Notes

Although the port admiral was an Englishman, he had mobilized the crews of the 36 ships, Portuguese, Basque, and French as well as English, to deny passage to Gilbert. The reason for this was the piracy by the Delight’s master, Richard Clarke, against Portuguese ships in the harbour in 1582, which the fishermen were determined to stop. Gilbert flourished his royal commission (evidently his patent) and the English fishermen gave way, so that his little squadron entered the same day.

To make such sovereignty effective he would need an armed shore establishment, which could issue licences to fishermen and assign shore stations. What Gilbert did was to issue to each of the 36 vessels in the harbour a certificate authorizing it to continue fishing (a version of one of these has recently been found in Seville, Archivo de Indias, Patronato 265, ramo 40), while, in return, he levied a contribution in kind from the fisheries for the supply of his own ships, poorly provisioned to begin with and worse off for having been over seven weeks at sea instead of the normal three or four.
Leaving with his three remaining ships on 20 August, Gilbert worked down to Cape Race, off which they did some cod-fishing, and then sent shore parties to sample the soil on Trepassey and Placentia bays before sailing for Sable Island on 22 August. They had had a course worked out for them by a Portuguese fisherman at St. John’s who recommended them to visit the island to obtain some wild cattle and pigs loose there (released he said by the Portuguese some 30 years before).