Teacher Walks to Trace Obscure Footnote

By Jorge Casuso

On Monday, history teacher Richard Nathan took his first step in tracing an obscure historical footnote by, well, using his feet. The longtime Los Angeles area teacher began a 4,000-mile hike from Nova Scotia to Mexico, tracing in reverse the path likely taken by three stranded English sailors in 1568 -- 60 years before the Pilgrims arrived in the New World.

"Like my three countrymen, I want to survive," said Nathan, who plans to chronicle his trek in a book, and, perhaps, a documentary film. "And, unlike them, I plan to tell a story of the journey that I know will become something more than a footnote to history."

Nathan had run across the "remarkable" footnote in John Adair's book "Founding Fathers" three years ago, and immediately it had struck a note with the Oxford graduate with a longtime penchant for his native land's Golden Age - an era of great playwrights, as well as daring pirates who thumbed their noses at Spain's monopoly over the Atlantic.

But it wasn't until early this summer that Nathan, 46, decided to embark on his unlikely trip. A Yorkshire lad transplanted to LA, where he has lived a dozen years, Nathan was suddenly feeling stranded. He had reached middle age. He had decided to quit teaching, but he wasn't sure what to do or where to go.

"I had personal disappointments largely of a professional nature," Nathan said shortly before his flight to Nova Scotia last week. "I had to rethink what I wanted to do. I didn't feel at home and somehow felt I had to leave."

Nathan had been rereading one of his favorite books, John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley," for a class he taught at the John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth on the Loyola Marymount campus. And that's when the idea struck - he would take a hike. Nathan would retrace the unlikely trek of three stranded Englishmen, like himself, who hoped to find a way back home by walking through an uncharted land. Nathan could relate.

It was on a small English fleet under the command of John Hawkins that the bizarre tale of David Ingram, Richard Twide and Richard Browne began. After a defeat at the hands of the Spanish Armada in the harbor at Veracruz, Mexico, the three men had crammed with more than 100 others into two small ships that limped away from land. But after two harrowing weeks, Hawkins cast 100 men ashore 40 miles north of Tampico.

"They were left to fend for themselves," Nathan said. "They were given one gun and two swords. If they survived, it would be due to the good will of Spaniards or Indians."

Most of the men headed back to Tampico, where they were killed or sold into slavery. A few made their way back to England. Ingram, Twide and Browne decided they would head north 1,000 miles to Ft. Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Fla. The only non-Spanish settlement in North America, it was built by fellow Protestants from France. They would be welcomed.

"What they didn't know," said Nathan, "is that this settlement had been destroyed."

The bedraggled trio was faced with two options. They could head back around the gulf to Mexico and throw themselves at the mercy of the Spaniards or Indians. Or they could push north into unknown territory in the hopes of reaching the Grand Banks of Nova Scotia, where they knew French fishing boats visited every summer. They headed north.

"What fascinated me was that they were going through uncharted territory," Nathan said. "It would have all been new. They depended on the good will of Native Americans. It's a testament to a time when strangers were decent to one another. The instinct was to lend a helping hand."

By summer's end the three men finally reached Nova Scotia, where they found their ride back to England. It wasn't a free ride, though. One had to trade a pearl he had found, another had to serve as a go-between with the Indians.

To train for his trek, Nathan has been walking 12 miles a day (he'll have to clock in 20 miles to make the trip in the scheduled six months), and he has secured a dog for a companion. He's charted a route a seaman would likely take, hugging the coast. Unlike his predecessors, Nathan plans to pack 25 pounds in his back pack, and has budgeted $25 a day for food and supplies.

The trip, sponsored by HarmoniAmerica - a humanitarian organization that builds bridges between peoples of the Americas and counts Edward James Olmos among its ranks --, will provide a glimpse of America at the dawn of a new millennium. The uncharted wilderness may have been paved with roads, but some of the tribes the three Englishmen likely encountered more than 400 years ago are still around. The trip, however, is also a personal quest for Nathan.

"It's appropriate for me to go on an odyssey of my own," Nathan said. "I've chosen this as the most daring, dramatic thing I could do."