Virginia. English Captain Argall takes Pocahontas the daughter of King Powhatan on board his ship. © NMM

Creating peace between the Englishmen colonising Jamestown and the native American tribes of Eastern Virginia.

Her life ended with a triumphal tour of England, where she was treated as a visiting princess. She met James I, the Royal Family and the best of London society.

Before her ship left London, she contracted an unknown disease - possibly pneumonia, smallpox or tuberculosis. When it became apparent that she would not survive the voyage home to Virginia, she was taken ashore and died.

She was buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, aged only 21 or 22.

The Portraictuer of Captayne John Smith Admirall of New England. © NMM

Powhatan, her father, allegedly had 100 wives, with one child by each. James I had Powhatan crowned Emperor of Virginia, making Pocahontas a princess outranking a lot of English nobility.

When John Rolfe - whom she later married - first sailed to Jamestown he was shipwrecked in Bermuda by a terrible storm. A report of this event, by a fellow passenger, may have inspired Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.