Special Guest Blogger: John Smith

All 16 year old boys have a need to explore and visit new countries and 16th Century England was great for that because we were involved in battles all over so i visited many battlefields all over Europe starting with the Netherlands, fighting for them in it's war of independence from Spain.
When the dust settled on that one i trotted off to the Mediterranean and after a spot of pirating, fought against the Ottoman Turks in Hungary where i was captured but escaped by beheading my captors and returned to England and that's where my story really starts.
Plans were being made to exploit the New World and i attached myself to a group of 100 adventurers preparing to establish an English colony in North America and i was named the leader as i had exactly what a new colony would need, a lack of compassion for whoever was already there.
After five months of puking over the side of the ship, we arrived at the Chesapeake Bay, and disembarked at what was to become Jamestown and i planned to trade for corn with the local Indians but one day i was were ambushed by members of the Powhatan empire who took me to their emperor, Big Chief Powhatan.
I never spoke Powhatan and they never spoke English and i did the English thing of speaking English even louder but they still didn't understand me and they were about to be put me to death when the chief’s young daughter placed herself between me and my executioners.
The Chief summoned his shamans who checked with their big totem pole thing who obviously said i was a good guy so they agreed not to gut me horribly.
With my head still attached to my shoulders, they sent me away and i set about making Jamestown the best town in the New World or it would have been if the colonists didn't keep dying and they didn't stupidly burn the place down, we spent one winter living in the charred ruins but the local Indians bought us some food as the leaders daughter acted as a intermediary between us.
I did hear she married an Englishman and went to live in England but she did help make sure Jamestown didn't gain a reputation as the settlement where everybody went to die, like Eastbourne is today, but while out hunting in a canoe, i accidentally set off a powder bag which was in my lap so i took my charred nads back to England for treatment.
With my love plums all patched up, i returned to different parts of the New World and explored and named the places so for example the first place i landed was a christened New England because it was green and pleasant, a stinking bog was obviously named after Boston in Lincolnshire and the disease ridden hell-hole on the coast was perfect to become the New Plymouth.