After exploring France, he headed for Marseilles and booked passage for Italy-the quickest way to reach Hungary where the Austrians and Turks were fighting-only to have the ship sink during a storm. But before he could fight the Sultan, a chance meeting turned him into a pirate. In the summer of 1600, the twenty-year old Smith set out again for the Continent, looking for what he called 'brave adventures' and a confrontation with the Turks. He also passed on to Smith his hatred for the Turks. Theodore Paleologue, the riding master to the Earl of Lincoln, taught him how to handle a horse, hold a lance, and speak Italian.

He immersed himself in classical military and political texts, taking Machiavelli and Marcus Aurelius as his models. The time Smith spent abroad taught him that if he wanted to become a gentleman soldier he needed to improve his mind and his military skills. He spent time in France to help keep Henry IV on the throne and fought for the Dutch in their war of independence from Spain. After his father died in 1596, he terminated his apprenticeship and struck out for the Continent, joining a company of English mercenaries that bounced from conflict to conflict. Smith, however, had something a little less conventional in mind. After Smith made a number of attempts to run away, his father apprenticed him to a wealthy merchant, hoping to settle him down. Smith's father, a prosperous farmer in Lincolnshire, did not appreciate his son's wanderlust. 'What more would be needed than the cry that the incomparable Drake was off again, to stir the adventurous spirit of thirteen-year old John Smith to action?' asks Barbour. It is an amazing story.Īs a young boy, Smith idolized the British explorers such as Sir Francis Drake, who sailed around the world and plundered gold from Spain. But by comparing Smith's own account with letters and documents of the time, scholars such as biographer Philip Barbour have confirmed his story and clarified it. He provides such a daredevil account of his life that critics have sometimes accused him of exaggerating his exploits.

Most of what we know about Smith's life before Jamestown comes from his The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captaine John Smith (1630).

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