Prince Madoc and the Gwinn Ancestry

Madoc: The Welshman who found America 300 years before Columbus

10 April 2021 · 9 min read  •  doug.evans

View original source ↗

IT’S well known that Christopher Columbus was not the first person to find America, but in some circles he still commonly gets the credit.

However, some people in Wales have a different take on the matter – they will tell you that 300 years earlier a Welshman discovered the continent, and you probably haven’t heard of his name.

The man who is behind this supposed feat was Prince Madoc.

Prince Madoc was the son of Owain Gwynedd, one of the greatest and most important rulers in the country, and while the legend cannot be corroborated there are many who believe it to be true beyond a doubt.

Indeed, Owain Gwynedd certainly existed, his reign being marred by long and hard-fought disputes with Henry II, king of England at the time.

So, how does the tale go?

Way back in 1170 it’s reported that Owain died and, almost immediately, a violent and very bloody dispute arose between his 13 children regarding the succession.

Madoc and his brother Rhirid were so upset and angered by events that they decided they wanted no further part in what was happening. Indeed, they wanted nothing more to do with their family or their homeland. They duly took ship from Rhos on Sea (Llandrillo) and sailed westwards to see what they could find.

What Prince Madoc found, so the legend says, was America.

The first voyage of Madoc, it is said, took eight weeks after which he landed in the bay of Mobile, probably during the summer of 1170.

The old tale tells us that Madoc left some 120 people to establish a base camp in the very beautiful and fertile Mobile Bay. He then returned to Wales to recruit more people for his expedition. The original 120 people were lost without trace. This was just the beginning of one of the most romantic and mysterious adventures of mediaeval times.

The Gwenan Gorn and the San Pedr probably landed in Mobile Bay during the summer of 1170. The Prince Madoc was impressed with, to quote Zella Armstrong, “the present and fruitful land, the inhabitants delighted him and were apparently pleased with the visitors.”

This, as we shall see, would change.

The ancient tale has it that Madoc having found such a paradise decided that he would return to Wales and recruit more individuals to settle the new land which he had found. It is said that on his first return to Wales, Madoc regaled his brother King David and his wife Queen Emma (who was half sister to King Henry II of England) with tales of the exotic lands far to the West.

This is described in the Robert Southey epic poem “Madoc” written hundreds of years later.

Migrants who would have chosen to accompany Madoc into the unknown would have had a compulsive urge to make such a voyage. Their motives whether they were religious, political, the lure of wealth or the wish for adventure are not explained.

The charisma which Madoc exercised must have been exceptional in persuading them to subscribe physically or financially to such a highly dangerous venture.

One of the primary purposes would have been to escape the discontent and chaos which prevailed in the unsettled state of the medieval small kingdoms of Wales. Four of Gwynedds sons who would have been siblings of Madoc and his sister Georil were said to have chosen to sail into the unknown on his second voyage, further illustrating the confusion of their Welsh status.

During the second expedition, Madoc must have assembled people with many skills to sustain the community which he hoped to settle in the Americas. It was impossible to foretell the wild and exciting journey which lay before them.

The Viking style ships left Wales, loaded with supplies, princes, priests and paupers all of whom wanted to live in peace in the magical land which Madoc had told them about.

On arrival initial contact with the Native Americans, from the sparse information provided, seems to have been friendly. This is illustrated from an incident related hundreds of years later.

During the year of 1942 two teenage boys visited to town of Gadsden, Alabama and made the acquaintance of a rather talkative old man by the name of Chief Tappawingow of the Muskogee Nation.

The old man repeated to them a legend handed down for generations that white men sailed the Coosa river (which joins the Alabama river) trading in fur, metals and wood. Although no physical proof currently exists for this story it is one of the many rumours which have circulated about the Welsh migrations amongst the Indian tribes.

The chief mentioned that trading would have been of advantage to both communities.

The ancient legends state that Madoc had left after his first voyage some 120 people to form a base camp.

Having reached for the second time the long coastline with many similar inlets and bays, it was impossible for him to recognise the place which he had left months earlier.

Searching for the abandoned party he sailed further West and then turned the search inland for his comrades. This proved fruitless. Madoc could find no trace of them. They were never heard of again.

Time passed and the adventurers became curious and moved up the Alabama river, where so legend tells us, he stopped at the Desoto Falls on the Coosa River where seemingly, the first of the fortified settlements were established.

Here begins the mystery of the Stone Forts of Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. Historians and archaeologists have long speculated about their purpose and who built the fortifications.

Researchers have found for example, that the fortification at the Desoto Falls was identical in plan to Dolwyddelan Castle, which was the birthplace of Madoc.

Many scholars who have investigated the stone forts believe that the Native Americans could not have built these strange constructions as they did not have the technology.

The adventurers moved on and appear to have constructed a number of these forts which seem to encircle land they wished to settle.

About 70 miles west of Chattanooga is situated the Old Stone Fort, at Tennessee. 45 miles south lies the Welsh Caves fortification, at Desoto Falls, Alabama. Fort Mountain, Georgia is situated about seventy miles southeast of Chattanooga.

There are a few other settlements mentioned in old records and tales, of which none have survived. The general opinion of archaeologists and other scholars are that the forts were of prehistoric origin, which in American terms seems to mean pre Columbian, although the builders have never been formally identified.

For a time the adventurers settled in the area of Chattanooga but bad luck seems to have again dogged them. They were routed by the Cherokee and were forced to leave the area, despite their huge efforts to protect themselves and the area of land which they wished to settle.

The next part of the venture is another mystery, only supported by myth and legend, but reflects the tenacity of the Welsh migrants who wandered the land for many years seeking a home.

The vexing question is – Did the Welsh Expedition leave the ancient fortified remains surrounding the Chattanooga area? What little archaeological work has been carried out on the ruins suggests that construction could only have been sustained by a people with a knowledge similar to the military architecture prevalent in Europe in the 1100s.

There has been no conclusion drawn as to who these people were, only the stories handed down for generations by the Native Americans who said a white moon-eyed people built the forts.

The Welsh adventurers who only wished to live in peace seem to have been driven from place to place by the natives who maybe viewed them as a threat.

It is also a possibility that these strangers had inhabited hunting grounds of the Native Americans, or had, with no knowledge of Native American tradition, accidentally desecrated grounds which were sacred to the Indians. All the theories need substantial investigation to prove or disprove the story of the Welsh migration to North America.

What is fact, however, is that there were ancient stone fortifications and it has been generally recognised that these were built before the Native Americans moved to the area. This is where myth and the only factual evidence for its proof converge.

John Dee, one of the principal mystics of the last five or six hundred years, laid claim to the Americas when in the name of Elizabeth I he addressed the English Council at Court. He started his speech: “The Lord Madoc, son of Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales lead a colony and inhabited Terra Florida or thereabouts.”

There is much documentation surviving on this claim, but no actual proof that this adventure ever took place. All that survives is tradition. Some of these stories surfaced in the medieval courts of Europe during the 1200s and have survived to this day. For whatever reason, Queen Elizabeth I never pursued this territorial claim with any enthusiasm, despite the fact that the old enemy, the Spanish, were making inroads into the Americas and claiming extensive lands.

The legend persisted in the Americas of the Welsh speaking Native Americans, and there are several documented examples. John Evans a Welshman employed by the Spanish during the 1790s to investigate this claim, denied the existence of Welsh speaking Indians.

It is strongly hinted that politics could have been the reason for the denial.

So where the truth lies, nobody really knows, but there’s a very strong chance there are deep Welsh roots in the good old US of A.

The discovery of America… by a Welsh Prince?

by Ben Johnson

View original source ↗

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Whilst it was generally believed that Columbus was the first European to discover America in 1492, it is now well known that Viking explorers reached parts of the east coast of Canada around 1100 and that Icelandic Leif Erikson’s Vinland may have been an area that is now part of the United States. What is less well known is that a Welshman may have followed in Erikson’s footsteps, this time bringing settlers with him to Mobile Bay in modern-day Alabama.

According to Welsh legend, that man was Prince Madog ab Owain Gwynedd.

A Welsh poem of the 15th century tells how Prince Madoc sailed away in 10 ships and discovered America. The account of the discovery of America by a Welsh prince, whether truth or myth, was apparently used by Queen Elizabeth I as evidence to the British claim to America during its territorial struggles with Spain. So who was this Welsh Prince and did he really discover America before Columbus?

Owain Gwynedd, king of Gwynedd in the 12th century, had nineteen children, only six of whom were legitimate. Madog (Madoc), one of the illegitimate sons, was born at Dolwyddelan Castle in the Lledr valley between Betws-y-Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog.

On the death of the king in December 1169, the brothers fought amongst themselves for the right to rule Gwynedd. Madog, although brave and adventurous, was also a man of peace. In 1170 he and his brother, Riryd, sailed from Aber-Kerrik-Gwynan on the North Wales Coast (now Rhos-on-Sea) in two ships, the Gorn Gwynant and the Pedr Sant. They sailed west and are said to have landed in what is now Alabama in the USA.

Prince Madog then returned to Wales with great tales of his adventures and persuaded others to return to America with him. They sailed from Lundy Island in 1171, but were never heard of again.

They are believed to have landed at Mobile Bay, Alabama and then travelled up the Alabama River along which there are several stone forts, said by the local Cherokee tribes to have been constructed by “White People”. These structures have been dated to several hundred years before the arrival of Columbus and are said to be of a similar design to Dolwyddelan Castle in North Wales.

Early explorers and pioneers found evidence of possible Welsh influence among the native tribes of America along the Tennessee and Missouri Rivers. In the 18th century one local tribe was discovered that seemed different to all the others that had been encountered before. Called the Mandans this tribe were described as white men with forts, towns and permanent villages laid out in streets and squares. They claimed ancestry with the Welsh and spoke a language remarkably similar to it. Instead of canoes, Mandans fished from coracles, an ancient type of boat still found in Wales today. It was also observed that unlike members of other tribes, these people grew white-haired with age. In addition, in 1799 Governor John Sevier of Tennessee wrote a report in which he mentioned the discovery of six skeletons encased in brass armour bearing the Welsh coat of arms.

Mandan Bull Boats and Lodges: George Catlin

George Catlin, a 19th century painter who spent eight years living among various native American tribes including the Mandans, declared that he had uncovered the descendants of Prince Madog’s expedition. He speculated that the Welshmen had lived among the Mandans for generations, intermarrying until their two cultures became virtually indistinguishable. Some later investigators supported his theory, noting that the Welsh and Mandan languages were so similar that the Mandans easily responded when spoken to in Welsh.

Mandan Village: George Catlin

Unfortunately the tribe was virtually wiped out by a smallpox epidemic introduced by traders in 1837. But the belief in their Welsh heritage persisted well into the 20th century, when a plaque was placed alongside Mobile Bay in 1953 by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

“In memory of Prince Madog,” the inscription reads, “a Welsh explorer who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language.”

Prince Madoc and the Welsh Indians

View original source ↗

In the harbor at Middle Bay, Alabama, the Daughters of the American Revolution have erected a plaque in honor of a Welshman who, legends claim, preceded the arrival of Columbus in the America’s by more than three centuries. The plaque reads, “In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer who landed on the shores of Mobile in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the knowledge of the Welsh language.”

When George Gwyneth, King of North Wales, died in 1170, violent civil war rent the country apart. Rather than battle in the bloody fray, Gwyneth’s son, Prince Madoc, left on a sailing ship with 120 men. Madoc landed in Mobile, left a handful of men behind to begin building and returned to Wales where he provisioned for a full colonization; loading ten boats with men, women, and livestock.

A tribe of Welsh Indians were rumored to have been the original mound builders of Illinois. They were said to have constructed a series of forts around Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain. John Sevier, the founder of Tennessee, claimed to have heard native traditions that the Welsh were the first explorers to reach Alabama, preceding the French and Spanish, but the Chickasaw drove them out. Over the years more than 13 tribes were nominated to be the descendants of Prince Madoc; including the Cheyenne, Pawnee, Delaware, Conastoga, and the eventual favorite the Mandan.

In 1699 the Reverend Morgan Jones was traveling through the Carolinas when he met up with a tribe of Tuscorarans called the Doeg. Jones claimed that the Doeg were able to understand Welsh and that he lived among them for many months preaching the gospel. In 1760, Irishman Charles Beatty was also traveling through the Carolinas when he was captured by Indians. When Beatty overheard his captors speaking Gaelic he answered them in kind and they released him. Famous frontiersman Daniel Boone once said that he had seen the moccasin prints of Welsh Indians on the mountain paths.

English writers of the time were quick to jump on the Madoc myth as a way to legitimize British claims to North American lands. Many historians believe the entire tale was fabricated as a piece of political propaganda intended to refute to discoveries of Columbus. Nevertheless, it was a very popular topic in the British Isles and the subject of many bestsellers, including one by a white American named William Bowles who pretended to be a red man — a Welsh red man. Bowles made a highly celebrated trip to London where he lectured in front of large audiences before he was denounced as a fraud.

In 1795, Welsh patriots funded the expedition of John Evans to search for Prince Madoc’s people. Evans believed that Prince Madoc’s tribe had intermarried with the surrounding tribes but still might be identified by their pale skins and perhaps beards. He had heard stories that the original colonists had lost their livestock and resorted to the barbaric ways of their neighbors. Evans, a clergyman, expected the need to re-Christianize the Welsh Indian but also expected to be aided by the tribe’s most revered possession; Prince Madoc’s personal (and pre-Gutenberg) Bible. Evans spent a winter with the Mandan in the Dakotas. The 25 year old clergyman wrote a report to his financial backers, “From the intercourse I have had with Indians from the latitude of 35 degrees and 49 degrees I think you may safely inform my friends that they have no existence.” Evans character was immediately slandered and he was denounced by those who believed in Prince Madoc.

When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark westward like canoe borne astronauts he instructed them to settle the Welsh Indian question once and for all. George Rogers Clark, early American frontiersman and relative to William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark expedition believed that the ruins of the mysterious ancient fortifications at Kaskaskia had been the work of the ancient Welsh. A fellow army officer, Amos Stoddard, author of Historical Sketches of Louisiana believed that Lewis and Clark had missed the Welsh Indians because they had taken the wrong river west. Prince Madoc’s kingdom, Stoddard asserted, was astride the Rio Buenaventura; the fabled northwest passage across the continent.

Eventually, the Native Americans known as the Mandan were the tribe most frequently associated with the Welsh legend. The Mandan were the only sedentary farming culture living among the nomads of the Great Plains. They were a river people, using a type of small boat which was exactly like the Welsh watercraft — the coracle. The Mandans were the only Native Americans who used this type of boat. It was said that Mandan girls giggled sweetly when embraced, just like Welsh girls do.

One of the most famous advocates of the Mandan as lost Welsh Indians was the artist George Catlin. Catlin painted the Mandan in 1832 and commented, “There are a great many of these people whose complexions appear as light as half breeds; and amongst the women particularly, there are many whose skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion of feature with hazel, with gray, with blue eyes…” Catlin went on to write, “And I recall what Governor (William) Clark told me before I started for the place, that I would find the Mandan a strange people and half white.”

As time went on the tales grew more elaborate. Some began to claim that proof of the Welsh explorer’s voyages could be found in the Aztec legends of Quetzacoatl. The god Quetzacoatl was white and even his name sounded like a word in the Welsh language. In 1805, the romantic era poet Robert Southey wrote the epic ballad “Madoc.” In this version of the tale, Madoc and his nephew Lewellyn sail a fleet into the Gulf of Mexico to meddle in Aztec politics. Prince Madoc and his warriors become entangled with mythical tribes such as the Aztlan, Tlalala, and the Zezozonos. The last eight lines of Southey’s poem give a feel for the colorful tale:

Madoc was left sole Lord, and far away

Yuhudthiton led forth the Aztecas

To spread in other land. Mexitilia’s name,

And rear a mightier empire, and set up

Again their foul idolatry, till Heaven,

Making blind zeal and bloody avarice

It’s ministers of vengeance, sent among them

The heroic Spaniards unrelenting swords.

Today the tales of Prince Madoc are taught as fables, not history but who is to say where the pendulum of political correctness will swing in the future. Bernard De Voto, who touches on the Madoc myth in his historical book Course of Empire has a footnote which states in his high school textbooks (dating to 1895) the story of the Welsh Indians was taught as fact not legend. Fact or fable, we may never know for certain whether the Mandans held small strains of Welsh blood mixed in with the rest of the tribe. The Mandan were destroyed by a most unusual historical tragedy.

The Mandan villages are unique in the history of global history as being the only cities on the historical record destroyed by a dragon. In 1821, the Stephen D. Long expedition journeyed along the Missouri River to the distant and remote Mandan villages. The Long expedition intended to follow up the Lewis and Clark explorations by navigating up the Missouri River with a paddle wheel steamboat. A large Viking style dragon head was placed on the front of the steamboat. The dragon’s nostrils were hooked up to the engine so the mechanical beast could whistle and vent steam. No one recorded whether or not the Indians were impressed. We do know that the Mandan nation was unintentionally afflicted with smallpox from infected blankets within the trade goods. By the time Catlin began to paint the Mandan they were disappearing from the earth, devastated by the steam and virus erupting from the nostrils of a steamboat dragon, a messenger of the plumed serpent Quetzacoatl taking his revenge on Prince Madoc’s tribe of Welsh Indians.

Madoc’s Mark: The Persistence of an Alabama Legend

View original source ↗

Historian John Sledge explores the riddle of Prince Madoc, the Welsh explorer who, according to legend, discovered the New World via Mobile Bay three centuries before Columbus.

By John Sledge -November 24, 2020

Tucked securely behind the Richards DAR House Museum in downtown Mobile is a most unusual artifact. If one politely asks the docent, she will graciously direct the way to the courtyard where it stands neatly sandwiched between a merrily plashing fountain and an ivied brick wall. The object in question is a large, bright green metal plaque that displays the Welsh flag and two short paragraphs of text. “In memory of Prince Madoc,” it states, “a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language.” It goes on to cite several sources for this extraordinary pronouncement, including the 16th-century writer Richard Hakluyt, the 1918 edition of “Webster’s Encyclopedia,” “Ridpath’s History of the World” (1894) and the existence of strange mid-South stone fortifications that resemble medieval Welsh castles.

Alabama lays claim to many mysteries and riddles, but that of Madoc is surely the most intriguing. Who was this fantastical figure, did he exist and did he actually discover the New World more than three centuries before Columbus? Might a clinker-built oaken cog have worked her way up Mobile Bay nearly 700 years ago, her lone mast bearing a salt-stained sail emblazoned with a red dragon, while bearded white men grunted at her oars and dark Indian eyes pondered them from the cane? Unfortunately, nothing to do with the Madoc story is as straightforward as the plaque behind the DAR House would have its readers believe. In fact, the plaque itself is an inextricable element of the questionable saga. But, first, the man.

Alas, there isn’t much to tell if we cleave to known historical fact. Madoc was said to be an illegitimate son of King Owain Gwynedd, a violent ruler who “left behind him many children gotten upon divers women.” After Gwynedd’s death, the sons warred with one another over the succession. Revolted by the spectacle and fearful of assassination, Madoc and a small band of followers sailed away, chasing the sun west over the gray Atlantic. That’s pretty much it. But then the bards took hold of the story, telling and retelling it around crackling fires on cold winter nights. By the 16th century, poets and historians began writing the tale down, embellishing as they went. One such fellow, Meredith ap Rhys, offered what he said was an accurate translation. A particularly memorable quatrain reads, “Madoc I am the sonne of Owen Gwynedd/With stature large and comely grace adorned;/No lande at home nor store of wealth me please/My minde was whole to search the Ocean Seas.”

It didn’t take long before more practically oriented Englishmen discerned the legend’s utility. Not only did Madoc sail west, they proclaimed, but he discovered the Americas before Columbus. This handily trumped Spain’s claims to the New World. In 1578, one John Dee managed an audience with Queen Elizabeth. He shared his research and explained, “The Lord Madoc … led a Colonie and inhabited Terra Florida or thereabouts.” This news suited Elizabeth just fine, and she promptly issued a royal patent for colonization that eventually led to Sir Walter Raleigh’s doomed Roanoke expedition.

By the 18th century, the Madoc legend was well-established, widely believed among the gentry and loudly championed by Welsh scholars. Well-circulated stories of fair-skinned, blue-eyed Indians who knew the Welsh language were taken as proof that Madoc’s men had indeed settled in America and left descendants. In a letter, former Tennessee Governor John Sevier added heft to the claims with his description of a conversation he said he had with an elderly Cherokee chief. The chief said that the stone fortifications found in north Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee were built by “a people called Welsh, and they had crossed the Great Water and landed first near the mouth of the Alabama River near Mobile and had been driven up to the heads of the waters until they arrived at Highwassee River.” This fit neatly with Sevier’s view of Native Americans as savages, incapable of building stone forts. It is not unlikely that the Cherokee chief was telling him what he believed Sevier wanted to hear.

The restored Madoc marker is located behind the Richards DAR House on Joachim Street in downtown Mobile.

From the time of Sevier’s account, Madoc’s landfall has been consistently linked with Mobile Bay. By the early 1950s, Hatchett Chandler, the colorful attendant at Fort Morgan, latched onto the legend with an iron grip and convinced the Virginia Cavalier Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, to erect a marker on Mobile Point stating it as fact. Thousands of tourists read the marker over the decades, and the story even crept into Alabama schools’ history textbooks, where it stubbornly remained until the 1980s. Since Chandler’s death in 1967, historians and archaeologists have steadily dismantled the Madoc legend, including the Mobile Bay landfall. The commemorative marker remained in place until Hurricane Frederic blew it down in 1979. It was stored away and eventually returned to the DAR chapter that had originally commissioned it.

The DAR ladies were uncertain what to do with the marker, however. Placing it back on Mobile Point was out of the question given the legend’s doubtful veracity. But as they soon discovered, the legend still has passionate advocates. In 2008, the BBC reported that the Alabama Welsh Society wanted the marker re-erected. “Mobile could and should capitalize on this, not hide it in a storage shed,” the society’s vice president said. “Prince Madoc is too important to Alabama’s history to have the only plaque in our state commemorating him disappear.”

After careful consideration, the DAR eventually agreed, with a twist. To preserve and interpret the marker in a responsible manner, the ladies restored it and placed it behind their Joachim Street headquarters, with an explanatory brochure available inside. And there the Madoc marker stands today, its text the blended fruit of medieval bardic embellishment, Elizabethan realpolitik, 18th-century racism and good old American hucksterism served up as fact. Surely one of the most complicated backstories ever!

John S. Sledge is the author of “The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History.”

The Richards DAR House at 256 N Joachim St. is open M, W – F 11 a.m. – 3:30 p.m., Sa 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., and Su 1 – 4 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for children ages 5 – 12.

Will DNA turn Madoc myth into reality?

View original source ↗

The story of a Welsh prince beating Christopher Columbus to it by 300 years was the stuff of myths and legends.

RA

By Roberta AverySPECIAL TO THE STAR

Sun., July 22, 2007timer3 min. read

RHOS-ON-SEA, Wales, UK–The story of a Welsh prince beating Christopher Columbus to it by 300 years was the stuff of myths and legends.

Stories of Madoc's voyage to the New World in 1170 didn't make it into the school curriculum when I was growing up in North Wales in the 1960s, but that didn't matter. Madoc was our hometown son who had made history, or so the story went.

The Madoc story gained recognition in North America more than a decade earlier when in 1953, Washington D.C.- based Daughters of the American Revolution erected two plaques – one in Rhos-on-Sea, the other in Mobile, Ala. – commemorating Madoc's voyage.

The plaques read "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language."

Historians delight in debunking the Madoc story, pointing out Penrhyn Bay, Rhos-on-Sea on the North Wales coast, where Madoc was supposed to have set sail, was far too shallow for a ship big enough to cross the Atlantic. Yet, during excavations for a garden for a Rhos-on-Sea home, remains of an ancient harbour were discovered.

In Wales – with a population of three million on the west side of Great Britain where 18 per cent of the population speak the Celtic language – Howard Kimberley has founded the Madoc International Research Association, hoping to find the truth.

Kimberley, 63, a former engineer who spent years researching the Madoc story, says many historians dismiss it as an Elizabethan invention, created to lay prior claim on the New World by saying that Madoc discovered America 300 years before Columbus.