Argall, Samuel, deputy governor and admiral of Virginia from May, 1617, to April 10, 1619, was born about 1580. Little is known of his early life, but as he was selected to discover a shorter way to Virginia in 1609, he must have been very early regarded as a mariner of tact and ability. He brought to Smith and the colony of Jamestown the first news of the second charter and the appointment of Sir Thomas Gates as governor. Finding the colony in great need, he furnished them with some provisions, and after making a successful trial of sturgeon fishing he returned to England. When Lord Delaware sailed on March, 1610, as governor, Captain Argall conducted him by way of the Canary and Azores Islands — the shorter route discovered by him. June 18, 1610, he was made a member of the governor's council and next day sailed with Somers to the Bermuda Islands, but missed them and sailed to Cape Cod, where he engaged in successful fishing. On his voyage homewards he explored the coast and discovered Delaware Bay. September 1 he reached Algernourn fort on Point Comfort. During the autumn and winter he explored the waters of Chesapeake Bay, and sailed from Virginia with Lord Delaware March 28, reaching England in June, 1611. On July 23, 1612, he made another trip to Virginia, and for a year remained in the service of the colony, voyaging about the bay and the rivers exploring and securing corn from the Indians, in which business he was remarkably successful.
In one of these voyages he captured Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhatan, and brought her to Jamestown. Soon after June 28, 1613, he sailed from Virginia under orders from Sir Thomas Gates, and drove away the French from New England thus keeping that country open to the Pilgrim Fathers, who came seven years later. He is said to have visited on this voyage the Dutch settlement on the Hudson, and compelled the governor, Hendrick Christiansen, to submit to the king of England. After that he was variously employed in Virginia from December, 1613, to June 18, 1614, when he sailed for England. In February, 1615, he again sailed to Virginia and returned to England with Dale in May, 1616. Early in 1617 he was appointed deputy governor and admiral of Virginia. He continued in this office two years, and he is generally represented as an unscrupulous chief magistrate, but party feeling was very high at this time, and the evidence cannot be relied on. He appears to have been a partner with the Earl of Warwick in bringing the first negroes to Jamestown in 1619. After Lord Delaware's death he quarreled with Captain Edward Brewster, who had care of Delaware's estate, and wanted to put him to death for mutiny. The company became incensed with him and sent orders by Captain Yardley, appointed to succeed him, to arrest him and to examine into his acts. But the Earl of Warwick took means to rescue his friend and dispatched a small vessel to fetch him and his goods away before Yardley could arrive. This vessel arrived in Virginia, April 6, and Argall sailed away on her about the 10th, leaving Captain Nathaniel Powell as deputy-governor. On his arrival from Virginia he answered the different charges brought again him, satisfactorily to some, but not to others. His activity as a seaman still continued. In 1620-21 he commanded a ship in the fleet of Sir Robert Mansell in the Mediterranean Sea. About 1621 he urged that an English settlement be made in New Netherlands, afterwards New York. In 1624 his friends wished to make him governor again of Virginia, but Sir Francis Wyatt was preferred. He was admiral in September, 1625, of 28 ships, and during his cruise captured from the Spaniards seven vessels valued at £100,000. In the attack on Cadiz in 1625 he commanded the flagship.
He was still alive in 1633, but was dead before 1641, as in that year his daughter Ann, widow of Alexander Bolling, and her second husband, Samuel Percivall, complained to the House of Commons that they had been deprived by John Woodhall of property in Virginia left to the petitioner Anne by her late father, Sir Samuel Argall, sometime governor of Virginia. From this account it is seen that Argall was one of the most active and remarkable men of his age.
