Thomas Shelburne 5

The trip did take a bit more than two months. There was plenty of terror for Thomas for the first few weeks. He hardly left Wynne's cabin except when he was forced to, usually to get Wynne water or wine.

Wynne did start teaching him to read and write English after the first day. His idea was to dictate his daily journey to Thomas and teach him to write in that way. The first task was to teach him the letters, and this he did by way of the Welsh Bible, whose letters at least looked like the English ones.

"So do you know the Ten Commandments, boy?" Wynne asked him.

"A few."

"Well give me one."

"Na ladrata," Thomas said. Thou shalt not steal.

"It figures that you would know that one. So look at the letters here in the Bible." And in this way Wynne began to teach him the letters that went with the sounds he already knew. His young mind had picked up the letters and their basic sounds within a week of the voyage.

To learn English, Wynne began by writing the entries each night and teaching Thomas the meaning. So the first night he told of how he had gone to see Shakespeare's new play Macbeth the night before sailing. The Globe Theater was on the south side of the Thames. Thomas himself had seen the round building from across the river, but wouldn't have had the money to cross to the other side even if he had wanted.

After about a month of the journey, Thomas ventured out a little more. But a young man such as him on deck was bound to be given chores, so he still largely stayed to the cabin. Wynne gave him a taste of wine for the first time. It had such a sour taste to him that he couldn't imagine why the crew so enjoyed it. Besides, it only made them act foolishly.

One night he saw Leviathan, a huge sea creature that surfaced and disappeared gently into the waters. "Truly only God could pluck out such a creature with a fish hook," he remarked to the other boys.

There were some frightening storms, but good laughs as well. When Wynne would get a little wine in him, he would tell stories. Some of his favorite had to do with the English defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. It established England as the supreme power of the seas in place of the Spanish. It was clear that none of the captains on ship cared much for the Spanish.

But it was a happy day indeed in early September when the word's "Land ho" rang throughout the ship. Captain Newport had somehow navigated the ship almost exactly on target. It was almost magic to Thomas how someone could use the stars and a compass to find land after being so long in the middle of nothing. As they sailed into the James River, he was not sure he would ever want to go back to visit Wales.