For over 400 years, English sailor David Ingram’s account of his trek from Mexico to Canada was considered either fanciful or phony by historians.
Then, in 2023, respected archaeologist Dean Snow published a 336-page book entitled “The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America.” Snow reopened Ingram’s case and meticulously investigated transcripts of his interrogation by Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster.
The results of Snow’s research are surprising and fascinating. They suggest that David Ingram and companions Richard Browne and Richard Twide may deserve membership in the prestigious and tiny club of hardy European explorers (like Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca) who traipsed across North America before the arrival of the Pilgrims.
Hurricane of hurricanes
The story of those three sailors begins in September of 1568 with what appeared to its victims to be the hurricane of all hurricanes, a tempest “in which lightning and thunder were constant for 24 hours,” ravaging a fleet of eight ships commanded by British admiral Sir John Hawkins, considered a notorious pirate by the Spaniards.
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What was left of the fleet limped into San Juan de Ulua harbor at Veracruz, on the Mexican coast. The harbor was, of course, controlled by Spain. A furious battle ensued, and Hawkins was barely able to escape in one ship, the Minion, with 200 men onboard and just enough water and food to get half of them back to England.
Eating rats and cats
Says Snow: “Men were already eating hides, rats, cats, pet monkeys, and any other emergency food they could find.” In the end, 100 men opted to take their chances on land. Hawkins gave each a bolt of Rouen cloth — which they could use for trading — and promised he would come back for them in a year … if he made it home.
Chichimecs in the desert
In October of 1568, David Ingram and companions were set on land near modern Tampico, in scrub desert with a thin population of what the Spaniards called “Chichimec barbarians,” who were typically hostile to outsiders. The Chichimecs killed eight of them and stripped many of their clothing (except for those wearing black). Ingram was lucky. He got to keep his clothes and also his bolt of Rouen cloth.
5,180 kilometers to Canada
The group of sailors then split, some heading south and some north. Both groups quickly splintered, and soon Ingram was a member of a trio that would make its way to Canada after walking at least 5,180 kilometers for 11 months, with the final legs completed by canoe. Their objective was Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where chances were good of catching a French or English ship home.
Dean Snow’s book is more than a retelling of David Ingram’s experiences. Instead, he sticks to the proper job of a good archaeologist-anthropologist-historian, constantly checking facts and seeking the corroboration of other sources.
Snow’s discovery
Sailor Davy Ingram was illiterate, and his account comes to us via Richard Hakluyt’s 1589 publication “The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation.” Among other extraordinary things, Hakluyt’s book would have us believe that Ingram saw elephants, leopards, russet parrots and flamingos while walking along the Atlantic coast of North America. No wonder that Hakluyt threw Ingram’s narrative out of the second edition of his book, and that it was considered fiction for centuries.
Snow, instead, decided to go back to the notes of Ingram’s interrogation. Since Ingram was a widely traveled sailor with experience in Africa and the Caribbean, he enthusiastically included all the wonders he had ever encountered in his voyages when interrogators pressed him about animals, birds, buildings and people he had seen.
Eventually, Snow realized that 48 percent of everything Ingram told his interrogators pertained to his earlier experiences. With this known, it was now a question of sorting things out and clearly separating what Ingram had to say about Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and points farther north. This reordered narration Snow presents as an Appendix, with the language and spelling brought up to date.
All of this having been clarified by Snow’s hard work, you can now peruse David Ingram’s story to discover what he has to say about the people he ran into, the flora and fauna he walked through, and the manner in which he managed to stay alive and find his way in America of 1568. Did Iroquoian longhouses look as described? Were native leaders really adorned with copper plates?
“The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram” will give you a new perspective on life in North America before the invasion of the Europeans.
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