NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — The swashbuckling sea captain who helped found America’s first permanent English settlement lost his right arm in battle nearly two decades before bringing the colonists to Jamestown 400 years ago.
But you wouldn’t know it to look at a 24-foot bronze statue of Christopher Newport, with all his limbs intact, that stands at the edge of the campus of the university named for him.
Some annoyed alumni and history buffs want the monument to get the hook — as in the prosthetic that Newport is thought to have used.
The two-armed statue shows a lack of respect for history, said Andy Kiser, of Winchester, who graduated from Christopher Newport University (CNU) in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in history with a focus on colonial Virginia.
That’s especially galling, Mr. Kiser said, in a part of Virginia filled with historic attractions, such as Colonial Williamsburg, and at a time when Jamestown is commemorating its 400th anniversary.
“In the middle of a community that tries so hard to get it right, here’s a 4-ton ’Oops, we got it wrong,’ ” he said.
A public university with about 4,800 students, CNU is a few blocks from where the James River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Up the river is Jamestown, the swampy peninsula where the settlers landed in May 1607.
Newport was captain of the Susan Constant, largest of the settlers’ three ships. He died 10 years later on a voyage to the East Indies.
Newport lost his arm around 1590, when he was working in the West Indies as a privateer hired by wealthy London merchants to raid Spanish and Portuguese ships, said Mike Lund, ships interpretive supervisor at Jamestown Settlement, a state-run living history museum.
Historical accounts refer to Newport’s arm being “stricken off” during a fight. It’s not clear how he was hurt, or how much of the arm he lost, Mr. Lund said.
The two-armed, 7,500-pound statue, donated to CNU by a benefactor, was installed in June.
Newport, wearing a floppy hat and cape, stands with his left hand on his hip. His right arm stretches in front of him, the hand resting on the handle of his sword as the blade’s tip touches the ground.
The inclusion of the right arm — as well as sculptor Jon Hair’s comment to the local newspaper that “We don’t show our heroes maimed” — touched off a spate of letters to the editor.
Mr. Hair, who has a studio in Cornelius, N.C., also created bronze monuments for other universities, including Purdue. He did not return repeated messages from the Associated Press seeking comment.
He told the Daily Press that the university decided to portray the captain with two arms and he agreed.
“I wouldn’t show an important historical figure like this with his arm cut off,” Mr. Hair was quoted as saying. “It’s one thing if he’d been born that way. He didn’t lose his arm ’til he was 29.”
CNU President Paul Trible did not recall having any conversation with the artist about how many arms the statue should have, university spokeswoman Emily Lucier said in an e-mail response to questions.
Mr. Trible approved a model of the statue “and he is very pleased with the statue,” Miss Lucier wrote. She said the university would have no other comment.
Jack Marshall has no connection to the university but was intrigued by the statue flap and wrote about it on EthicsScoreboard.com, a project of ProEthics Ltd., the ethics training and consulting firm he founded in Alexandria.
A statue portraying someone for posterity should include that person’s distinguishing characteristics, Mr. Marshall said in a phone interview. He also noted that heroic figures have been depicted as maimed. For example, statues in England show Horatio Nelson with one arm, he said. The British admiral known for fighting in the Napoleonic Wars lost his right arm after being shot.
“It’s like doing a statute of Babe Ruth and showing him thin,” Mr. Marshall said, referring to the rotund slugger, “or doing a statue of Willie Shoemaker, a jockey, and showing him 6 feet tall.”
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