Jim Egan Comments on America Unearthed and the Newport Tower

3/17/2013

In response to my review of America Unearthed S01E12 "America's Oldest Secret," Jim Egan of the Newport Tower Museum wrote some comments that were too lengthy to fit into my blog's comment feature. I told Egan that I would publish his comments in full. Here they are:

Dear Jason and all,

I've enjoyed reading your opinions about "America's Oldest Secret" and the Newport Tower. That show, for all its nonsensicalness and non-sequiturs has sparked an interest in this incredibly important structure.

This is a quote from Jason's introduction

He [Wolter] meets with one such academic, Jim Egan, the curator of the Newport Tower Museum. Egan does not believe that the tower was a windmill; instead, he thinks it is the first English structure in Rhode Island, built just before 1600 and later converted into a windmill, based, again, on the fact that it simply doesn’t look like a windmill to him. He believes that Dr. John Dee planned a secret colony for Rhode Island, that the Tower was its first building, and that the colony failed, leaving behind, conveniently, no trace of its existence archaeologically or historically. In fact, Egan produced a video naming the tower the “John Dee Tower of 1583,” for which there is not the slightest hint of solid evidence.

I would respectfully like to disagree with several of the points you have made here.

First off I am not an academic, I have been a professional photographer for 40 years. I've studied the Tower for over 25 years, written 12 books on the subject, produced 20 videos, and opened the Newport Tower Museum. Over the past three years I've explained my research to over 2000 people from practically every state in the country and most of the countries in Europe.

Secondly, you suggest that I think the tower was converted into a windmill. Let me be clear. I don’t think this tower was built as a windmill, or that it was ever converted into a windmill.

Thirdly, I think it's misleading to refer to John Dee as Dr. John Dee. He was not a medical doctor. He was an expert on Euclidean geometry, mathematics, astronomy, optics, navigation, cartography, history, theology, and Vitruvian architecture. He wrote over 40 books and had a library of 4000 books, the largest in Elizabethan England

When you claim that there is "no trace of its existence archaeologically or historically" and that I have "not the slightest hint of solid evidence" for naming the tower the "John D Tower 1583. I can only think that you haven't read my thesis, listen to my videos, or been to the Newport Tower Museum.

You are however absolutely correct that I do not provide any evidence of my thesis during that bizarre episode of "America's Oldest Secret." All my erudite rebuttals to Scott Wolter’s absurd conjectures ended up on the cutting room floor.

As we sat on the park bench I explained to him that the drawing on the Mercator map of 1569 was a depiction of the mythical town of Norumbega, which is 90 miles up the Hudson. What is now Narragansett Bay is clearly marked on the Mercator map, just north of the triangular island of Claudia. Furthermore, both Norumbega and Claudia appear on John Dee’s 1580 map of North America. John Dee and Gerard Mercator were inseparable friends in when they were both studying under the renowned astronomer Gemma Frisuis in the Louvain, Netherlands.

Much of my work is based on the pioneering research done by William Penhallow, Professor Emeritus in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Rhode Island. In the early 1990s, he found numerous astronomical alignments in the Tower, and as a professional photographer, I photo-documented what he had predicted in his published papers.
I was astounded by astronomy Incorporated in the tower. There are alignments with the North Star, the Moon at Lunar Minor, and the Sun at each of the Solstices and at the Equinoxes. The Tower is a building which keeps track of time. The interior of the tower acted like a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room. (I have replicated this kind of a room in my Museum.)

I showed Scott Wolter all these alignments and not only did he “borrow” some of them to support his Templar Thesis, he botched a wonderful opportunity to share the depth of Penhallow’s amazing discoveries on National TV.

For example, in the winter of 2000, I was photographing Penhallow’s discovery that sunlight passes through two of the three windows in the Tower. This event only happens just after sunrise, on or around the Winter Solstice, and no other time of year. I got some great shots of the event, which only last 20 minutes, and decided to hang around to see if anything else happened. At around 9:00 AM, I noticed that egg-shaped rock being illuminated by a box of light shining through the south window.

Scott saw my photographs at the slide show I presented at the Newport Tower symposium sponsored by the New England Antiquities Research Association at the Newport Art Museum. He asked if he could use the pictures for his book on the "Hooked X." I refused, telling him I did not believe at all in his Templar theory. However, I told him when the event would happen, and where he should stand, and he was free to take his own pictures, which he did. And in the book, he courteously credits me with the discovery. Much as I disagree with Scott, I'm grateful that he is bringing a Tower to the attention of a wider audience.

Incidentally, that egg-shaped rock is completely contained within the first-floor room of the Tower. The patch of sunlight does not have to go through a floor. The tops of the beam sockets are clearly below the level of the egg shaped rock.

For the sake of brevity, I will not explain my full thesis, which can be read at: NewportTowerMuseum.com.

Or understood even more briefly in some short videos produced by Marc Creedon on my Facebook page: Newport Tower.

To conclude, if you think I'm making up this whole idea of the Elizabethan effort to colonize what is now Rhode Island, I suggest you dig a little deeper into the history books. Two of the most noted authorities on Elizabethan exploration, David Beers Quinn and Samuel Eliot Morrison both talk about at length about the 1583 colonization effort. The authorization for this expedition came from the Queen herself.

For example, on page 376 of his 1974, “England and the Discovery of America” David Beers Quinn writes,

“Moreover, Dee was able to point out to them on the large map of North America he had drawn in 1580 the precise place he thought their settlement should lie. Verrazzano had stayed for some time on Narragansett Bay in modern Rhode Island, which he calls his "Refugio," and there was decided that Peckham should lay out his seignory.”

And Samuel Eliot Morison, in his 1971 book, “The European Discovery of America,” on page 590 writes,

“And in 1582-83, Sir Humphrey Gilbert deeded to Sir George Peckham and his son a modest patrimony of 1,5000,000 acres. Guided by Verrazzano’s Letter (which Hakluyt had printed), the grant begins at "Dee River" (Narragansett Bay) with its five islands and extends 60 English miles ‘along the seacoast westward towards the river of Norumbeague.’”

135 Comments

John J. McKay link

3/17/2013 04:58:55 pm

Before we go any further, I want to ask Mr. Egan about that last number.

"Sir Humphrey Gilbert deeded to Sir George Peckham and his son a modest patrimony of 1,5000,000 acres."

I know you're quoting Morrison, who is referring to someone else. I have a copy of Morrison, but it's in storage. Are you quoting that correctly? Did Gilbert deed to Peckham fifteen million acres? That's an area equivalent to West Virginia or Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the lower parts of New Hampshire and Vermont. Is this a typo--off by a decimal point? And, if not, have you confirmed this?

I am an historian, but this not my area of specialty. I read Morrison maybe twenty years ago. I never checked his sources. If you've written twelve books on the subject, maybe you can point me in the right direction.

For the Gilbert deed to Peckham. As far as i can tell, Gilbert died on his 1582-3 voyage. Is Peckham the source for that claim? Did Gilbert have the authority to make land grants? If so, did the crown recognize this grant?

Other than the fact that Elizabeth supported some efforts in the direction of New England, can you name some sources that tie John Dee, specifically, to that effort? I do know a little about his connection to Mercator, and I was under the impression that his interest was the Northwest passage and that he learned more from Mercator than the other way 'round.Again, what primary sources can you point me to that show the information, specifically Norumbega, flowed the the other direction?

Finally, what does any of this prove about the tower one way or the other?

The Other J.

3/17/2013 09:25:55 pm

Wow... damn good questions.

Aladdin Collar link

3/21/2016 10:30:15 am

1. It's 1.5, not 15 million acres.
2. Yes, Queen Elizabeth did permit Gilbert to distribute land deeds, with the understanding that any colony established would be under British rule.
3. Peckham's deed is extant. David Beers Quinn found it.
4. John Dee literally wrote the book on Elizabethan colonization (New England). "General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation," 1577.
5. There is no definitive proof that the Tower was designed by John Dee. But Narragansett Bay, where the Tower is located, used to be called the John Dee Bay and River, which is only the beginning of a long line of clues in the historical record, most of which were left by Dee himself.

The Other J.

3/17/2013 09:35:48 pm

As far as the astronomical alignments go, I'm curious about a few things. First, I'd like to see some debate about the solstice alignments -- accidental? Are there any problems with them?

Second, how known and common were such alignments? I know they were plenty common in neolithic Britain and Ireland, and it strikes me that maybe such alignments weren't just forgotten, but either rediscovered and/or carried over into later architecture. And if so, would they be not so rare and significant, at least to the people who built them?

Third, if such alignments weren't so rare, by extension wouldn't it be possible for a structure like a windmill to be constructed with a kind of architecturally hard-wired calendar? And would that have not been surprising to 16th century Europeans?

In a way, it reminds me of seeing archaeologists examining old neolithic mummified corpses and pointing out how the tattoos mark them out as significant people of high social status and importance. Maybe 2000 years from now archaeologists will be digging up the bones of frat boys, college athletes, and Burning Man refugees and saying the same thing about their tribal tattoos -- i.e. they only seem significant in retrospect, but to us today, they're as common as a cold.

Yokaiou

3/26/2013 09:54:11 pm

A person in a frat, college athletes, and some people in Burning Man all have one thing in common, disposable income.

If your washing dishes in a bar, saying "fries with that" you might not have those tattoos saying your part of these groups.

So yes they do have significant status in our society.

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 04:13:28 am

I tried looking things up about the Newport Tower Museum but it appears that Egan is the Newport Tower Museum. There doesn't appear to be any proper board nor any form of the usual trappings of any museum, it's just a guy with some stuff. From now on I'll be introducing myself as Chris Randolph from the Museum of Chris Randolph Magnificence.

Likewise Egan's "dissertation" is 2000 pages of self-edited, self-published snipe hunt. For all the digs the diffusionists make at academia, these are examples of why there are instructors, advisers, boards, peer review, etc.

I note that William Penhallow - who doesn't have a doctorate incidentally according to website of the university he is/was associated with - is or was a specialist in reading images taken of distant stars and star systems for purposes of determining their composition, and not necessarily ones taken in the visible spectrum. He appears to have had a particular talent using a particular technology (one which might have been supplanted considering the man earned his MS in 1957) and was therefore lecturing on that at a small college's physics and astronomy department. These claims appear to require a background in what I believe is called optical astronomy.

In 1998 Penhallow also (self?)published ("The New England Antiquities Research Association") a work on the 'alignments' and his work has not been subject to peer review nor for that matter even a science publisher's editor.

I've no doubt that the windows of my house have similar mystical 'alignments' if we'd prefer to see them, particularly if it doesn't matter what time of day observations are made.

I'd suggest Egan not eat anything that comes out of his hens looking like what he describes as 'egg-shaped." A little search engine use or a quick trip to a grocery store is in order to see what an egg usually looks like.

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 04:24:25 am

You are right on all your points. Mr. Egan sent me some additional information about his Tower research, but I am afraid that the only evidence he provides is circumstantial, based on mathematical proportions, astronomical alignments, and the like. The factual basis appears to rest on the fact that Dee made plans for a colony in the 1580s, and Egan believes this was actually attempted, although there is no documentation to support this.

Jim Egan link

3/18/2013 07:20:06 am

Reply to Christopher Randolph,

You guys are tough crowd. I thought this blog might be a place for open-minded discussion but if it's a place you get spears thrown at you for having a personal opinion, I'll go elsewhere.

Indeed the museum is just me, a place where I explain what I have found in 20 years researching Elizabethan History, Rhode Island History, and the History of Mathematics, Optics, and Time. I have been trying to get academics interested in my work, but have run into the same closed mindedness I am finding on this blog.

My associate William Penhallow studied with the great Otto Neugebauer at Brown University and is past president of the Seagrave Observatory and the Frosty Drew Observatory. He's an expert on optical astronomy. And he has been studying the Tower for over 30 years.

I get a lot of people whose reaction to the alignments is "I can see the sun, the moon, and the stars out of the windows of my house." They don't understand the precision of the alignments that Penhollow found. Standing about 50 steps away from the Tower, you look through one window, through the interior of the tower, and out another window. The area of sky which is delineated by that double-window viewpoint is quite small, less than 1 degree by 1 degree. The Solar event happens only around the Winter Solstice, just after sunrise. (They showed it happen on America"s Oldest Secret, but oddly failed to explain what was happening.) The Lunar event happens just after moonrise, on a full Moon once every 18.6 years (at Lunar Minor). Penhallow, who has dedicated his life to astronomy says the builders of this Tower had an exremely sophisticated knowledge of horizon astronomy and spherical trigonometry. Might I ask, Christopher, have you studied astronomy for 50 years? Do you have your own 6-foot telescope? Have you presented papers at the American Astronomical Society?
And finally, have you ever even seen the Tower?

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 08:17:14 am

"You guys are tough crowd. I thought this blog might be a place for open-minded discussion.."

That 'tough crowd' would be people who expect to see normal proof for even normal claims let alone extraordinary ones in which you claim to be more clever than all of the historians and archeologists combined. Perhaps if you had any actual academic background the thought of people asking you to prove your claims wouldn't be so offensive. There's a big difference between being your own editor for 20 years and having your ideas considered by others.

'Open-minded' doesn't mean accepting everything you say just because you say it. I think the word you're looking for is 'credulous.'

"for having a personal opinion"

Wait, which is it, is it a series of facts that overthrow standard historical understanding and require 20 years of study or is it a "personal opinion"?!

"20 years researching Elizabethan History, Rhode Island History, and the History of Mathematics, Optics, and Time"

... but all only in so far as your understanding of each bolsters a pet idea that you proposed before trying to find facts (or 'facts') to back it up.

"My associate William Penhallow studied with the great Otto Neugebauer at Brown University..."

You mean he took astronomy classes at Brown, maybe grad ones? OK, so did a lot of other people and none of them made the same claims. If you'd like to play that game, I've "studied under" some fantastic archeologists at Penn, meaning I've taken classes they've taught. That doesn't give me their knowledge base by some transitive property and claiming so here would be ridiculous.

Penhollow earned a doctorate in nothing and he's not listed as an optical astronomer where he used to teach. Has Penhollow ever presented a paper ABOUT THE TOWER to other astronomers, or to historians..? I've a feeling he actually presented papers in his areas of specialty.

Have you actually studied astronomy at an accredited university?

No one is misunderstanding your astronomical claims because they are too complex for us to understand. The fact of the matter is that if you spend enough time attempting to "align" objects in the night sky (or in your case the 9am sky!) with any object with multiple windows, arches, niches and "egg-shaped" rocks, you'll eventually do it. It proves nothing.

"Standing about 50 steps away from the Tower..."

We get to change our focal range to wherever we like? In the words of Charles Fort, "One draws a circle starting anywhere." And isn't that convenient!

I'm not interested in going up to Rhode Island solely to look at a ruined windmill.

B L

3/18/2013 08:32:52 am

Hey Chris, your tone sucks! Back off a little bit! You have a really derogatory way of throwing people's words back in their faces. If you disagree then do so constructively.

As far as I can tell, Mr, Egan has responded to all inquiries in a respectful manor. Why are you unable or unwilling to do the same?

Tara Jordan

3/18/2013 11:11:04 am

"You guys are tough crowd". Not quite as tough as you think.
I used to love this blog but Jason is not intellectually honest.He applies double standard,relentlessly going after the Ancient Aliens - America Unearthed charlatans & snake oil peddlers,yet in the process he doesn't seem to have any particular problem associating himself with individuals (Chris White - Mike heiser) who espouse even more preposterous theories about history,cultures & civilizations. I have nothing personal against you Jason,but you can't have it both ways.When you proclaim to represent the epitome of strict scientific methodology & historical accuracy, you cannot cherry-pick.

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 11:16:41 am

I have called out Chris White--twice!--on his material, and I devoted a very long blog post to explaining exactly why his religious arguments about the Nephilim and the Flood are completely wrong.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2013/01/chris-white-discusses-ancient-aliens-and-the-great-flood-with-alex-tsakris.html

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2013/01/was-there-a-trans-dimensional-race-of-hybrid-beings.html

Mike Heiser has done very good work on Zecharia Sitchin, and his religious beliefs have not played a role in the arguments he made against Sitchin's false claims.

Please do check my archive before accusing me of not doing something.

Jim Egan link

3/18/2013 07:20:17 am

Jim Egan link

3/18/2013 07:20:30 am

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 07:54:30 am

Let me jump in and state that this blog is not a salon, and I can't control what people choose to write in response to my blog posts. The software doesn't give me editorial control, only the ability to delete whole posts, which I have made it a policy only to do in case of libel, abusive language, and other extremes. If anyone dislikes what someone writes, you are free to ignore the comment and not respond.

That said, I am a bit confused about one point: If the Tower is so precise that it is calculated to a fraction of a degree, why is the Tower so out of true? It isn't a perfect circle, the support pillars aren't evenly spaced, and the arches are of different widths. Surely you can't argue that the Tower is both perfect in its alignments and sloppy in its architecture?

jim link

3/18/2013 09:10:45 am

Jason asks:
If the Tower is so precise that it is calculated to a fraction of a degree, why is the Tower so out of true? It isn't a perfect circle, the support pillars aren't evenly spaced, and the arches are of different widths. Surely you can't argue that the Tower is both perfect in its alignments and sloppy in its architecture?"

It's hard to make exact measurements of widths between pillars and arch widths because the Tower was originally completely covered with white pargeting (one might call it stucco, plaster, made from crushed seashells, fresh water sand and gravel). Some of this is still visible today on several pillars, inside the niches and beam sockets.

In the Revolutionary War, the British Army occupied Newport and stored their gunpowder in the Tower. When they had to leave in a hurry after getting whooped in the Battle of Rhode Island, they lit the powder and blew the top off the Tower. The ensuing fire probably compromised the beams. But its amazing that it's still standing.
It may not be perfectly round, but it's pretty close. One time I rented two 40 foot ladders and my photo assistant and I tried measuring the various diameters. it's not an easy thing to do. Tape measurers sag. 20 foot poles are hard to carry up ladders. If you tell me who made the measurements showing irregulariy, I'd like to know how. Back in the early 90's. he Danes did a photogrammetric survey of the exterior, but not the interior.
Here's an interesting fact that the Danes did find. The pillars are not exactly NSEW. They are off by 3 degrees counterclockwise. Penhallow suggests this was for a meridianna alignment but that's a longer story. But the point is this: That means that the magnetic cumberlandite is precisely on the north-south axis of the Tower.

By the way, Scott Wolter did not find the cumberlandite as the show seems to portray. Steve and Pete Demarzo pointed it out to him.

These Elizabethans did things in accordance with the celestial events. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who led the unsuccessful 280-man mission to settle here at the Dee River received his letters patent from Queen Elizabeth precisely on the day of the Summer Solstice in 1578. He left Plymouth, England with his 5 ships precisely on the Summer Solstice of 1583. And after he drowned, the Queen gave letters patent to his brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, who sent 3 expeditions to what is now Roanoke Island NC. He was looking for a longer growing season.) These 3 missions were unsuccessful as well. This, to me, is amazing history. It's in the books. I am just a single guy who followed a long trail of clues and wants to share it with the world.
You are asking good questions.
Thanks, Jim Egan

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 10:07:17 am

So it's an incredibly complex and specifically attuned astronomical instrument at the same time as a sloppy circle?

And the "egg-shaped" (which resembles no egg I'm familiar with but we'll spot you that one) stone wasn't visible because of the stucco yet at the same time was crucial to astronomical observation?

Let's ask this, in the 20 years of your study of the tower, have you spent one second or one penny trying to prove how it could have been a windmill?

It occurs to me as well that unlike any given working astronomer or historian, you have a personal vested financial interest in the windmill being a "mystery."

James Marshall

3/21/2013 09:51:23 pm

Wow, such small-minded arrogance!

Matt Mc

3/18/2013 04:26:41 am

I just want to make sure we are talking about the same John Dee, who talked to angels, correct?

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 04:31:23 am

Yes, that's him. Egan believes that the Newport Tower encodes Dee's "glyph," a made-up astronological/cabbalistic symbol that looks like the sign for Venus standing atop two hills and crowned with horns. Dee was in contact with the angels in the year Egan believes he ordered construction of the Tower.

Matt Mc

3/18/2013 04:58:47 am

I wonder if that was before or after he wrote the Voynich manuscript. I assumes me to no end how these "alternative" history theorist, always attribute there theories to well known occultists for everything. I am surprised Nostradamus has not been mentioned yet for one of these theories.

Using the logic that these "historians" would not surprised me if somehow, Crowley with the help of one of Jack Parsons rockets and L. Ron Hubbard's dream regression machines somehow travel back in time and planted the Kensington rune stone and built the Newport tower for magikal rituals that could not be performed until after the year 2015 when he will travel from the past and complete the ritual uncovering the location of the Holy Grail, which is really the cup of Thelma, hidden by the Templars who became the Rosicrucians, who then evolved into the Golden Dawn, not the Mason's.

I could go on for ever with this and sadly it would have as much weight as Wolter's theories

Cathleen Anderson

3/18/2013 04:38:17 am

Try searching the Newport Library database. There is quite a bit there about the different theories.

Jim Egan link

3/18/2013 05:11:47 am

John,
You are right, that is a typo. It should read 1.5 million acres, not 15 million. The colony was to start at the "Dee Ryver and port" and go 60 miles westward towards the River of Norumbega (Hudson River). In other words, this 1.5 million colony was to have inclded half of what is now Connecticut and all of what is now Rhode Island.

Yes, in 1577 the Queen granted Sir Humphrey Gilbert letters patent to all of North America (except Florida, which had been settled by the Spanish.) Gilbert was so appreciative of the work Dee had done convincing the Queen she had a legal right to North America, he gave Dee all of the lands North of the 50 degree latitude. That's most all of Canada, Alaska and Greenland. (Dee was convinced there was a Northwest Passage, and was the main navigational consultant for Martin Frobisher's missions.)

The best place to read about all this is David Beer's Quinn “England and the Discovery of America.” which you can buy from 5 to 10 dollars at Amazon. All the original documents pertaining to the Gilbert Expedition were also published the Hakluyt Society in 1939, in two volumes entitled "The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. The Hakluyt Society books (they all have a distinctive blue binding) are available at all major Academic libraries.)

As for Norumbega, here is one source, but it is a century old, and perhaps superceded by new info. All I know is, the Elizabethans absolutely did not consider the River of Norumbegue to be Narragansett Bay.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/nda/nda26.htm
quoted here:
"In identifying the river called by one of the French writers Norombega, with the present Hudson, Weise lays great stress upon the statement by the same writer that the water of the river was salty to the height of forty leagues, and shows that the Hudson is brackish beyond the city of Poughkeepsie. According to Weise, the city of Norumbega must have occupied the site of the present Albany, the capital of New York. Weise's arguments seemed so conclusive, particularly his interpretation of the name, that his view was very generally accepted by students of American history everywhere."

Finally, you are right: this doesn't prove anything about the Tower. I hope you will not be offended, but I don't consider most historians of the Tower to be creative thinkers. Here is a huge effort to colonize Narragansett Bay, led by the Queen's Philosopher and one of her leading Generals, and the financed by one of the wealthiest men in England. AND we have a classical building at that location, that nobody knows who built . To me this rings a very loud bell. Historians they apparently hear nothing.

Again, this doesn't prove a thing so far. You are now at my starting point. And I appreciate you made it this far. My proof is in the details of what I found in 5 years of full time research, and wrote 8 books about, summarized into one volume ("Elizabethan America," by James Alan Egan on Amazon for 29 bucks), explain on my 20 videos on the website, and explain in the 100 framed images on the walls of my museum, just 50 steps northeast of the Tower.

Jim Egan, Newport Tower Museum

RLewis

3/18/2013 05:40:01 am

Mr. Egan, I appreciate your wiliness to respond to our questions and your dedication to this subject. However, I would gladly trade all of your books, videos, and photos for just one peer-reviewed article published by a recognized authority.

Jim Egan link

3/18/2013 08:26:33 am

Respose to RLewis

Actually I would trade them all too. I've been rejected by the best of them. Wikipedia even rejected me because I was not published in a peer journal. I do not have any initials after my name. I have been a professional photographer for 35 years, I transitioned from black and white darkroom to 8 by 10 chromes to medium format digital. I am an in-the-trenches creative visual problem solver. And the key to understanding the tower has to do with optics: If you don't understand what I mean about a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room, you won't understand my new insight into solving the mystery of the Tower.

I also have extensively studied RI History, Elizabethan History, and the History of mathematics, optics and time to come to all my conclusions about the Tower. If you don't think a non academic can make a discovery about Renaissance Architecture, that's fine.

But I have an important interdisciplinary story to tell about the genesis of America, and I will continue to sing my song.

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 05:52:02 am

Thank you for your response. As someone who lives in Albany, I can say that there is not nor has there ever been any evidence for Norumbega here. As I understand it, Norumbega, being a fiction, was attributed to many different spots across the northeast, from Maine on south.

Of course, as you know Frobisher in seeking the Northwest Passage used the hoax Zeno map and narrative of 1558, which is also the same "evidence" used by the Sinclair apologists to suggest that Henry Sinclair came to America in 1398.

B L

3/18/2013 06:09:29 am

Fellow fans of Jason's blog:

I think we need to treat Mr. Egan a little differently than we treat Scott Wolter in these posts. Mr. Egan has a theory about the tower and John Dee. He was curious about some celestial alignments, researched, collected data first-hand, and came up with a theory that makes some sense. Regardless of whether or not you agree with him, you cannot argue that he has done his homework.

Scott Wolter, on the other hand, has developed a whole narrative storyline he sells as fact that he has pieced together by selectively choosing bits from others' theories. He makes up a centuries spanning fantasy about Templars, Norsemen, Jesus' bloodline, and various other things and backs it up by citing uncounted, unsubstantiated claims by any number of unnamed contributors most of whom Wolter himself has taken out of context.

Mr. Egan has a theory he can debate intelligently. Scott Wolter has a fairy tale. Let's promote an open, civil discussion with Mr. Egan with this in mind.

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 06:33:16 am

Egan has a hypothesis (not a theory) for which there isn't any evidence. much of which is a telegraphed attempt to link one particular person to New England via an idiosyncratic reading of symbols and not much else. (We also have a unique camera obscura claim which Jason has already pointed out is simply factually incorrect.)

"Hypothesis" is even a bit kind as we're dealing with the usual conclusion-first followed by claims of supportive proof later. "Belief" would be more accurate.

Egan's storyline is equally as fanciful as any of Wolter'sl; I don't know that it being largely his own work adds gravitas. Like Wolter, Egan's hypotheses rest in part on what are known forgeries.

Egan has "done his homework" outside of any normal academic standards, and I'm afraid it shows, painfully. The same amount of applied, focused work and expense within academia would have him an advanced degree by now, although this would necessarily require normal standards of proof. And that's what we're lacking here,

Avoiding "open and civil discussion" of ideas is exactly the reason that 'alternative' historians self-publish and avoid academia to begin with. So far as I'm concerned Egan and his claims are getting more serious attention than they actually warrant.

B L

3/18/2013 06:39:36 am

I have a hypothesis (not a theory) that you, Chris Randolph, are a dick. I cite your own comments as the basis for my hypothesis (not theory). Prove me wrong.

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 06:56:32 am

B L -

Actually even in this you don't understand how logical argument works. The onus of proof is on you as the one making the positive assertion.

I think we're seeing your commitment to "open, civil discussion" and I expect nothing less from alternative historians (who I assume to be telling the history of some alternate dimension).

B L

3/18/2013 07:20:37 am

Please turn my "civil discussion" comment back onto me! It is painfully obvious that you have no intention of it yourself, so why should I hold myself to the standard in a discussion with you?

I am certainly not an "alternative historian". How can you make that claim? What historical thoughts, alternative or otherwise, have I put forth that would lead a supremely educated man like yourself to that conclusion? I'm simply suggesting that we don't invalidate Mr. Egan's membership card to the human race just because he is curious about something and wants to share what he thinks he's discovered. I don't necessarily agree with Mr. Egan, but I will point out that he's not in-your-face about his beliefs. You can avoid him if you want to....or, you can take joy in tearing him down on an anonymous blog. He also has not attacked those who disagree with him on base personal levels like Scott Wolter does, and to a lesser degree, like you do.

You're right, though, the onus is on me to prove that you are a dick. But, your comments to this thread make it a little easier.

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 07:58:15 am

OK, fellows. Iet's leave the personal attacks out of it. Any more and I'm deleting this whole thread.

Jimmy

3/18/2013 05:22:22 pm

"Avoiding "open and civil discussion" of ideas is exactly the reason that 'alternative' historians self-publish and avoid academia to begin with."

Absolutely brilliant line. I couldn't agree with you more

Amelia

3/18/2013 08:57:53 am

I see no one attacking him, so how about you quit your tone trolling and get over it? If Mr. Egan reads criticism and tough questions to his ideas as a personal offense, that's his problem.

B L

3/18/2013 09:04:11 am

If there is a "problem" here it lies with Chris Randolph's social skills and not with Egan.

J Adamson

3/18/2013 06:48:39 am

"Incidentally, that egg-shaped rock is completely contained within the first-floor room of the Tower. The patch of sunlight does not have to go through a floor. The tops of the beam sockets are clearly below the level of the egg shaped rock."

Is there a good photograph we can see of this? If the floor was seated below the egg-shaped rock, wouldn't that put it below the top of the support arches? I can't imagine anyone putting a floor beneath the strongest points of its support arches.

Jason Colavito link

3/18/2013 07:49:12 am

I'm not sure what difference it would make since the whole thing was covered in plaster and no one would see the "egg shaped rock" anyway.

Jim Egan link

3/19/2013 12:05:56 pm

Dear Jason, Sorry for my delay in responding to your “covered rocks" question, but I had to get a root canal done this morning.

In Medieval and Renaissance times, architects and builders used a technique called "sgraffito," which basically means “faux painting” (from which we get the word “graffiti”. Buildings made from stone or brick or wood were plastered over and faux painted (and even etched with grooves) to look like the building was made from marble or cut stone. Artists would paint edge-lines, texture, and even shadows on the plaster surface. They would paint on symbols, words, and sometimes even aphorisms or full sentences.

Examples of Renaissance sgraffito can be seen in Prague, Austria, Rome, and many other towns and cities across Europe. (in Google images, type in: “sgraffito on buildings” and you'll see some magnificent examples. Some buildings look like they have tattoos all over them.) In America, we have plenty of graffiti, but hardly any sgraffito in Colonial, Federal, Georgian or Modern architecture.)

Yes, the egg-shaped rock, the keystone and, indeed, all the interior and exterior façade rocks were covered with an inch or two of white pargeting, making the surface as smooth as a baby’s bum. (Some exterior pargeting still remains to this very day, inside the well-protected areas).

And I believe symbols (of what these rocks were intended to depict) were painted over the rocks. In other words, on the plaster which covered the “egg-shaped rock” was an illustration of an egg. Not just an outline, but probably with shading. (Indeed, just like that hen egg you get any grocery store.)

And on the Winter Solstice, a patch of light coming through the South window at 9:00 AM illuminates that egg (which it still does). It's as dramatic as a spotlight in a stage show.

Furthermore, that rock, which Scott Wolter calls a "keystone" (in the north-northwest arch), I don't think is a keystone at all. Four reasons:
1 This "keystone" is not in the center of the arch, it clearly to the right of center.
2 There are no other true "keystones" in any of the other interior or exterior arches.
3 The arches are not ashlar, in other words, they are not made from same-sized cut stones that abut evenly and are locked together by a V-shaped central rock. Such a V-shaped central rock would be a true keystone. The Tower’s arches are just made from flat fieldstones of varying thicknesses (some granite, some slate, some bluestone).
4 Keystones are usually one stone, but this one is not alone. Directly above it is a round, red stone that is also acting as a "keystone.”) This round, red stone is much different than all or all the other stones around it. (It has small pink crystals that glint in the sunlight in the late afternoon.)

Penhallow has (for 25 years) referred to this as the "Sunstone."

I assert this “stone with shoulders” and the “round, red stone,” combined, are a representation of John Dee’s Monas symbol, a geometric figure which Dee invented and which is the key symbol in his most cherished book, the Monas Hieroglyphica (1564)
(to see the symbol, Google Images: Monas Hieroglyphica)

Dee writes that his symbol is comprised of four parts: the Moon (semicircle), the Sun (circle with dot in center), the Cross of the Elements (Fire, Air, Earth, and Water) and the symbol for Aries (which is a zodiacal sign that begins on March 21, or the first day of Spring).

Dee wrote a two-page geometric proof explaining the exact proportions of the various parts of the Monas symbol. For example the, diameter of the Sun-circle is the length of the vertical spine and also the horizontal arms of the Cross. The whole shape must always be in a 9 x 4 overall proportion, regardless of its size.

I assert that the “round, red rock” represents Sun-circle of the Monas symbol. What Scott Wolter calls the "keystone,” I believe, is Dee’s Cross Of the Elements. The shoulders are exactly where the horizontal line is in Dee’s “offset cross.”

True, there is no depiction of the Moon-half circle or the Aries symbol, but it's challenging enough to represent a “stick figure” out of rocks in the first place. I think Dee’s Monas symbol was hand-painted, or “sgraffitoed” on the plaster which covered this “assembly of these two very distinctive and geometrically-shaped rocks.”

Now, here's the fun thing (that Scott’s producers cut from the show for some unknown reason): The "sunstone" and "stone with shoulders" assembly (on the outside of the Tower) is directly behind the egg-shaped rock (on the inside of the Tower). (That section of the Tower is about 3 feet thick). In other words, the rocks that I say depict the Monas symbol, and the “egg-shaped rock” are "back-to-back” in the Tower’s west-northwest arch.

Monas

Jason Colavito link

3/19/2013 12:35:45 pm

Thank you for your comments, Jim. I appreciate you taking the time to answer, and I hope that your root canal wasn't too painful.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with hypothesizing yet another layer of unproveable assumption--this time the interior decoration of the tower--whose existence is predicated on assumptions about the purpose of the stones they decorations would have covered. This seems like needless complication. Why bother to put the rocks in the walls if they were to simply be painted over later? They couldn't have been guides since after plastering they'd be useless for finding the right spot to paint.

Jim Egan

3/19/2013 01:44:54 pm

SORRY THIS PART GOT CUT OFF THE BOTTOM OF MY PREVIOUS POST
Now, here's the fun thing (that Scott’s producers cut from the show for some unknown reason): The "sunstone" and "stone with shoulders" assembly (on the outside of the Tower) is directly behind the egg-shaped rock (on the inside of the Tower). (That section of the Tower is about 3 feet thick). In other words, the rocks that I say depict the Monas symbol, and the “egg-shaped rock” are "back-to-back” in the Tower’s west-northwest arch.

Monas symbol and egg are back-to-back.

Now, (Google Images: Monas Hieroglyphica Title Page) look at the center of Dee’s Title Page. There you will see a Monas symbol, in the middle of an egg. (Dee actually discusses several different egg metaphors and riddles in several of the 24 Theorems of his book.)

To conclude, the “egg-shaped rock” gets illuminated on the Winter solstice. (Incidentally, Dee believed that Christ was born conceived on the Spring Equinox and was born nine months later on the Winter Solstice.) Back-to-back with that illuminated rock is the Monas symbol.

Furthermore, I believe the proportions of the Monas symbol are the proportions of the Tower.

In short, the Monas symbol is the blueprint for the Tower. And this blueprint is depicted by the "sunstone" and the "stone with shoulders." Dee had the craftsmen who came across with Anthony Brigham in 1582-83 build the Tower’s blueprint right into the Tower.

I won't get into all the geometry, but the Tower’s width (measured just above the pillars at the bottom of the upper cylinder) is 24 feet. I think the Tower was originally 36 feet high, with a 12-foot dome, surmounted by a 6-foot finial – totaling 54 feet.

Divide 54 by 6 and also 24 by 6, and you'll see that the 54 to 24 is the 9 to 4 proportion of Dee’s Monas symbol. (Today, only about 28 feet of the Tower is still standing.)

I realize this all sounds too incredible to be true. Who would have been so clever to even conceive of this, let alone have it built in a remote land? Some guy who lived 430 years ago was into mixing architecture, symbols, and astronomy into some grand puzzle?

Well, if someone think the whole idea of what I have just explained is preposterous, outlandish and ridiculous, all I can say is that person don't know much about John Dee and how influential he was in the English Renaissance and the birth of the British Empire. To be honst, I was amazed that none of this was in my high school history books, but if you read chapter 14 of David Beers Quinn, you'll see its all there. (Except he does not mention the Tower, only that Narragansett Bay was definitely the site of the first Elizabethan colonization effort). Tying the Tower in is all my work.

jim link

3/18/2013 08:03:21 am

Reply to J Adamson.
Thanks for asking J. The 8 beam sockets at the tops of the pillars can still be seen today. These held beams that were approximately one foot by one foot square. These 4 beams criss-crossed in a tic-tac-toe pattern, mortised like Lincoln Logs. Resting on them would be a 2-inch thick sub floor, and a 2-inch thick floor. This puts the first floor level at the height of the tops of the arches. And the egg-shaped rock is above that. If you go to Google images, and type in "interior of Newport Tower" there are some views of the inside. Or come on down to Newport and see this magnificent building for yourself. Thanks for your question and your pleasant tone.
Incidentally, in the southest pillar's beam socket, you can measure from the flat faces of the original mortar on the left and on the right. It measures one english foot, accurate to about 1/4 of an inch. All this talk of the "Ell" measurement that someone supposedly claims, I find highly questionable. I have measured every length, diameter and height of the Tower (with the permission of the Newport Parks Department) and it is hard to get exact measurements because of the irregular surfaces. All measurements are plus or minus 2 to 3 inches depending on which rocks you use to measure from.

B L

3/18/2013 08:55:50 am

Mr. Egan:

I cannot find any evidence that Dee ever made the trip to America. It would seem to me that if the tower is a very precise clock/calendar of Dee's own design then wouldn't Dee himself have to have been present to oversee the construction? Would he leave something like that up to others when the slightest mistake in construction could ruin these many alignments?

Also, wouldn't Dee have made a prototype first in England that we could find evidence of?

If it were me, I couldn't imagine designing something so high-tech (for the times), lobbying for it to be built, then never getting to see it myself.

Jim Egan link

3/18/2013 04:50:13 pm

Response to BL.

You are correct. Dee never came to America. The Queen did not want her important consultants, generals and courtiers leaving London. She didn't even want Sir Humphrey Gilbert to lead his own expedition declaring, "He's not a very good hap by sea." And indeed he wasn't. He didn't follow the advice of his well-seasoned sea captains and wound up in two hurricanes, the second of which he drowned in a small 10-man ship, the Squirrel.

In June of 1578, a month after Dee presented his case to the Queen and the Privy Council, she gave letters patent to North America (except Florida) to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Gilbert was so appreciative but Dee’s work, he gave him all of the lands north of the 50° line (Alaska, most of Canada and Greenland).

In 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert set out with seven ships, but the mission was aborted mid-Atlantic due to bad weather and some unauthorized piracy against Spanish ships.

In 1580, Sir Humphrey Gilbert sent the famed Portuguese navigator Simon Fernandez in Gilbert’s small ship, the Squirrel, to draw map of the planned colonization site. Amazingly, Fernandez made the round-trip at 90 days. Upon his return he went to John Dee's house where Dee copied his "sea cartes.” ( Dee writes about this in his Diary)

Gilbert set sent Anthony Brigham with two ships and about 80 men to "reconnoiter the place where they [Gilbert] shall go next year.” I claim this mission had approximate 40 carpenters and 40 masons and their job was to build this Tower to Dee specifications.

Dee, as legal council, writing the deed between Gilbert and Peckham inserted a clause that required a building to be built and occupied for a year for any of Gilbert’s colonies to be recognized. And Dee just happened to have a building designed, (based on his mathematical cosmology as described in his 1564 Monas Hieroglyphica.)

This was to be the city center of the main Elizabethan colonization effort (the Manhattan, if you will.) It was rumored that 10,000 men were to migrate here to the Dee River the following year.

It's known that Anthony Brigham returned nine months later (March of 1583) and met with Sir Francis Walsingham, who sent a circular letter (in need of reply) to a group of wealthy Londoners urging them to fund this or their own small colonies. Walsingham labeled this letter "Touching upon the Discovery of America."

Not much is known about Brigham’s mission, because the Spanish Ambassador to London, Don Bernadino de Mendoza, had threatened that Spain would “slit the throats” of all these Englishmen when they found out the colony’s location.

In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and five ships set sail, but he met his doom. In England, the head financier, Sir George Peckham was thrown into jail on recusancy charges (he was accused of being a Catholic sympathizer).

To answer your question, Dee, knowing the latitude (42°) and the overall layout (the site had a panoramic view of the Dee River to the west) knew exactly where all of the windows of the Tower had to be positioned for these key astronomical alignments of the sun, moon, and stars (but not freaking Venus).

Dee had written several books on navigation, geometry, astronomy and optics. He was familiar with the history of astronomy from Ptolemy, to the Arabs, to his teacher Gemma Frisius (who added the third ring to the astronomer’s ring dial) to Copernicus, (Dee's heliocentric contemporary).

The Oxford English Dictionary will tell you that John Dee coined 144 words in the English Language (first person to use the word in a printed English work). One of them was the word "model," which he adopted from the French “modelle” and the Italian “modello.” I’s certain Dee would have given Anthony Brigham a scale model, and I have built my conception of it here in the Newport Tower Museum.

When you understand how brilliant Dee was, you'll see that to design “remotely” like this would not have presented a problem. (Indeed, one of Dee’s inspirations, Leon Battista Alberti, seldom visited the churches that he had designed as the craftspeople were constructing them.)

I'm sure Dee presumed that one day, after the colony was well-established, he would cross the Atlantic to see his Tower on the Dee River. The financiers had given him 10,000 acres in this particular colony. This astronomical building on an island was to have been his "Uraniborg" (The island in Denmark where Tycho Brahe set up his astronomical observatories)

I assert the Tower was built by Anthony Brigham and his men in 1582-3. But when Sir Humphrey Gilbert drowned, and Sir George Peckham was thrown into jail in September of 1583 the impetus for the colonization effort fizzled and the Tower was abandoned.

John Dee was so irritated with his countrymen for not seeing the wonders of the New World, and England’s rejecting his 1583 Calendar Reform proposal, Dee and Kel

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 06:33:15 pm

That's a heck of a lot of assumption and supposition. There's no point in touching those portions of your claims, it's swinging at phantoms.

Allow me to ask you a second time if your astronomer friend ever presented a paper on the windmill to other astronomers, or to any peer reviewed journal. I'll also ask again how much research you've done inquiring as to whether or not the structure

Setting aside your series of speculations, your story for how and why such a tower would be built makes no sense. When things don't make a lick of sense they aren't true. I haven't yet been to Uraniborg but I have been to the Round Tower in Copenhagen.

The point of the latter was simply to get to the top of the tower, to be above the light of Copenhagen and see the full night sky. None of this nonsense with eggs and alignments. Your windmill, you're claiming, was the first object to be built in an area that had no light pollution to rise above, but even 'better' which you're not claiming was even being used as one would expect an astronomical tower of the era to be used, as a platform for observing the full night sky in an unobstructed fashion from some height. (Note also that the Round Tower was built at the dawn of the telescope era, when getting to the top even of a narrow tower would be useful.)

But let's say that we're not assuming the telescope era nor any arrangement for it. Let's assume Dee was building his own Uraniborg at great expense precisely where it'd be... er, convenient for him... on another continent on the other side of an ocean where he'd never been and on the way to which a series of expensive, failed expeditions recently ended in death. Because that... makes sense.

Uraniborg was NOTHING REMOTELY LIKE this windmill, neither in its design nor in its use. Your tower walls would in fact block out most of the night sky from within, and the tower is FAR TOO NARROW to have contained the series of large quadrants of the sort used at Uraniborg, which in any event would be useless for most purposes inside of a tube.

Uraniborg's equipment was placed mostly on the second floor of a building which had three floors, in large flat areas which allowed for unobstructed views of different areas of the night sky. Being out on the island is what allowed for lack of light pollution. If someone were building a Uraniborg here it'd be open and flat.

As if that isn't enough, Brahe also had built Stjerneborg, which was UNDERGROUND, and again open to the air. Anyone replicating Brahe's work would more likely be digging a pit than buildng a tower.

Thus the only possible use this thing could have would be to 'make observations' (crediting you with being correct that there's something special about the location of the windows, which there isn't) through holes projecting Indiana Jones-style beams inside the tower... in ways you say Dee already calculated from where he was sitting! What's the point of that? From a science standpoint absolutely nothing.

We might be left with some weird religious purpose for the tower in that case, but some very weird one that cares where the sun is after breakfast. Again why we'd see this in Rhode Island but nowhere in England is something you need to explain.

I note the number 40, 40 masons and 40 carpenters. Very biblical. Would it really have taken 80 men to build this thing, and so poorly? How many people built the Chesterton Windmill, and so much more neatly..?

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 06:43:39 pm

Oops.

"I'll also ask again how much research you've done inquiring as to whether or not the structure...

... could have functioned as a windmill?" Have you researched the size of mill equipment of the day and calculated how well that might fit in the structure? What did you determine?

Those people with 'letters after their names', this is what they do. What they're willing to do and know how to do (and in fact forced by the academic process to do)... test their own hypotheses, try and make them fail and accept things as fact after competing ideas are eliminated. Start with questions and end with answers, not the reverse.

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 07:06:51 pm

"Uraniborg's equipment was placed mostly on the second floor of a building which had three floors..."

Here are some plans:

http://www.tychobrahe.com/uk/uraniborg.html

Note the size of the brass arc. Given a radial measure of 2 meters this one instrument all by itself would be about 6 and a quarter meters long and equally tall - that's 20 feet 6 inches and change long and the same high.

Internal measures of the (irregular!) Newport Windmill are between 18 and 19 feet. ONE of Brahe's arcs oriented in one direction wouldn't even fit.

Christopher Randolph

3/18/2013 08:32:40 pm

Well this is embarrassing, I've substituted a circumference for a diameter. Flunk me in geometry if you will. The general point stands; the tower isn't wide enough to accommodate the sort of work Brahe was doing with the equipment of the day.

Here's another image of Brahe working:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/15450/Tycho-Brahe-and-his-assistants-in-his-Uraniborg-observatory-a

It's a three-person operation. The mural arc is fastened to a wall in one direction, there was the same room on the opposite side of the building facing the other direction. From the plans I've looked at the rooms facing each direction were about 5m long @ or 10m long in total, that's more than 30 ft. which is approaching double the internal diameter of Newport (and this is discounting the stucco). It's actually more than the external diameter of Newport.

Note that this scale was needed by Brahe in order to attain the degree of accuracy that Egan is saying Dee was attaining.

Brahe then built Stjerneborg in part in order to make more room for his instruments because apparently this wasn't roomy enough.

Additionally the Danish facility had a number of balconies for open observation, although one could argue Newport had a roof.

Why someone in the wilderness needs a roof to see the open sky I don't know. Why someone picks a lowest elevation island to build an observation tower upon is well beyond me:

http://www.rhode-island-map.org/topo-map.htm

Brahe placed his observatory at the highest point on the island of Hven. What the USGS calls "Old Stone Mill" is at an elevation of 85 ft in a town whereas the WWI Newport Memorial Tower is listed as being at an elevation of over 160 ft. Why was Dee building his tower observatory on lower ground than was available even on this island, even on the southern portion of the island?

Jim Egan link

3/19/2013 12:35:01 pm

Dear Christopher,
I apologize if I was unclear about my Uraniborg comparison. I was only speaking metaphorically that this island, now Aquidneck island (on the Dee River where the Newport Tower is), was to be similar to Uraniborg, which was Tycho Brahe's Island. I was only making a general observation about islands and astronomers, not the specific dimensions of any buildings.
John Dee (1528-1608) and Tycho Brahe (1546-1601, were contemporaries. When Tyco Brahe sent his portrait to Thomas Saville, the warden of Merton College in Oxford, he asked to be remembered to John Dee, and also to Dee's pupil Thomas Digges (1549-1622).
http://www.numericana.com/arms/brahe.htm

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 01:36:01 pm

Jim -

You can 'speak metaphorically' about Uraniborg all you like, but whether you meant to open that can of worms or not, the fact of the matter is that we do have extensive record of what contemporaries of Dee actually did build to do astronomical observations. And those structures are not at all comparable in form, function or location to the windmill in Newport. Beyond this I'm having trouble seeing how precise equipment of the sort employed by Brahe would even fit in it.

Among other problems you have to answer why anyone would stick an astronomical observation tower merely at about the 52nd percentile of high ground in what is now Newport, never mind the higher ground to the north of the island, or for that matter the much higher ground anywhere else in what you say was the Dee land grant. You also have to explain why when Brahe is putting his observatory inconveniently as far from people as possible that Dee is building a city around his.

I might ask as well how or if Dee is taking into account precise astronomical calculations for a tower of which he presumably doesn't know the altitude. I should think that anyone who feels it's important to track the sun isn't going to build a tower west of ground 40-80 ft lower than ground to its east.

None of this makes a lick of sense.

Byron DeLear

3/19/2013 04:10:26 am

Jim and Chris--

Couple of questions.

Jim I saw your videos and think they're pretty cool and unique. The various associations you make, like B. Arnold's signature symbol and other idiosyncratic ideas are fascinating—if only to pull out historical details. This is how our brains work to remember things—through associations. Maybe telling stories and history in this manner serves some intrinsic intellectual purpose beyond the literal history—kind of a reverse memorial recall technique. Nevertheless, like I’ve mentioned here (Jason’s blog) before, we sure do love our stories. Love.

So a question that pops out for me is:

Is there a historical precedent for the construction of such an expensive and complicated structure (NT) in an extremely remote location only to not be provided with the protection necessary to ensure its preservation?

Would the NT be built spending huge sums of money and then left to the fates without a surrounding security infrastructure to protect the expenditure?

In a mysterious and dangerous 16th century, this would seem a strange proposition—indeed, if it was an astronomical monument designed by Dee for any particular purpose, staking his land claim, whatever, why would all those resources be expended without any insurance in place?

Natives could just come and knock it over, right?

Or is there a story about a permanent colony in place to protect it? I may have missed that part.

On another note,

Chris— you said, “(crediting you with being correct that there's something special about the location of the windows, which there isn't)”

I’m not an architect, but after watching Egan’s videos, those windows have really asymmetrical locations in a very symmetrical structure. Astronomical alignment doesn’t seem to be a stretch.

Or, I guess they may have been placed that way to have a view of the out-house or something?

Jason Colavito link

3/19/2013 04:27:30 am

My understanding is that the window placement was selected around the interior windmill mechanism and any alignments are coincidental.

The Tower is not particularly symmetrical; it's roughly circular, but not perfectly so, and the arches are unevenly spaced.

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 04:47:24 am

Hi Byron -

One wonders if these 80 skilled (or judging from the actual construction of the tower not so skilled!) workers were also the sailing crew, or if those were a whole other set of people sent on this quest.

And who was working on food and shelter, firewood and so forth for 80 people while 80 people worked on the tower? This is a massive undertaking, with every reason to believe that people might now make it there alive let alone there and back.

So now the fact that the mill is a terrible circle and the windows are asymmetrical makes it MORE likely to have been a precise instrument?!

Uraniborg (which Egan makes reference to, he's the one who wants to make the comparison) was a perfectly symmetrical structure built to exacting standards, and in fact was built as a rectangle (and a real one, not some distorted shape like at Newport) oriented precisely to the cardinal directions. The window slits used to do precise observations via that method were carefully arranged 180 degrees away from each other to allow viewing of the full night sky from both directions. This makes sense.

Someone with even more time than me could take a look at the angles at which light would be hitting Brahe's arcs and figure out if the Old Stone Mill (as the US government calls it, but of course they are in on The Conspiracy) even has the necessary dimensions to accommodate that. I don't think it does even for the instruments alone, never mind what I assume would be an internal staircase and other support structures.

This is what an astronomer who knew what he was doing designed as his dream building to make actual observations. (And again this he found too small - a 15m x 15m observatory was too small - and he found being above ground subjected the instruments to too much wind. Lacking advanced optics Brahe had to build big in order to have hilariously large instruments for precise readings.) So he then built more observation points underground, open to the sky.

Egan has Dee doing the exact opposite in almost every measure. And then says this is Dee's Uraniborg.

What we're left with is the fact of any window in any structure being open to some of the sky all of the time. The fact that "alignments" are sometimes made (with as Egan puts it the sun, moon and stars... but not Venus because for some reason that's crazy!) I regard as a mathematical inevitability and not proof of anything.

So what we'd have then is the assumption that Dee worked out certain little windows to make very limited observations of very limited phenomena (projected on opposite walls of a structire clearly not built with any precision). But... why? If you're claiming it was for science it doesn't make any sense; you've already calculated (so says Egan) where what you want to look at was going to be sitting in England.

Has anyone asked what window placement looks like in windmills normally?

Jim Egan link

3/19/2013 12:50:06 pm

You are absolutely correct in thinking that the Tower is a windmill given the set of data you have.

Serious students of the Tower should read the 1942 book entitled “Newport Tower” by Philip Ainsworth Means. Means was authority on South America history, but developed a fascination for the Tower leading to his 344-page book. When he visited the Tower his reaction was "This is the most un-windmill like structure I've ever seen."

It’s not just the presence of the fireplace and the idea that a building on tall pillars is not well suited to handle the torque of the huge blades. All other windmills in colonial New England were made from wood. Carpenters built the exteriors and all the internal shafts and wooden gears.

This would be the only windmill out of hundreds, from Maine to New York, which was made from stone.

Since it doesn’t taper, it would require a 24-foot diameter turret. Such a turret would probably require using an ox or a team of oxen to rotate it so the blades continuously faced the wind.

One should also be familiar with the excavation done by William Godfrey from Harvard in the years 1949 and 1950. After years of research and excavations, he didn’t think it was a windmill either, but instead thought it was Governor Benedict Arnold's "folly" (a rich man's architectural muse).

Jason Colavito link

3/19/2013 01:00:05 pm

That's an interesting point, Jim, but it fails to account for the fact that in England round windmills were in use since the Middle Ages and there were also mills on pillars, like the Chesterton windmill. Fireplaces also occur in English windmills, such as the Upholland Windmill--which, incidentally, also features astronomical alignments in the windows of its second floor, and nevertheless is a windmill.

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 01:23:08 pm

The Old Stone Windmill of Mathews County, VA built c. 1800 and since lost:

http://www.vahistorical.org/lva/windmill.htm

The old stone windmill of Morristown NY:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Windmill_%28Morristown,_New_York%29

Those are on the first page of results one gets by typing "stone windmill" into Google.

It's amazing what one can find by looking for it.

Gareth

3/19/2013 01:53:03 pm

Means may well have said "This is the most un-windmill like structure I have ever seen". But how many windmills had he seen? He never went to Chesterton, for example.
Fireplaces are relatively common in English windmills. Anbd I'm sure if you stand 50' away from the base of quite a few of them and squint through the windows, you'll find "meaningful" astronomical alignments.
Sgraffito was never a common decorative technique in England. Even the Elizabethans relied on paint for their effects.
The 24' diameter cap would be large, but not at all impossible, or even especially difficult, to turn.
And here's a couple of photos that explain the post holes Chronognostic found
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2420236
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2420285
They are for attaching the chain from something like this
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2420307
when you want to turn the mill into the wind.

Gareth

3/19/2013 02:06:54 pm

Oh, and here's J F W Des Barres' plan of Newport in 1776, which clearly marks the tower as "Stone Wind Mill", which puts an end to any suggestion that it was never used as such
http://maps.bpl.org/id/12640

Gareth

3/19/2013 02:29:51 pm

Rather less widely disseminated than Means' original conclusion (that the Tower was 17th century, but was not built as a windmill) is this:
"When my article was written, I was doubtful about the mill theory. Today, I am not so sure. Rex Wailes, noted English expert on windmills, has re-examined the evidence for the Newport structure and the suggested prototype in England, Chesterton Mill (Wailes, in press), and has supported the contention that both structures were built as mills." (William Godfrey, "Answer to 'Plaster under the Tower,'" American Antiquity, vol. 19, no. 3 (Jan. 1954), p. 278.)"

Gareth

3/19/2013 02:31:22 pm

sorry, Godfrey's conclusion, not Means' (which is based on a lot of nonsense)

Sean

3/19/2013 04:24:11 pm

Gareth,
Great find on the map from the Boston Public library. Funny how the stone wind mill is located at the top of Mill street. That's probably just a coincidence.

Jason Colavito link

3/21/2013 07:15:35 am

In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert tried to colonize St. John's, Newfoundland. His first priority was taxing the fishing trade, not building monuments. After levying his tax, he ran out of supplies, turned around and went home, dying when his boat sank.

In 1585, Gilbert's half brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, sent an expedition to colonize Roanoke. They built a small fort to protect themselves from the Natives, ended up fighting a war with them, and fled with Sir Francis Drake, leaving behind a skeleton crew to man the fort, all of whom vanished by the time the next expedition arrived in 1587.

So far as I know, the first priority of English expeditions was to establish a settlement of some kind; monuments came later.

3/18/2013 08:29:14 pm

Doesn't anybody have any sort of architectural diagramme of the Tower as well as its relation to the landscape's contours and astronomical alignments according to the seasons?
Just a precise, architectural diagramme of the Tower would be a good start, for one! I would love to see how all the holes and windows, as well the columns, as well as the post-holes for the floors, are all lined up and designed, from top to bottom, inside out, in 3D! Anyone? Anyone?

Jim Egan

3/19/2013 02:06:34 pm

My (Jim Egan's) book "Elizabethan America" has plenty of charts and diagrams. It's for sale on Amazon for $29.00 (360 pages) or you can download it for free (pdf) on my website newporttowermuseum.com.

Here is my 2 paragraph summation of Dee and the Tower

John Dee lived in tumultuous times. Born Catholic under Henry VIII, then Protestant under Edward VI, he then do became a Catholic priest under Queen Mary, and finally he became a Protestant under Queen Elizabeth. And he was an important one as well. The Queen asked John Dee to select the most propitious day for her coronation, which he did, January 15 1559.

Dee set out to single-handedly reform Christendom so the Catholics and Protestants would stop killing each other. Dee felt that Natural Philosophy was something all men and women could rally around. And the Tower is an architectural expression of his mathematical, optical, and “cosmopolitical” philosophy (In Greek, cosmopolite means “citizen of the world).

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 02:18:13 pm

"And the Tower is an architectural expression of his mathematical, optical, and “cosmopolitical” philosophy"

Really? The base isn't even quite circular and the arches don't match. You'd better watch it, some Dee descendant is going to slap you with one of those nasty UK libel suits; that sort of statement is an affront to the man's character.

Prime

3/18/2013 08:39:12 pm

So much for that theory of a "smoke house" for fish! HAHAHAHAHA!

That dude was an idiot, insisting on it so much.

Byron DeLear

3/19/2013 05:20:10 am

Chris, Jason, Jim---

Is there a link showing how the irregular windows were part of the windmill structure? or is it obvious...

Chris-- I think Jim said 'not freaking Venus' because he was amazed Venus wasn't included --- I may be wrong. Venus surely did function as one of the most important heavenly bodies ever since writing developed, and is always featured prominently in esoteric stuff, which is very Dee-esque. The Star of Ishtar form (eight pointed star) representing Venus may very well have been drawn from the original cuneiform symbol for God, heaven, which is basically a diagonal cross and equatorial cross superimposed to make an eight pointed cross (5500 years ago). On a recent trip to the British museum we saw amazing Babylonian boundary stones with the three primary gods logos atop the marker---Venus, Moon, Sun, aka Ishtar, Sin, Shamash. Probably a religious model, when combined with the Greek Platonic forms, that got remixed and contributed to the Xtian trinity concept---Sun, Moon, Venus...

I have to say, IMHO, it would be pretty weird for Dee et al to put the cart before the horse so-to-speak, and build-out an amazing structure without a fort and/or colony to protect it—mind you, the assertion, if I’m not mistaken, is that this construction all happened coterminous with the English misadventure in Roanoke, end of 16th century.

The secrecy and lack of information is because the Spanish threatened to slit the English throats upon discovery? I pretty much figure, that was an everyday figure of speech back then.

Certainly there are copious amounts of information about Roanoke and Jamestown, etc. Why nothing about the settlement and colony to protect the NT site?

I’m interested to hear from Jim more about the secrecy issue (slit throats) and what his take is on idea of leaving an expensive investment wholly unprotected, and if there’s another precedent like it in history.

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 06:15:13 am

More to the point it wouldn't make any sense whatever to locate one's Uraniborg smack in the middle of what Egan claims was going to be the "Manhattan" (says Egan) of a colony. The whole idea of Brahe sticking his observatory out on an island was to get away from people, not to make it the focal point (no pun intended) of a city. And then he built at the highest ground of that island.

This brings us back to the Round Tower, which was built to be above the ambient light of Copenhagen. And again, built with a corkscrew ramp to get people and equipment simply up to the top of that tower for that purpose only, not with any windows cut for any purpose windows don't normally have. Putting the tower at 85 ft elevation when 100-160 ft elevation is nearby in your new colony (higher elevations even available at other places) makes no sense whatever for this purpose; one would think you'd pick the highest ground. Note that these supposed astronomical windows aren't even at the top of the tower.

Jim Egan link

3/19/2013 01:35:34 pm

My "not freaking Venus" comment was a jibe at Wolther's laser-light conjecture about the Venus alignments in the Tower. Venus was indeed important to astronomers thru the ages. It's just that the earth-sun revolution "plate" and the venus-sun revolution "plate" are on the same plane. (Give or take 1-2 degrees.) So any window alignment to Venus would also be solar alignment. And the sun is thousand of times brighter than Venus. The solar disc is distinct in a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room. Venus would be so faint one would need a lens to resolve it. And it would only visible at night. And it's always so close to the sun, the only time you see it brightly is at dawn or dusk. This does not make an easily-viewed alignment source.

Here is the historical connection. Dee's partner in this first Elizabethan colonization attempt was Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Gilbert's younger half-brother was Sir Walter Raleigh. They grew up together in Dartmouth, England. ( Gilbert's house, Greenaway, was later owned by Agatha Christie) The Bark Raleigh, captained by Sir Walter Raleigh was on one of the 5 ships (the largest) in Gilbert's 1583 mission that never made it here.

Yes, the Tower was abandoned and left unprotected. But Dee designed it so solidly, it is still here 430 years later. Window alignments and all. I realize this all sounds too amazing. But come see for yourself.

I apologize for the disorganized way all my responses might be sounding. I have never had to explain my complex thesis in a piecemeal, out of order, non-visual, non-footnoted way. But its all very refreshing. Thanks all for you continued responses and questions.

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 02:13:26 pm

"The solar disc is distinct in a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room."

One would think it would be, else one would have simply a dark room. Not to mention that one would need to rename the thing.

But you haven't proven that that's what the windmill is.

I'll ask this again a different way: Why would someone who could design a device knowing where the light was going to hit have any scientific need of a device to show where the light was hitting? If one could design such a device which only works by correctly predicting exactly where the sun is going to be at a particular time then one has no need for it. It doesn't make any sense as a scientific instrument.

It's not even particularly practical as a worship instrument.

"I have never had to explain my complex thesis in a piecemeal, out of order, non-visual, non-footnoted way."

The problem you're having is that when you encounter other people you don't get full control of the narrative, as you do when self-publishing or founding your own museum. This, again, is why some people have 'letters after their names.' They've had to propose and repropose and defend their ideas with other peoples' minds involved.

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 02:56:08 pm

"Yes, the Tower was abandoned and left unprotected. But Dee designed it so solidly, it is still here 430 years later. Window alignments and all. I realize this all sounds too amazing."

First off there's not only no proof the thing is 430 years old.

I have no idea why you'd find it "amazing" that a stone structure would be partially (! - the roof has collapsed and the tower is gutted) intact after 400+ years. I seldom take a vacation anywhere where there aren't much larger and more complex stone structures in much better shape having been abandoned for multiples of that time.

Beyond this I don't know why you'd be attributing any of that to Dee, who was on another continent and surely didn't leave instructions for which particular individual stones to pick out and how to arrange them (especially as the show you were on took pains to point out the usage of local rock which would not have been known to an Englishman.)

You've got 40 masons and 40 carpenters slaving away at this very important tower on behalf of a wizard doing work on a massive new colony chartered by the queen and between them they can't make a decent circle or arch. Makes. No. Sense.

CFC

3/19/2013 05:22:48 am

Thanks to Jim Egan for coming on this blog and contributing his ideas and thoughts.

Wolter's claim in the program that made me the most angry was that the "academics have dropped the ball"! What nonsense. He and the producers do such a terrible job of research for these episodes that they simply ZERO out the work of others including academics to promote their own story.

Jim Egan link

3/19/2013 01:57:44 pm

I think it is great you are providing a forum for a lively discussion on the history of this unbelievable cool building. And Jason, you are free to be the ultimate judge here in your blog-courtroom. But no one will be the judge or jury in my courtroom, trying my case, until he or she has fully listened to my testimony. In other words, come visit the Tower and the museum. Seeing the Tower and it's architectural details will put a new perpective on it.

Will you understand my thesis from my comments on this blog? No way. First, I'm a visual person, and this forum is words only. My books and videos are filled with thousands of illustrations and photos telling my story visually.

Will you understand my thesis by reading my summary? Probably not. As such a complex story that it needs a full-day seminar.

The only way you get a shot at understanding my words as to come to the Newport Tower Museum. First, I'll point out 15 architectural features of the tower you wouldn't see if you looked at it all day long. Then after reviewing half-dozen Tower theories, I will demonstrate how a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room works and its importance in Renaissance history. I explain how I came to learn about the Dee River of 1583 in my studies and was quite stunned. Why would Narragansett Bay be named after an Englishman 40 years before the Pilgrims?

So I read all I could about John Dee. Then I translated his main works from Latin, Greek and Elizabethan English into modern English and figured out many of his riddles, clues and puns.

All his biographies will tell you there were two main chapters in Dee's life. The pre-1583 period, when Dee was among the top consultants to the Queen and wrote his 40 books, and the after-1583 period, when Dee, accompanied by his family and Edward Kelly, his hired scrier, travelled to Prague to speak with Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf.

One day I invited John Shannon Hendrix, professor of Art and Architecture from Roger Williams University down museum for an hour talk. He stayed for eight hours. He totally got it and is a supporter of my work. I have even filled in for him as an Adjunct Professor and hosted his classes’ field trips to the Tower.

Hendrix has written 10 books on the history of Renaissance architecture and Neoplatonic philosophy. If you want to see what he thinks about my thesis, go to Facebook and type in “Newport Tower” and scroll down to watch his video. You can also see a video of William Penhallow as well. Again thanks for providing a forum for such a lively and fun discussion.

My blog responses, my books, and even my much-abbreviated performance on America's Oldest Secret are only ways to get folks interested in the Tower.

My real goal here is to catch the interest of a professional archaeologist and have him or her to some modern CSI-style testing of this 28-foot tall artifact. It’s filled with clues. Maybe you will be the one to discover even more!

Christopher Randolph

3/19/2013 02:34:04 pm

That's the second commercial for your products and services on this thread. How much money could we calculate you stand to lose based in a general public acceptance of the windmill being a windmill and not a "mystery?"

Why is it do you imagine that you can't find an actual archeologist to take any interest into sinking their resources and reputation into your tower?

Jeff

3/20/2013 05:57:20 am

Please pay no mind to Christopher Randolph. Whether you are right or wrong, you have done your homework and are open for discussion and enlightenment. I find your way of presentation on this forum to be a breath of fresh air, considering my short time involved in reading this blog. One day I hope to visit the tower and would welcome a tour.

Jason Colavito link

3/20/2013 05:59:44 am

I think we can all agree that Mr. Egan has been extraordinarily kind in sharing his point of view, and I thank him for discussing it.

Matt Mc

3/20/2013 06:51:42 am

Videos are by nature deceiving and only offer a set narrative for review without proper citing and references required in writing. While writing can be deceiving also it is subject to more strick review process by the reader. Video is easier manipulated and convincing (ie. being drawn into a given subject by a persons excitement and passion).

The context is easier to manipulate with photo's and video and perspectives can be distorted. I am not saying that this is being done in the Newport Tower video as presented by Mr. Egan as I have not had to time to properly view them. I will say that videos and photographs should only be used as support of a written theory when it comes to historical or archeological presentations, especially when it comes to those wanting peer review.

Also I would like to ask, are there an admission to the Newport Tower Museum or is at free to the public? I like Christopher am skeptical of the about the motivations, it seems more like a way to generate income. So far based on what I have read there is not much different than the old Sideshow Gaffs of the old days. I mean we have a famous and controversial Occultist (one who later partner was a proven charlatan) and undocumented trip to the new world, a land claim of most land north of Rhode Island, strange astronomical symbols and a whole slew of other interesting arguments.

I would say P. T. Barnum would be proud, this makes his Cardiff Giant look trivial. Like I said I have no idea a large profit making Gaff is Egan's intention or he truly does believe what he writes. I do think that this is a great way to generate some money out of a interesting hobby

B L

3/20/2013 09:08:43 am

C'mon Matt Mc. Cut the guy a little bit of a break here. This is such a specialty niche that I'm sure Egan makes HUNDREDS, yes HUNDREDS (as in three whole figures) of dollars on the books that he's written on the subject. He is such a money hungry ghoul that he's posted one of his books for free on his website. And, discounting the possibility of Mr. Egan being independently wealthy, of course there should be an entry fee to the Newport Tower Museum. Any free-standing structure requires an outlay of cash to operate and maintain.

I'm all for questioning motives, but in this case I'm convinced that Egan is more passionate than most, and just wants to share what he's learned.

As to the previous question asked about why academics are not willing to take an interest in Egan's ideas...sure, some if not most, may find his point of view kind of goofy and decide to stay away. Others may stay away simply due to a fear of the career-ending treatment he has received by some in this thread. It's fine to question and to demand logical support for one's ideas. But, to denigrate and deride really hinders the process of progress. Seriously, the tone and language used in some of the previous comments would be considered punishable hate-crimes if words like "diffusionists" were replaced by racial identifiers.

Matt Mc

3/20/2013 10:09:28 am

I am sorry if I came across harsh in my post. I did not intend to. I believe and have found based on his post here that Mr. Egan is a very nice person who is honestly passionate about his theories on the Newport Tower. There is nothing wrong with trying to make extra money off a theory, none what so ever. There is nothing wrong with creating a private museum based on a popular tourist location and capitalizing off it also. Why not incorporate something you have a great interest in and share information about it and make a few extra dollars. I in no way think Mr. Egan is a charlatan. Like I said he seems very nice and sincere. I am sorry if I expressed that in any way.

I was just noticing that having a for profit museum (it comes across as a official site, which it is not) and than only forward a theory that you directly profit from (even if it is a dollar) does have a bit of Barnum style showman ship to it. When you add to it the wonderfully interesting (and it is) story he weaves with his theories, it makes for a great story. I don't myself see the difference between what Egan is doing and what the old Dime Museum operators of the past did. How different is a Occult Magician who worked for the Queens mysterious tower to a strange mermaid mummy found off the coast of Fiji. Both are fantastic and great fun, but should be considered as such.

I mean no insult to Mr Egan at all, I enjoy a good Gaff.

Christopher Randolph

3/20/2013 11:44:10 am

"Whether you are right or wrong, you have done your homework..."

Really? Is that how that works?

Starting with a fairy tale assumption and then working backward from that to weave an increasingly intricate series of layered suppositions, never challenging any of one's own assumptions, is not "doing your homework."

Guessing the height of a roof that doesn't exist and then the finial that doesn't exist atop the roof that doesn't exist and then starting to do qabbalistic division based in the sum is not "doing your homework," it's making things up out of whole cloth.

One small example: Egan claimed that in his 20 years of intense study resulted in not being aware of any stone windmill from NY to Maine (although why that particular range of area would somehow invalidate the possibility of one existing when located in that range is beyond me). I was able to find a stone windmill in NY in literal seconds by searching on the term "stone windmill." That's not even an exhaustive search nor is it taking into consideration any former stone windmills that might have been lost through time, it's simply bothering to verify a simple claim.

"... and are open for discussion and enlightenment."

I've asked Egan several simple questions he has no interest in attempting to answer. He clearly wants to avoid a collision between his pet project and reality. Egan has has answers from the academic community about the windmill; what he means by having someone study it is having someone who already agrees with him study it. If another actual expert tells him that it's a windmill that won't count to him as the academic community interacting with him.

"Others may stay away simply due to a fear of the career-ending treatment he has received..."

Huh? Before someone's academic career can end it has to begin. How about instead of (in effect) calling the entire set of archeologists and historians moral and intellectual cowards (a Scott Wolter technique), we take the Occam's razor approach that nobody with any experience and training sees anything worthy of study.

Egan isn't being persecuted. He's throwing out an idea into the public (one which happens to insinuate that the entirety of the historic and archeological community is comprised of close-minded, dim, likely elitist cowards) and reacting as if persecuted when having to provide a normal amount of proof and defense of his extraordinary claims.

I wasn't aware that wrong ideas became somehow more valid if the attempt to market them yielded a comparatively small amount of money owing to unpopularity. If Scott Wolter had a roadside attraction instead of a TV show would that lend him credibility?

Is it that unusual or out of line for me - for anyone - to question the claim that someone's ideas are so far advanced that the only ways we can understand their arguments is to pay them? Is it that unusual or out of line for me - for anyone - to do a thought experiment comparing the potential revenue for the mysterious Newport Tower Museum vs the Newport Windmill Museum (which explains to throngs of eager tourists how a windmill works, minus the advantage of a working windmill)?

B L

3/20/2013 02:49:45 pm

Christopher Randolph: Why don't you do us all a favor and use Occam's razor to cut the power cord to your computer. I bet you're a blast at parties. I was convinced the structure was a windmill, but now after reading your 752nd preachy post on the subject I'm gonna tell everyone who is willing to listen that YOU convinced me that is has always been John Dee's calendar/science project AND the rendezvous point for Templar Knights worldwide. There was a reason you were picked last in gym class, and it had nothing to do with your athletic abilities.

cora

3/19/2013 06:08:41 pm

Jim
Thanks for commenting here. Sounds like it has been a fun and fascinating journey for you.

The ill shaped egg is a non-issue in my mind. The exact shape does not matter as long as it served its purpose. For example I've seen very nicely done solar lit figures, say an arrow, ( for illustration purposes only). Then again I've seen very amorphous roughly done sun lit arrows. But they both worked to serve the purpose intended on the right day(s) of the year.

The plastering over is a bit more troublesome though you have mentioned one possible explanation.

I do think as a life long pro photographer you likely know your light and shadows and sun effects more than the average person.

It would not surprise me in the least to see things were lined up solstice wise. Many buildings throughout the ages were built with some attention to solar events. I have not studied how that evolved in English culture though, at the time period we are talking about.

You welcome, indeed wish, for academic 3rd party review, which is great. And I think telling.

Its cool that some additional information has come to light in this comment section that may give you more or different insight as to the nature and purpose of the tower. A shame that with the burning of the tower , there is not any organic material around that could be dated. The tower looks likes it has been cleaned.

David Cody

3/20/2013 10:53:46 am

Stumbled upon the _America Unearthed_ episode, thought it one of the most ineptly scripted and poorly acted fantasies that I had ever seen, wondered whether anybody else had wondered whether the fact that the show made it on the air at all might be a sign that our educational system is dissolving, and in search of an answer came upon this blog, the reading of which has proved (for the most part) reassuring. Just for the heck of it, I note in passing that a woodcut illustration (probably a copy of an earlier image) accompanying an article entitled "Newport" on page 63 of the first volume of the _American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge_ (Boston, 1835) depicts the tower in full windmill mode. The relevant bit of text reads "The wind-mill, an old stone tower on the top of the hill, is, as it appears in the cut, a very conspicuous object."

Jason Colavito link

3/20/2013 10:56:52 am

Fascinating! Click my name for a link to the book and picutre, or use this:

http://books.google.com/books?id=zhw_AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=American+Magazine+of+Useful+and+Entertaining+Knowledge&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FTBKUbLpDvi74AOU8IDQCQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20capital%20of%20the%20county%20of%22&f=false

Jim Egan

3/20/2013 02:58:52 pm

Based on the terrain and the view of the bay, this does appear to me to be a depiction of the Newport Tower. But I believe the artist took creative license by reshaping it, adding blades and turret. Philip Mean's book, Newport Tower (1942), shows 1 engraving from 1833, and 2 paintings from 1835. In all of them, the Tower in much the same condition you see it in today. (Some depict a rough top, suggesting there was once more to it.) Means also shows a dozen other illustrations and photos from the 1800's. In the 1870's, vines were allowed to grow, covering the entire exterior with leaves. (Presumably to make it more antique looking. This was called the Viny Period.) In the late 1800's and early 1900's during what is called the "Guilded Age of Newport," people came from all over America to Newport. They weren't here to visit the mansions, they were all private homes. They came to see the Tower.

Gareth

3/20/2013 03:11:38 pm

The artist of the original is William Guy Wall (1792-1864), who at the same time he painted or drew the view on which the image linked to above is based, also produced a view of the ruined Newport Tower, also published as an engraving. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=118490&imageID=54614&word=Barber%2C%20H.&s=3¬word=&d=&c=&f=4&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=1&num=0&imgs=12&pNum=&pos=1 .
So they aren't the same building.

L Bean

3/20/2013 05:08:27 pm

Jim Egan - just acursory glance at Newport's history would do you well. Ever heard of whale oil? It's the stuff that made millionaires before the real oil was discovered. Hint - it was used for everything in pre-electricity days. Newport's early establishment also fostered many other kinds of trade, including slaves. Newport was THE SPOT in colonial America, rum was distilled here, slaves were bought and sold for it.

By the time of the GILDED age, there was plenty of old and new money, many made their fortunes in trade and china, and the stately homes are still there to prove it. In the later period of the Gilded Age the robber barons(Vanderbilts etc) made Newport their summer getaway solely because of it's climate and "old money" pedigree, building even more stately homes and eventually turning Newport into the summer location for all events on the "society pages". As is usual with all resort areas, immigrants were brought in (Irish in this era) to serve. Maybe that's who you're thinking of?

Ever heard of a garden party? Seasonal guests? These things just don't happen on their own like the solstice, ya know.

Gareth

3/20/2013 11:04:28 am

Sadly, that's a different mill (there were several in Newport). It's a case of a description written by one person and an illustration (pirated from another source, and widely-circulated in various forms about the time of that publication) by someone else, put together in the American Magazine because they wanted to fill up space.

Jason Colavito link

3/20/2013 11:33:37 am

That explains why there are no arches in the picture.

Gareth

3/20/2013 11:46:38 am

The Des Barres plan of 1776 (which I posted earlier, here it is again: http://maps.bpl.org/id/12640 ) shows four other windmills around Newport. And interestingly it also shows a powder magazine at "U", a good distance from the Stone Wind Mill and perhaps casting doubt on the story about the Tower being blown up while being used as a magazine in the Revolutionary War.

Sean

3/20/2013 12:47:56 pm

Gareth,
Do you have an example of where else that image was used? Just a question out of curiosity.

With regard to the statement made in the article, "The wind-mill, an old stone tower on the top of the hill, is, as it appears in the cut, a very conspicuous object.", in a list of the windmills of Rhode Island the Newport Tower is the only one listed as a Tower. All the others are listed as Smocks.
So even if the image isn't of the Newport Tower the manner in which it's described and paralleled to the image would seem to suggest that it was either intact in 1835 or, at least, that the common knowledge at the time was that it was used a windmill.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_windmills_in_Rhode_Island )
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smock_mill )

Gareth

3/20/2013 01:16:43 pm

The image appears in, for example, The Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?strucID=166105&imageID=423097&k=4&print=info
which is a later work, but a "better" image. I'd say it's important not to be misled by that, but it seems very probable that the two versions of the view share a common source, possibly a painting. The way images were disseminated in publications in the early C19th is a complicated matter, but the crude woodcut of the American Magazine is very, very, unlikely to be the original version.
Whatever the case, that view shows a windmill which is a smock mill (the corners are obvious in both versions).
And the article in The American Magazine, such as it is, contains statistical information readily available from other published sources of the 1830s, but nothing to suggest that the writer had been any closer than a ship, from which it appeared that "the houses are thickly clustered on the margins of the town but seem from the water to be in want of paint and repairs", and has then conflated that impression with knowledge of a stone windmill in the town, and with an illustration showing a windmill at Newport, of which a rather crude version is given to illustrate a short piece of what we might now call infotainment, between a brief item on "the first printer in America", a little homily on good behaviour, and the Teatro San Carlo at Naples.
Hawthorne was publishing a bit of mildly educational fluff for a wide readership who would never actually check his facts, with illustrations pirated from wherever they could be found.
The wikipedia article makes several assumptions that the vanished examples were smock mills, and doesn't give the type for some others. British colonists were building stone tower mills (for processing sugar cane) from the middle of the 17th Century, and French colonists were building tower mills in Quebec in the 1670s.

Gareth

3/20/2013 01:20:49 pm

But yes, the common knowledge in 1835 (the publication date I have is 1839, by the way), was that the Tower had been a windmill, indeed it may well have still been one within the memory of the oldest inhabitants of Newport at the time. This is *just* before Rafn started muddying the waters with unsupportable speculations about Vikings.

Sean

3/20/2013 02:53:37 pm

Thanks for the response. In the scan I'm looking at it states that it was published by the Boston Bewick Comapny, No. 47, Court street. 1835 but that doesn't really matter. My apologies for not being clearer in my earlier post that I agree that the tower depicted is not the Newport Tower. I am also aware of the building capabilities of the time period but thank you for that as well. My point was just that this is one more reference to this structure which describes it for what it is.

Jim Egan

3/20/2013 02:27:20 pm

Here's some more mindblowing fresh meat for the piranhas and angel fish alike.

When the Rhode Island Charter was written in 1663, King Charles II specified one person to be the first governor: Benedict Arnold. (This of course was not Revolutionary war traitor Benedict Arnold trader, but it was his great-great-great grandfather.) Governor Benedict Arnold was reelected seven times, and when he died, 1000 people attended his funeral. His governor's mansion (torn down around 1910) was three blocks west of the Tower, just across Thames Street from were his wharfs and warehouses, boats, and 2 cannons. Just as he requested in his 1677 Will, he was buried halfway between his mansion and what he called "my Stone-built windmil’n." (His grave can still be seen today, 1.5 blocks west of the Tower.)

I claim that Governor Benedict Arnold was more important in establishing religious freedom here in Rhode Island than Roger Williams. Jews, Sabbatarians, Quakers, Ranters, were all allowed to settle here in Newport, where Arnold reigned, but you didn't see many in Providence where Roger Williams was in charge.

This dichotomy is still reflected in our state name. Though we are the smallest date we have the longest name, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. (And look who got top billing.)

Yet strangely, no biography has ever written about Governor Benedict Arnold. He's almost completely ignored Rhode Island history books. Why? Because his great-great-great grandson tarnished his good name.

Roger Williams gets all the glory in this state (he certainly did some great stuff). There is Roger Williams University, Roger Williams Hospital, and Roger Williams Park. Let me ask you this: Would you dish out $40,000 a year to send your kid to Benedict Arnold University. I don't think so. We Americans have this thing about that name.

So the first thing I did was to write a biography of Governor Benedict Arnold based on three years of searching through all the early RI records. He was born in 1615 and died in 1678. He grew up in Ilchester, in the West Country of England. He was 17 years old, working at his father's clothing store, tending the family farm, learning Greek and Latin and the quadrivium in school when the Chesterton windmill was built. That windmill design by Indigo Jones was in Warwickshire, about 200 miles to the north. There is a slim chance that Arnold might have taken a fortnight to travel up there and see a windmill. But windmills are not really what most teenage boys are excited about.

When he was 19 years old, he sailed to America with his extended family of ten people. After spending some time in Hingham, Massachusetts, the Arnold Clan came to Narragansett Bay, the exact same month that Roger Williams arrived, in April of 1634. Benedict Arnold and Roger Williams were the only two settlers who learned the native Algonquin tongue, and thus were the only two signers of the original deed to Providence.

Roger Williams was content with the 100 or so square miles settlement group had received from the Narragansetts. But Benedict Arnold and his father William Arnold were land hungry. Not only did they start buying up large tracts of land from the Indians, they broke from Providence and put their lands and the estates under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Furthermore, Benedict became the main trading factor between the Narragansett Indians, the largest tribe in New England, and the Massachusetts Bay colony. Arnold probably had a three-day trading route in which he transported furs, wampum, and hundreds of bushels of the Indian corn in a fleet of shallops ( boats that could be rowed or sailed). One day from Providence and Pawtuxet to Newport, the next to Nantucket and the third around Cape Cod to Boston. He returned with tools, guns, liquor, and ammunition, which he sold to the Indians and the people of Providence. He became fabulously wealthy. He also became the main interpreter between the Narragansetts and the magistrates of the United Colonies, which included Plymouth, Mass. Bay, and Connecticut.

In 1651 Benedict Arnold and his family moved to Newport, and helped this colony to blossom and prosper.

It was Benedict Arnold who insisted that Aqidneck Island, (where the Tower is) be called Rhode Island, and that the Anchor of Hope be adopted for our state symbol (which it still is today). Roger Williams objected vehemently. Williams wanted this island to be named “Patmos,” the island in the Aegean Sea where Saint John had written the book of Revelation. But Arnold prevailed. And remember, Arnold owned the Tower.

Flash back to the 1583. The Spanish Ambassador to London, Don Bernadino de Mendoza, had warned the Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham that the Spanish would "slit the throats" of everyone at that colony, “just like they had done at the Jean Ribault colony in Florida.” (Indeed, the Spanish had massacred the entire French colony there a few

Gareth

3/20/2013 02:36:14 pm

I'll leave aside all the colourful and unsupported speculation in that message, and give you the view today of Chesterton Windmill from the Fosse Way, which when Benedict Arnold was growing up was one of the major routes between his birthplace in the south west of England and the English midlands and north,
http://goo.gl/maps/OUmVH
And I'll go on to say that the idea that it was Arnold, personally, who knew the windmill is really just the icing on the cake, it is only necessary that someone he knew well enough to influence his architectural aspirations (which he obviously had, but presumably didn't pick up as a farm boy / clothier's son in Somerset) had seen it.

jim

3/20/2013 02:28:22 pm

Flash back to the 1583. The Spanish Ambassador to London, Don Bernadino de Mendoza, had warned the Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham that the Spanish would "slit the throats" of everyone at that colony, “just like they had done at the Jean Ribault colony in Florida.” (Indeed, the Spanish had massacred the entire French colony there a few years earlier.)

So John Dee devised a secret code word, and a secret code symbol for the Elizabethan Mission of 1583. He hid them cryptically in the Title page illustration of his 1577 General and Rare Memorials, the text he used to convince the Queen she had a legal right to all of North America (except Florida, where the Spanish were).

John Dee’s secret code symbol was: The Anchor of Hope. And John Dee’s secret code word for the mission of 1583: Rhode.

That's right, I’m certain Governor Benedict Arnold knew about John Dee, the mission of 1583 and the purpose of the Tower, (which Arnold claimed because he was the first one here in the 1630’s). Arnold knew all about Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh and John Dee.
(From 1583 to 1634 is only 41 years. It's like telling me I've never heard of the Beatles, or the Kennedy assassination. These Elizabethans were his countrymen.)
The Elizabethan writer Richard Hakluyt in his “Divers Voyages Touching upon the Discovery of America” describes what is now Narragansett Bay and calls it the “Country of Sir H.G. Voyage” [Humphrey Gilbert]. In a list of Expeditions to the New World, the final entry mentions: “1582, Anthony Brigham,” (the preliminary expedition which, I claim, built the Tower).

Furthermore, the word Rhode is written in the arrangement of the stones in the arches of the Tower. But you'll never see unless you understand John Dee in his mathematical philosophy.
In the Monas Hieroglyphica, John Dee boils his whole philosophy down to one number: 252. If you understand what 252 means, you will understand the Monas and the Tower.
I spent 10 years deciphering what 252 means and what Dee’s mathematical philosophy was all about. (And no, it doesn’t involve Edward Kelley’s and John Dee’s later attempts to converse with the angels.) I have explained it all in-depth in my eight books, all available for free at my website. And I have summarized it in one book entitled “Elizabethan America” which is also free (or if you want to hold a paper version of it you can buy at Amazon).
Or you can visit the Newport Tower Museum, find out what 252 means, and see for yourself the word Rhode on the Tower.

Is all this self-promotional? You bet. I'm laughing all the way to the bank. I’ve lost thousands running my museum the past two year. Museums and books are not moneymakers. My goal here is not fame and fortune (or bankruptcy), but to share with Americans this fascinating story of the Tower of how it is important in the birth of our great country.
In the 1600’s, Rhode Island was different than the other colonies up and down the coast, which were all governed by various churches. This was the birthplace of the separation of church and state. In the 1700’s, Rhode Islanders refused to sign the Constitution until Bill of Rights were amended to it, because by signing it, they would have had fewer freedoms.

L Bean

3/20/2013 05:18:24 pm

If you believe all of that I have a spring house to sell you in Ethiopia that lies directly above the site of the real holy grail. How do I know this? Look up the coordinates, divide by your birthday, jump up and down three times, and cough. And then add the coordinates of your favorite sunspot.

See, I told you you wouldn't need that ol' dowsing rod!

It's as plain as the egg on the rock face!

Christopher Randolph

3/20/2013 06:19:09 pm

"Museums and books are not moneymakers."

This will come as some news to the museum and publishing communities. Books people want to read and museums people want to visit make large sums of money. The fact that you aren't doing particularly well financially doesn't mean you couldn't be. Are you incorporated as a non-profit?

Jim Egan

3/20/2013 02:29:26 pm

This might clarify things:
My 4 reasons why Benedict Arnold “shaded the truth” and called it his “Stone-built windmill’n” in his 1677 will:

1 This 1583 colony was to be Anglican, but the Catholics who settled here would have been allowed to worship as they pleased. It was Catholic sympathizers who had funded these expeditions. Besides being a horologium, (a building which keeps track of time), this building was also a Catholic Church. (The horologiums in Italy were in churches.)

In, Puritan New England of the 1600s, anything related to the Pope or Catholicism was not very popular to say the least. If this Tower was widely publicized as a Catholic Church, it would've been torn down. Benedict knew its importance as a horologium designed by John Dee and he saved it by claiming he, (as the first settler), had built it as a windmill.

2 If the decendants of the Peckham family, (who had financed the Elizabethan expedition), found out that a building still existed here, and they dug up the deed in the Elizabethan state papers in London, all these early Rhode Island settlers might have been out of the land and homes they had risked their lives for.

3 The interior of this Tower acted like a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room. Along with the solar disc, (the image of the sun), you also have an image of what's outside projected on the walls. People walking by, horses towing carts, leaves rustling on the trees, clouds blowing. The 1600’s with the times of the witchcraft trials up in Salem, having images of people walking across walls would be hard to explain.

4 In the Puritan 1600's, as the scientific revolution was starting, many wanted to shut the door on the astrology and alchemy of the 1500's. In the 1580s, John Dee had hired Edward Kelly to be his crystal ball reader. They traveled all across Europe together. Dee claims he never saw the angels, but he believed that Kelly could communicate with them, and so he wrote down the transcription of many of their séances. Dee buried his Diary in a wooden box in the backyard of his house in Mortlake. After Dee died, an antiquarian purchased the house, found the box, and published Dee’s diary. So Dee's reputation as a scholar and influential member of the Queens court became tainted. That tarnished reputation has continued up until about 20 years ago, when scholars started to really study John Dee and discover how instrumental he was in bringing the Renaissance to England.

Her is one great clue (of many) that Benedict knew all about Dee, Gilbert and the Tower.

In December 1677, Benedict Arnold wrote his Last Will and Testament. In February of 1678 , despite being ill and housebound, he was reelected governor of Rhode Island. The citizens knew he could negotiate with the Indians, and indeed Aquidneck island was one of the few places in Southern England that was never attacked by the Indians during King Philip's war.
(Providence and Warwick were burned to the ground.)

On the Summer Solstice in June 1678, Benedict Arnold wrote a Codicil (or amendment) to his Will. (He died a week later, so this might be the last time he ever signed his name). This date is quite telling. Exactly 100 years, one century, before this date, on the Summer Solstice in June 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert received his letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I to settle all of North America (except Florida). The last thing Benedict did was to drop us a fat clue.

Was most of my story and my opinions stifled on the “America Unearthed” episode "America's Oldest Secret? You bet. But I got to be in front of 1 million viewers and Wolter called me "an authority on the Tower" and even the wrote the words “John Dee” and showed Dee’s picture on the screen. There's no such thing as bad PR.
Thank you again for all your open minds and ears, your responses and thoughts. I honor and respect all your opinions about the Tower because, to me, that's what it represents: freedom of thought.

Gareth

3/20/2013 02:45:39 pm

Jim
You said at the outset that the Tower had never been used as a windmill. I provided evidence that it had (the Des Barres map). Any comment?
Among your recent speculations there's this:

"The interior of this Tower acted like a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room. Along with the solar disc, (the image of the sun), you also have an image of what's outside projected on the walls. People walking by, horses towing carts, leaves rustling on the trees, clouds blowing. The 1600’s with the times of the witchcraft trials up in Salem, having images of people walking across walls would be hard to explain"

It wouldn't work like that, not with three pretty big windows.

Gareth

3/20/2013 02:53:24 pm

remind me how this, on the one hand, simple farm boy from the West Country who was only 19 when he sailed to the New World and wasn't interested in the technological, scientific and architectural advances of his time exemplified by the Chesterton windmill, and had no connection to the Royal court...
...is on the other hand the keeper of John Dee's "secret", with the wealth and influence to become Governor of Rhode Island at Charles II's behest, and to "cover up" the "truth" about Dee's "secret" colony of a century earlier?
Do you see how nonsensical your suggestions (with no evidence to back them up) are?

jim

3/20/2013 03:27:02 pm

Des Barres Map and others called it the Stone Wind Mill. Means also cites the Mumford map of 1712, the Blaskowitz map of 1777 and the Stiles map of 1758. And then concludes: " Altogether, these maps tell scarcely more than that the tower has long been where it is now. In this respect, they are much less informative than the pictures which we have already examined."

You are correct, but to be in a room in Newport in fall, winter, and spring which didn't close would render that first-floor room useless (and snow drifty). I'm sure they were shuttered. Why else have a fireplace?
With If the windows were all blocked up except for one small hole about the size of a dime, it would be impossible NOT to have a camera obscura image projected onto the interior walls. I have made dozens of camera obscura rooms and pinhole cameras, and you can't get it NOT to happen. They can be made anywhere on Earth, on the Moon, in the Space Shuttle, anywhere there is LIGHT. (You are on the right track, understanding the behavior of light is the key to understanding the Tower.)

Christopher Randolph

3/20/2013 06:53:47 pm

Just to be clear, you have John Dee working with the British queen, keeping a colony literally founded around a Catholic Church a secret from... Spain?

Exactly what is your proof that this building was a (secret) Catholic Church? In addition to our 40 masons and 40 carpenters and the sailors and and others keeping these people supplied, we now have to add at least one priest. Was this a secret priest, or..? Any particular order? This is an awful lot of people sailing away to their possible doom without telling anyone where they're going or why.

Are you under the impression that Catholics make a lot of secret colonial churches or just this one?

Are you claiming that it was necessary to keep a church secret from the Puritans, but not a mystical astronomical observation tower? Keeping in mind that you have this tower the first and only object built for the colony... what was it supposed to be disguised as exactly? "Tower - what tower? Oh, the building we have 80 people working on to the exclusion of everything else in our new colony, that tower? Yeah... it's a... um... well it certainly isn't a windmill... and it's not a Catholic church...."

First you say the building is amazing and unique and then you say:

"it would be impossible NOT to have a camera obscura image projected onto the interior walls. I have made dozens of camera obscura rooms and pinhole cameras, and you can't get it NOT to happen. "

... so why does Dee need a tower then? This doesn't make any sense. All it does is attract attention to itself, which is a terrible way to keep a secret.

Why not build a normal building that looks like a normal building if it's supposed to be a secret, hold services there and do the math for your Indiana Jones calendar to match windows in whatever shaped building one likes. If Dee's this big of a math genius that should be simplicity itself. There's nothing special about an irregular tube shape which aids beams of light finding their way around a dark room.

I'll ask again, why can't 80 skilled masons and carpenters following the instructions of a mathematical genius build a circle?

Christopher Randolph

3/20/2013 07:13:26 pm

I'd also still like an answer as to why Dee (who we claim wasn't present and had never been to the island) would chose this particular spot for an observation tower. It's not only far from the highest ground on the island, it's not the highest ground in Newport, and it doesn't appear to be the highest ground east across the island from its location, which seems important for anyone attempting to track the sun.

I'd also like to know why any religious colony, let alone one with wealthy benefactors, isn't going to do better than an 18 ft diameter (!) house of worship. Precisely how many people are fitting in this? And how low is that ceiling..? Worst church ever. The carpenters and masons alone would have to attend mass in shifts.

Byron DeLear

3/21/2013 07:05:39 am

I like Jim's story and exploration... it's a great story. And we're all here IMHO because we love stories, history and their intersection.

However, the main problem for me is the cost and the potential loss of investment suffered by the builders and investors of the tower (presumably in late 16th century by John Dee according to Jim Egan).

It doesn't make any sense to build a permanent structure (stone) on a single expeditionary trip (1582) only to leave it unprotected -- and I'll venture to say, un-used.

This contruction would seem to be complete folly and foolishness---and as I asked earlier, does anyone knew of a historical precedent?

• Builders traveling to a faraway land at great expense

• Building a single, expensive monument with an ostensibly utilitarian purpose (astronomy, camera obscura, worship, wind mill, etc.)

• Abandoning it for months, years, without any plan for its protection

The timeline on this just seems a little askew. These lands were populated. When you dropped anchor and came ashore with the intent of hanging around for awhile you built a fort so you could stay alive. And you manned the fort. Is there any other structure or fort or colony in place BEFORE construction of the tower begins in the Jim Egan narrative?

The only rationale for an unprotected project like Jim suggests, would be of an irrational ilk, namely, religious—not unlike, say, the Easter Island heads.

Why do we travel across the world and build an astronomical monument of John Dee’s design? Because God told us to do so.

However, I would think we would still need some sort of precedence of this behavior being duplicated somewhere else in history by Elizabethans, and/or Europeans in general, to believe that this great expenditure (voyage, men, building the tower) would be so readily abandoned to fate.

Otherwise, it becomes an extremely extraordinary claim that requires extremely extraordinary evidence to become anything other than a fanciful and cool historical exploration—a great story, but probably fiction.

If there IS a precedence for this sort of unprotected, remote monument building, then maybe the NT was John Dee’s device...

Jason, Chris, any thoughts on a historical precedence?

Christopher Randolph

3/21/2013 10:39:23 am

Byron -

According to the diffusionist crowd it's standard operating procedure for Europeans to make incredible journeys to inconvenient locales for the purpose of carving a few symbols (poorly) or building useless structures (poorly), and then to turn around and come home. This is apparently just what white people do, and for some reason makes us more interesting and awesome.

Of interest to me, because the story is too silly to be considered on its own merit, is what the construction of the story tells us about the worldview of the storyteller. And I don't see much here other than the fact that there's no apparent concern nor interest being projected unto John Dee or his colonists as to how or if local natives would or should interact with this "2001: A Space Odyssey"-style monolith plunked down in front of them by some palefaces in a hurry.

The native population are just written out of the tale completely. Par for the America Unearthed course.

Sean

3/21/2013 04:56:05 am

“3 The interior of this Tower acted like a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room. Along with the solar disc, (the image of the sun), you also have an image of what's outside projected on the walls. People walking by, horses towing carts, leaves rustling on the trees, clouds blowing. The 1600’s with the times of the witchcraft trials up in Salem, having images of people walking across walls would be hard to explain.”

Since no one has addressed this I’d like to take a moment to do so.

First, a “camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room” is something that you coined yourself and only seems to imply the use of light to tell time. Not an unheard of concept but not needing any new, lengthy terminology.

Second, the camera obscura has a long and documented history easily accessible to anyone so I won’t bother listing it as it only requires the words typed into a search engine to get millions of results. In short, its uses have been both artistic and scientific throughout history and its principles are fairly straightforward. In order for a camera obscura (literally “dark room”) to work the two parts that are non-negotiable are an appropriately sized aperture to let light through and darkness so that the minimal amount of light that passes through the aperture is visible on the projection surface on which the image would be reversed. The most efficient camera obscurae utilize a lens and mirrors.

There are a few things to address with regard to your statement. Your conclusion as to the purpose is pure conjecture. Since this is your own interpretation and not based on hard evidence I won’t bother with a full refutation.

As I stated earlier the camera obscura requires a total lack of light except for that which enters the aperture in order to work. This would automatically make impossible the idea that people would be walking past and viewing projected images. They would have to be inside the structure with it closed up to observe the projections.

At the time you’re referring to in the seventeenth century the principles of the camera oscura, lenses and optics had already been around for hundreds of years and are conceptually easy to explain. Although these things would not have been household items one can hardly posit that the people of the time would’ve been totally ignorant and therefore fearful of such technology simply because of the religious hysteria of1692 in Salem. Such hysteria exists today in many parts of the world but we aren’t fearful of technology because other places have different opinions. All you do by drawing that parallel is calling the people of seventeenth century Salem ignorant. It has no relevance to this situation.

There are many examples of camera obscura rooms built all over the world but all are enclosed. The largest one, in Aberystwyth, Wales, is not only enclosed but uses mirrors, and a 14 in. lens in order to accomplish what you’re proposing the Newport Tower was designed for.

So here are a few questions for you regarding direct evidence of your hypothesis: Have you ever found the original shutters that would have been required for this? There would be many needed and one of the window shutters would’ve had the aperture in it. Or if you’re suggesting that something of this size utilized a lens and mirrors have you found any of those? Have you found any reference in any original source material that made any mention of projected images on the wall of the structure? One would think that such an uncommon structure with such an unusual function would’ve been the town’s claim to fame. It seems odd that no one would mention it.

Jim Egan

3/22/2013 04:26:41 pm

In 1557 Dee wrote a book called "On Perspective, as it pertains to pictures."
1n 1557 Dee wrote " On Burning Mirrrors" (a study the geometry of parabolic mirrors.)
In 1559 Dee wrote a book on the geometry of "The Refraction of Rays."

As early as 1550, Giralmo Cardano writes, "If you want to see things which go on in the street, at a time when the sun shines, place in the window shutter a biconvex lens."

Dee was not only a camera obscura expert, he also knew how to sharpen the image at a particular projection distance. Dee met Cardano when Cardano lived in London for a while.

Dee knew more about optics. than all of us combined.

Sean

3/23/2013 10:36:38 am

So what you're saying is that you have not found any physical evidence of your thesis nor any reference by any inhabitant of the region at any time to what you've suggested is the inherent purpose of this structure.

Thank you for your response.

jim

3/23/2013 11:23:17 am

Not at all. There are loads of clues in the Tower and in written texts. And many "inhabitants" have hinted about it. That's what my 8 books are about. Is there a "smoking gun"? No. But Sherlock Holmes solved many cases without "smoking guns."

Sean

3/23/2013 12:45:18 pm

Your responses seem to indicate you know that "clues" and "hints" aren't evidence.

You've now directly answered that no lens, no mirrors, no aperture, no direct mention in any record or correspondence has ever been found to support your hypothesis.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote many books as well. While many featured his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, the number of stories he appears in doesn't make Holmes any less fictional.

Jim Egan

3/23/2013 03:03:19 pm

"Objection, Your Honor, Leading the witness."

No mirrors lenses, or shutters have ever been found. (Technically speaking, the aperture is still there.)

The clues that this is a camera-obscura solar-disc calendar-room are the architectural arrangement of the 5 niches (all different sizes and shapes) the built-in-the-wall fireplace, the 3 differently-sized windows and 2 peepholes, and the sockets for the stairway.

These rooms were used in the Renaissance to keep track of time. There is still one in the Vatican today. It is in the Tower of the Winds.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-06-24-vatican24_CV_N.htm

The great astronomer J L Heilbron wrote a whole book about them:

http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Church-Cathedrals-Solar-Observatories/dp/0674005368

At the last movie I saw, I didn't see the projector, but I can safely assume there was one.

Sean

3/23/2013 06:01:30 pm

As I said in my original post using light to mark time isn't new. I made reference myself to a camera obscura room in Wales which actually does what you claim the Newport Tower did.

(In this context a window does not an aperture make.)

The point which I keep making, and that you keep making more definitively with every response, is that there is no physical evidence that you have ever uncovered which supports these ideas.

Your "clues" are references to books that don't support your thesis, and places that have long and documented histories that don't support your thesis. There are no shipping records, no building plans, no work orders for lenses or mirrors.

Although what you've presented is testable no tests of the sight using analogous materials has been done to test if this could be achieved even under ideal conditions.

If there were any physical evidence at all there might be something to discuss but as you have already stated there isn't. Until real evidence is presented or tests can be performed there is no point to continuing with this conversation.

Best of luck.

Sean

3/24/2013 02:20:37 am

That should've been "...no tests of the site using analogous materials...". Hooray for late night posts.

Gunn Sinclair link

3/21/2013 05:39:52 am

Hi Jim, if you come back to the blog, I'm curious to know whether or not you have opinions about the two sets of initials seen carved into rocks on the interior of the Tower. I took these photos last year, early summer. Actually, I ran into you at the Tower and we had a pretty good discussion.

This one set of intials appears to be quite aged. I'm wondering if either of the sets of initials match up with early names you might be aware of. Thanks. (Hang in there.)

Personally, as a wind turbine inventor myself (with a patent for a new kind of enclosed vertical-axis wind turbine), I don't think the Newport Tower was ever used as a wind turbine. It is far too intricate...just my own opinion.

I've been very curious about these two sets of initials ever since I captured them with a telephoto lens last year. Thanks for any further input.

http://www.hallmarkemporium.com/discoveries/id23.html

PS: Jim, what do you think of the aged, triangulated "Jason Colavito Stonehole" to be seen on the Altar Rock page? Jason cannot explain this stonehole named after him, because it is not perfectly round and fresh looking as he would prefer. I wonder what kind of carbon dating materials might be discovered within the layer of white chips to be found buried a number of inches in the ground below the large stoneholes. Can some of these stoneholes be dated? Why not? Perhaps some of these stoneholes can even help to confirm the time-frame of the Kensington Runestone, mid-Fourteenth Century.

jim egan

3/21/2013 09:41:47 am

I couldn't get your link to photos, but I suspect you are referring to the 3 prominent initials over niche 1 on the eastern interior wall. I think those are more modern, perhaps in the 1800's as those same 3 initials are also found in one of the 8 pillars, along with more grafitti that seems to be from the 1800's. Can't comment on stoneholes. I have not seen them.

Jim Egan

3/21/2013 09:30:50 am

The Tower is ideally sited. It has a 180 degree view of the western horizon. It overlooks Newport Harbor, a naturally protected harbor at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, one of the finest natural bays on the East Coast.
If the term “church” conjures up a massive 100-pew room to the modern ear, perhaps the word “chapel.” Dee was designing a Vitruvian circular temple, much like Bramante’s Tempietto (San Pietro in Montorio) (Google it for a visual). If you don’t understand the influence of Vitruvius, and Bramante’s Tempietto, in the 1400’s Italian Renaissance you won’t be able to envision what I call Dee’s “Tempietto Americana” in the 1500’s Elizabethan Renaissance.

Christopher Randolph

3/21/2013 10:23:16 am

"The Tower is ideally sited. It has a 180 degree view of the western horizon."

... meaning, of course, that as stated the windmill has higher ground across the island to its east, which is a mighty odd situation for solar observation. Certainly religious significance is generally attached to first light sightings from the east among people who bother doing that. Certainly there are spots higher in Newport which also have (maybe even better?) views of the harbor, although your claim is that the tower was for astronomical observation and on top of that a camera obscura, so who cares about the "view" of the harbor from inside a dark room?

People don't question your conjectures out of ignorance. San Pietro is described as "perfectly proportioned," which doesn't exactly describe our windmill. What's more it's set in a "narrow courtyard" (which again makes zero sense for the design of an astronomical device) and is surrounded by columns. Its location is the supposed site of a martyrdom, it wasn't selected for either the view (which the courtyard would block) nor as a scientific instrument. Other than being very roughly cylindrical the two buildings have virtually nothing in common.

It's as if I hammered a box together out of 6 ill-matched pieces of wood and you compared the result to Frank Lloyd Wright's work.

It appears your answer (by omission) to the question of your proof of a Catholic Church is that you don't have any. Unlike many Protestant sects the church famously frowns upon individual interpretation of the Bible and didn't go setting up religious outposts unguided by a priest.

In fact the church very aggressively set about conversions of natives, who par for the course for alternative historians play into your narrative not a whit. I should think that if the Catholic Church were placing a foot in 16th century Rhode Island then they'd do what they did every other place in the Americas and set about converting the natives openly. Compare the aggressive conversion of the Micmac for example, beginning in 1610, with your narrative in which (lay?) Catholics (but not the priesthood..?) build one tiny chapel for white people, tell no one about it, and leave.

Is it too much to ask you address a question I'm now asking directly a 4th time: Why is it that you assert a mathematical genius is employing 80 skilled laborers at great expense to replicate masterpieces of Renaissance and/or Roman architecture yet they can't make matching arches or a neat circle?

Christopher Randolph

3/21/2013 10:30:17 am

I'll add that Egan asserts that this is going to the be first building and focal point of the "Manhattan" of a massive (yet oddly secret) new colony. So what do we do? We send 80 skilled laborers possibly to their death and at great expense to build a structure with an 18 ft internal diameter to be the centerpiece! This can't be taken seriously.

Jim Egan

3/22/2013 03:51:54 pm

The Tower is only slightly out of round. And that's pretty amazing having been exposed to the elements for centuries. If the Tower top was oval, I’d be asking you how they could put a round windmill turret on an oval building. I've taken zoom-telephoto shots from a helicopter, and the tower appears quite circular. Any out of roundness is hardly noticeable to the eye.

And as far as I can see, all the arches match. In fact I think they were all made from the same tall box mold. True, there is a slight variation in the distances between neighboring colors, but it's only a matter of inches.
When I walk around the Tower to discern which neighboring pillars have the widest gap, it's nearly impossible to tell with the eyes. Using a tape measurer, one will find discrepancies, but as the Tower was totally plastered, it's challenging to measure.

For example, the plaster might have been applied thicker in some places to compensate for any "rough construction" variations. (No matter how straight modern rough carpenter make a wall from straight 2 by 4’s, the sheet rock guy still need shims.)

The circumference of each of the eight pillars is pretty much the same. Philip Ainsworth Means reports that four of them “are close to 116” inches in circumference, three of them are “118 inches,” and one is “114.5 inches.”

Christopher Randolph

3/31/2013 06:31:19 pm

The windmill is reported to currently have one diameter 1 foot and 1 inch longer than another, which on a building of only about an 18 ft diameter on average is seriously out of whack. Worse, a 19th century account when there was more plaster on it lists a 1 foot 5 inch discrepancy. The plaster seems to have been making things worse and not better.

Of course you'll claim there was even more plaster in the thing to even things out and that it had been eroding unevenly over a century ago, or some such highly unscientific speculation, (The only shimming being done here is by you, attempting to shim facts to fit your story.) But that cuts down the interior dimensions even further, rendering the building less and less useful for any purpose.

Do you seriously believe that John Dee sat around calculating precisely how his team of 80 contractors should build an oval tower with mismatched arches (out of pieces of stone he never saw) and then the precise amount of plaster needed to even things out? Ridiculous.

Funny how actual Renaissance structures not claimed to have astronomical uses manage to hold their shapes through the centuries, but your windmill can't.

Gunn Sinclair link

3/21/2013 10:38:25 am

Jim, highlight the link above and then use ctrl and the c key to copy, then paste into the url space way above using the ctrl and v key. Otherwise, just type it in. Someone else here on the blog asked for photos of the Newport Tower, and I made them available. The page with the initials will pop right up...I just tried it.

Don't worry about commenting on the Jason Colavito Stonehole, even though it's easy to see that the chiseled hole has A LOT of aging. Jason cannot confirm this because he would then have to admit that it was not intended for use as a 19th Century blasting hole, which would then open the door to other possibilities. Scott Wolter is doing the same thing with me, purposely avoiding agreeing about the appearance of a particular stonehole because he doesn't want to admit that I may have discovered medieval "exploration" evidences at a particular site in SD. Photos can be seen of this "Scott Wolter Stonehole" at the website given above, on the Swedish Runestone page.

Scott and Jason are like two cozy peas in a pod when it comes to purposely avoiding aged stoneholes. Who would've thought these two distinguished gentlemen would have so much in common? Want to be evidence-based? LOOK at the stoneholes. They don't lie.

BTW, I can attest to Jason's claim about a lot of people reading this blog, as I had nearly 300 page hits last week and more than a hundred a day since then, all because of this blog. In other words, hundreds of people are seeing aged, triangulated stoneholes for the first time in their lives. This will be important because these stoneholes are valuable clues to America's medieval past. But, yes, we must wait for more puzzle pieces to be fitted in.

What was the stonehole intended for, out in the absolute middle of no-where?

It looks like religion to me, just like the Newport Tower looked like religion to a blogger just above me. Some things don't make sense unless the religious element is considered, and even then it may be unbelievable to others. At this point, I would ask readers to consider that the Kensington Runesone has religious elements carved into it.

This is all a wonderful mystery, which I believe can be solved perhaps even one little clue at a time...like puzzle pieces.

The Jason Colavito Stonehole is a puzzle piece. It is a very important piece of the puzzle up here. Jason, both your hand and your mouth are frozen. In the name of OCD, what will you do with this lonely stonehole that bears your name for all of eternity on the internet?

(Or at least until earth suffers a major meltdown blasting through the nearest black hole. New heaven and new earth, anyone?)

Jason Colavito link

3/21/2013 10:49:43 am

I don't suppose you saw that way back in my blog posting about stone holes I said that there is no way to declare one explanation to cover every possible stone hole, since different holes may have had different purposes. As I stated, archaeologists have found that many stone holes match the holes in blasted stones used for building foundations. There is a long way between "I don't know what this is" to "Europeans came here in the Middle Ages and did it."

I obviously can't comment on a hole I've never personally seen, nor am I experienced enough with drilling techniques to say anything about it. That said, I'm not sure why the triangular shape is of special interest. Wouldn't bringing a drill in three times at an angle to make a wider hole produce that shape?

Gunn Sinclair link

3/21/2013 11:05:11 am

Jason, thanks for finally answering! You bring up a good point about the triangulated shape. No, it can't be made with a drill three times at an angle. The particular shape of triangulated stoneholes is made by hand-chiseling. Hand-chiseling with a regular flat chisel causes that shape. It is the same shape as medieval stoneholes to be found in Iceland, etc. The shape says it was made by hand and not by a drill.

Jason, though you haven't seen this stonehole "in person," I have provided excellent close-up's that anyone reading this can see are aged. Anyone. But one has to look.

I've been having a difficult time about this, because up here people want to believe these were for mooring ships! Also, even though 250 years separate the Viking Age from the Runestone, people up here in MN want to conjoin the two. Big Ole. So, I've been in my own struggle up here, trying to show people what these stonehole were not for, and that the Vikings didn't leave the Runestone. If I may say so, I've been between a rock and a hard place!

I'll leave you alone now. OCD accomplished...at least partially. But any way you look at it, you now have a lonely stonehole named after you. Great.

Jason Colavito link

3/21/2013 11:38:05 am

I'm afraid I still don't understand why some people wouldn't have used chisels to make blasting holes. I'm sure not everyone had a drill capable of boring into stone.

Gunn Sinclair link

3/21/2013 12:16:36 pm

Hi again Jason. You are right about this. Although I could say that it is less likely that all these stoneholes would have gone abandoned, not blasted, if they had been made laboriously...they wouldn't be so easy to just forget about.

That's where we must consider aging. I'll admit I'm not a stonehole aging expert. However, may I humbly suggest that if 100 people were invited to look at the now-somewhat-famous Jason Colavito Stonehole, in other words my close-up's www.hallmarkemporium.com/discoveries of that particular stonehole, I think a vast majority would be willing to go on the limb as agreeing that the stonehole looks very aged. Not just a little bit aged, but A LOT aged, and this makes a difference.

Notice above somewhere that I suggested a way for professionals to possibly date some of these stoneholes. Most folks think these stoneholes cannot be aged-tested. So then, if these stoneholes are obviously very aged, what were they for? I've already covered that before, about carving up land.

I notice you just posted another blog heading about the so-called Welsh Indians. Here is what's funny about our conversation about stoneholes: there are two main clusters, if you will, of stoneholes and what I consider to be medieval evidences here in the Upper Midwest, in and around the Kensington Runestone in MN, and across the border in SD.

It is my own personal opinion that it was Scandinavian DNA, not Welsh DNA, that contributed to those "White Indians." Of course we're really talking about the Mandans. I recently read a book entiled "Sheheke, Mandan Indian Diplomat," sub-titled "The Story of White Coyote, Thomas Jefferson, and Lewis and Clark."

These Mandans, many of them, had blond hair and blueish eyes. It is my belief that Scandinavians made all the stoneholes in SD, along the Whetstone River, where there are carvings of Scandinavian items. I myself have discovered stoneholes and a carving of an owl, overlooking a spring-fed pond. I think this large group of Scandinavians became the Mandan, or Welsh, White Indians. The geography is close.

I wonder what Sheheke and Thomas Jefferson talked about when he and Yellow Corn traveled to Washington to see the President? Upon returning to ND, Sheheke was later murdered by a Native American, apparently out of jealousy.

Byron DeLear

3/22/2013 02:14:19 am

As a clarification Gunn, on the Newport Tower "looking like religion" --- my point was that, seemingly, the only explanation that makes any sense for a completely nonsensical investment of huge sums of money toward building a remotely-located monument, only to abandon it without any plan for its protection, would be religious. Meaning, it doesn't matter how much it costs or who'll protect it because, “God commands us to build this thing thousands of miles away and then leave.” I think this is an extremely remote possibility. People want to keep the things they build, not abandon them. This could have been a divine directive the Queen and Dee would've have received, and then they, in turn, would contract and fund the voyage. I would assume there would be records of this, advertisements for the voyage, ship's manifest indicating masons and craftsmen, tools, supplies, etc.

I think one common denominator about most ancient or even modern monument building is that they are designed so that people will see them. They will experience their message. And the message or significance of the monument goes to heart of the motivation for its construction --- "I'm a powerful King who dispatched his enemies" --- "This general was martyred but won the battle" --- "This is our God, isn't he amazing" --- etc.

There was no colony, nor fort in place to protect the investment of the Newport Tower; consequently, I find it highly unlikely to have been built during the 1582 voyage. It would have served no purpose, certainly one not worth defending (or they would have defended it), and unless there’s another example of ‘voyage-laden-remote monument-builders’ leaving their work unprotected in history, it’s a highly dubious claim. Mainly, because there’s no record of Dee having commissioned the project, no logical purpose for it to have been constructed in an unprotected fashion, and no historical precedent for a massive construction project to be conducted in secret thousands of miles away without anyone being able to use it, nor be influenced by its power and/or message.

Having said all that, I did enjoy Jim’s videos and learning about Dee and some of his magical, esoteric devices. And about the history of Benedict Arnold and Rhode Island etc. I think his story is fantastic, mystical and really entertaining and if I’m ever in the neighborhood will definitely go check out his museum and the tower, er, colonial wind-mill.

Jim Egan

3/22/2013 04:40:21 pm

I am in no way suggesting, this author Ken Macmillan agrees in any way about my thesis, but if you are going to pass judgement about Dee's importance in the Elizabethan colonization of the New World, you should really read his book, reviewed here:

http://www.sochistdisc.org/2006_book_reviews/dee.htm

Dee's important text was only discovered in 1976.

If you want to know the Elizabethan attitude towards the native Americans, read Macmillan's article:

"Benign and Benevolent Conquest? The Ideology of Elizabethan Atlantic Expansion"

Byron DeLear

3/23/2013 03:16:48 am

Thanks for the links. I'm afraid Chris is going to have a field day on the "Benign and Benevolent Conquest" essay. Do you know where I can read more than just an abstract?

I will have to say, on first blush, seems to be an apologist for Empire. For many year historians would talk about such silly notions as Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, as if the imperial enterprise was somehow foisted upon these princes, and their moral obligation was to "bring peace to the savage peoples" -- never mind the rampant sacking of cities, rape, murder, cruelty and torture -- never mind the systematic slavery and expropriation of resources woven though the entire fabric of the colonial enterprise. Mind you, this is the same Elizabeth that chartered the East India Company which went on to rape and plunder in the name of profits for their shareholders. In world systems theory, this has become the global socio-economic hegemon, innovated in large part through the limited liability corporate models developed in Amsterdam and their Dutch East India Company, stock market, etc. All other economic models have withered on the vine to give sway to our current model which utilizes the concept of maximized exploitation to achieve its goals --- at the expense of people(s) and planet.

Macmillan's article talks about "revisiting" the "language of conquest" in "metropolitan writings" advocating Elizabethan Atlantic expansion. But then the abstract says the practice, as opposed to the theory of conquest, was different as the "American Natives were not willing to accept English presence on the benevolent terms." Really?

I understand the humanist concepts driving the age of enlightenment, and I get the inspired desires embedded in the language of the day --- but don't let that confuse you about the absolute dispassionate application of brutal violence to impose the Empire upon conquered peoples. This was a concept brought forward from the Roman.

"Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth's peoples—for your arts are to be these: To pacify, to impose the rule of law, To spare the conquered, battle down the proud."

There is no middle ground in expansion of Empire—subjugation is where the rubber meets the road. Any fanciful notions of shared destiny were always subordinate to "worship my god or die", "worship my king or die", "give us your resources or die."

There are pockets of cooperation and cohabitation between native peoples and conquerors in the timeline of colonial expansion, and these are worth exploring. But I find dubious the pursuit of rehabilitating Elizabethan notions of conquest, when the in reality and in practice there was no real diplomacy occurring on the level.

Byron DeLear

3/23/2013 03:31:07 am

The Limits of Empire does seem like a very interesting book, I might pick it up, although $75-95 bucks, sheesh.

"Writing directly to Queen Elizabeth and drawing on ancient and contemporary history, geography, and law as his supporting evidence, Dee argued for the existence and recovery of a vast British Empire. This included much of the North Atlantic and North America, Ireland and Scotland, and even portions of Scandinavia and the Iberian Peninsula. King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Robert the Bruce, Pope Alexander VI, Martin Frobisher, and the Emperor Justinian are just a few of the historical agents who help to make this treatise at once erudite, elegant, and effusive."

Maybe Dee was a, what's the term, diffusionist?

Jim Egan

3/23/2013 04:40:21 am

My interest is in uncovering truths of history, not judging it.

"John Dee: Limits of the British Empire" can be found at any good College Library.Also look up Ken Macmillan's other great book:

Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World: The Legal Foundations of Empire, 1576–1640, reviewed here:

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/597

A non medical doctor

4/11/2013 01:38:19 pm

Thirdly, I think it's misleading to refer to John Dee as Dr. John Dee. "He was not a medical doctor. He was an expert on Euclidean geometry, mathematics, astronomy, optics, navigation, cartography, history, theology, and Vitruvian architecture. He wrote over 40 books and had a library of 4000 books, the largest in Elizabethan England"

If he held a doctorate, "doctor" is the only appropriate title. The etymology of the word is of course from the latin docere which means to "teach" or "cause to know". Indeed, academics and scholars were using the title doctor when physicians were still doing bloodletting and using leeches in barber shops.

Jason Colavito link

4/11/2013 01:51:25 pm

It's an interesting question. No one really knows for sure. He was certainly called "doctor" in his own lifetime, but it is unclear whether this was an honorary title ("doctus," or "learned") in recognition of his achievements in science and math, or whether he earned a real degree. The best evidence suggests (but cannot prove) that he may have earned a doctorate in medicine at the University of Prague in 1586, although he had been referred to as a doctor since at least 1563 by his contemporaries.

Peter Wiggin link

4/24/2014 09:49:28 am

To Jim Egan.

By the looks of things here you have certainly "stirred a turd" with your work. Well Done. ............. We should talk. Are you a coffee drinker ?

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