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,
Clapton Crabb Rolfe Rolfe was a devout Anglo-Catholic who sought to translate his faith into his building work. In 1871 he wrote in "The Builder": Those professional men nowadays who despise and ridicule that pure symbolic spirit which actuated our forefathers in their church-work, and probably substitute for it that £sd money-grubbing spirit of the age, are alike unfit and unworthy of being engaged on any modern church-work whatever. Rolfe wrote a number of publications on aspects of church architecture and furnishing, but as he got older the style and content of his writing became increasingly obscure. Clapton Crabb Rolfe Clapton Crabb Rolfe