Gravesend was granted, allowing the men of the town to operate boats between London and the town; these became known as the "Long Ferry". It became the preferred form of passage, because of the perils of road travel (see below). On Gravesend's river front are the remains of a Tudor fort built by command of King Henry VIII in 1543. On 21 March 1617, John Rolfe and Rebecca (aka Princess Pocahontas) with their two-year-old son, Thomas, boarded a ship in London bound for the Commonwealth of Virginia; the ship had only sailed as far as Gravesend before Rebecca fell fatally ill,
Rolfe Kent Bateman's directorial debut "Bad Words". He later scored the 2017 film "Downsizing" by Alexander Payne. Rolfe Kent Rolfe R. Kent (born 1963) is a British film score composer. Kent was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England. He attended St Albans School, worked at Balrossie School in Renfrewshire, Scotland, then graduated in Psychology (BSc) from the University of Leeds in 1986. 1986-1988 he taught psychology at Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University) before moving to London to concentrate on film scoring. Rolfe currently lives in Los Angeles, California. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the "Best Original Score"