Clarke, Iohn: ; Captain John Clarke, listed as one of the gentlemen of the company of Raleigh’s 1585 Roanoke Expedition under Richard Grenville, was the commander of the flyboat Roebuck on the voyage. Evidently Clarke put to sea in the Roebuck earlier than the rest of the expedition, acting as a privateer, specifically looking to capture ships that could be used for the expedition’s fleet. It is noted by several sources that Clarke captured a French vessels carrying a cargo of linen, an act which simultaneously resulted in profit for both Clarke and Raleigh as well as various legal and political tensions by numerous parties involved. Shortly after the expedition left Plymouth in April 1585, the fleet was scattered in a storm off the bay of Portugal, not being reunited until reaching the Virginia Coast in early July. Once in the New World, Clarke accompanied Grenville and Amadas on an expedition across Pamlico Sound, and finally returned to England in the Roebuck in early September 1585. Working from these sources, little else is known of his exploits during or following the 1585 Roanoke Voyage.;
Works Cited: ; The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590: Volume I, ed. David Beers Quinn (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955), 121, 153, 158, 166, 179-80, 190, 210-12.; Andrews, Kenneth R. Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering During the Spanish War 1585-1602 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964): 96.;