View - Roanoke Colonies Illuminated

Title	Simon Ferdinando
Caption	Pictured is a copy of Ferdinando's Coat of Arms.
Source	This photo was taken at the Fort Raleigh National Park Site Vistor's Center
Date	April 4, 2009
Origin	digital camera
Notes	This is a moder reproduction of the coat of arms, no other images were available.

Fernando (Fernándes), Simon (Simão) (c. 1538-1600?):; Simon Fernando was an occasionally piratical, Protestant, Portuguese pilot who was known for his prodigious command of foul language and remarkable skill as a sailor and navigator. Born in the Azores and trained in the arts of the sea in Portugal, Fernando spent his early years sailing under the Spanish flag on expeditions to the New World, likely including exploratory voyages up the East Coast of North America. Around 1573 Fernando moved to England as a merchant, became an English subject, and by 1574 was getting himself into trouble as a pirate in the Atlantic. In 1577 he began working for Sir Francis Walsingham, the expansionist secretary of state, and, likely as a result of this connection, sailed in Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s 1578 and 1580 exploratory expeditions to the New World, and from 1582-84 in an attempt to find a South Atlantic route to the East Indies. ; Beginning in 1584, Fernando served as pilot or master of a number of ships on Raleigh’s Roanoke Voyages. As pilot and navigator he apparently discovered the entrance to modern Oregon Inlet, near Roanoke Island, which was then named Port Fernando. He served as pilot and master of the principle ship for the 1584 exploratory voyage with Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, of Sir Richard Grenville’s ship, the Tiger, in the 1585 initial attempt at colonization, and finally as master of the Lion, as well as the pilot major and sea commander of the 1587 “Lost Colony” voyage, during which, due to circumstances that remain hazy, he put the ill-fated colonists ashore on Roanoke Island rather than further up on the Chesapeake Bay, as per the original plan. Soon after, Fernando served as a naval officer on the largest ship in the English fleet, countering the threat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and as master of a ship under Sir John Hawkins preying on Spanish vessels on the shipping route from Spain to their American colonies. ;
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. William S. Powell. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1986), s.v. “Fernándes (Fernando), Simon or Simão.”

Simon Ferdinando