someone else to act on their information.