On August 3, Captain John Rut sat down and wrote “in haste” a letter to the King of England in which he described the condition of his crew. “Pleasing your honourable Grace to hear of your servant John Rut, with all his company here in good health, thanks be to God and your Grace’s ship the Mary Gilford.”
A few months earlier, Robert Thorne, a Bristol merchant, convinced the king to finance an expedition to find a northwest passage to the Orient around or through the North American continent. Finding a new and quicker route to China, Thorne reasoned, would increase the king’s wealth as well as his own. The king agreed and put John Rut in command of two well-armed ships.
On June 10, the Mary Guildford, captained by John Rut, and the Samson, captained by a man known only as “Master Grube,” left Plymouth Harbor and sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean. For three weeks, the two ships sailed in calm seas and stayed within sight of each other. Then, on the night of July 1, a severe summer storm materialized. The crews of both ships fought the high, pounding waves through heavy rain to keep their ships afloat. Bolts of lightning lit up the skies for split seconds at a time, but the crews were too busy trying to survive to keep each other’s ship in their sights. Finally, the waves began to die down. The storm was letting up. John Rut and the crew of the Mary Guildford looked in all directions through their spyglasses, but they could not locate the Samson.
John Rut wrote, “I trust in almighty Jesu to hear good news of her. And please your Grace, we were considering and a’writing of all our order, how we would wash us and what course we would draw, [and] so departed southward to seek our fellow.”
In the letter, John Rut explained that they changed course again. “[We] ran in our course to the northward … and there we found many great islands of ice and deep water; we found no sounding, and then we durst not go further to the northward for fear of more ice.” On August 3, the Mary Guildford entered into St. John’s harbor, Newfoundland. In the harbor, which John Rut referred to as “a good haven,” they encountered “eleven sail of Normans, and one Brittaine, and two Portugall barks, and all a’fishing, and so we are ready to depart toward Cape de Bas [as] shortly as we have fished, and so along the coast till we may meet with our fellow (the Samson), and [with] all the diligence that lies in me [as] we were commanded at our departing.”
Unfortunately, the crew of the Mary Guildford never located their fellow ship, the Samson. The Samson and its crew disappeared. Most people at the time, and modern historians agree, that they were probably victims of the brutal storm mentioned in the letter.
John Rut ended the letter, “And thus, Jesu save and keep your honorable Grace, and all your honorable Rever(ences), in the Haven of Saint John, the third day of August. By your servant John Rut to his uttermost of his power.”
Once John Rut completed the letter, he exchanged it with another ship’s captain, possibly one of the 14 fishing ships in St. John’s “haven.” At the time, captains on outbound voyages exchanged letters with captains of ships who were heading back toward the outbound ship’s port. Letters often passed between several ships before reaching their intended recipients.
John Rut’s letter eventually made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to King Henry VIII and into its place in history. John Rut’s letter, portions of it which you have just read, was the first known letter mailed from the new world, the first letter sent from North America. John Rut wrote and mailed the letter on August 3, 1527.