Ratcliffe, John, alias Sicklemore, second president of the local council at Jamestown, had seen service as a seaman before coming to Virginia. He was also, it is believed, a soldier in the Low Countries, and is supposed to have been the Captain Ratcliffe who was taken prisoner with Sir Henry Cary and Captain Pigott at Mulheim in October, 1605. He commanded the Discovery, the smallest of the three ships that brought the emigrants to Jamestown. When the names of the councillors were read, April 26, 1607, Ratcliffe's name was one of them. On the deposition of Wingfield, Ratcliffe became president, but the summer of 1608 proving as unhealthy as that of 1607, Ratcliffe suffered an experience similar to Wingfield's, was removed from the government in July, 1608, and succeeded by Mathew Scrivener. One subject of complaint against him was that he enlisted the men in building a governor's house. When Captain Newport sailed from Virginia, December, 1608, Captain Ratcliffe accompanied him. Owing to his complaints and Wingfield's, a new charter was obtained by the London Company, and Ratcliffe commanded the Diamond, one of the ships in the great fleet of Sir Thomas Gates, who bore the commission of governor. During the temporary administration of George Percy, he was sent in October, 1609, to build a fort at Old Point Comfort, which was named "Algernourne fort" in honor of President Percy's ancestor. The following December, going to trade with the Indians, he was led into an ambush and killed with fourteen others under his command, at Werowocomoco on York river, Smith calls him "a poor counterfeit imposter," because he used an alias, but there was no imposition. Ratcliffe made no secret of his double name, signing himself "John Ratcliffe commonly called." Very frequently in his time men wrote their names with an alias on account of a second marriage of their mother. Ratcliffe's mother probably first married Sicklemore and afterward Ratcliffe, and Ratcliffe's real name was probably John Sicklemore.
