It has been asserted that Sir John Hawkins brought the potato to Ireland
in 1565, and his kinsman Sir Francis Drake to England in 1585. Although
this is not improbable, writers generally assume that it was the sweet
potato which was introduced by those navigators.

Whether or not Raleigh's third expedition, which sailed from England in
1584, was the _first_ to bring into these countries the potato of
Virginia, there can be no reasonable doubt of its having been brought
home by that expedition. The story of Raleigh having stopped on some
part of the Irish coast on his way from Virginia, when he distributed
potatoes to the natives, is quite groundless. Raleigh was never in
Virginia; for although by his money and influence, and perhaps yet more
by his untiring energy, he organized nine exploring expeditions, he did
not sail with any of them except the first, which was commanded by his
half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. But this had to return disabled to
England without touching land.[3]

Sir Joseph Banks, the well-known naturalist, and President of the Royal
Society from 1777 till his death in 1820, was at great pains to collect
the history of the introduction of the potato into these countries. His
account is, that Raleigh's expedition, granted to him under patent "to
discover such remote heathen and barbarous lands, not yet actually
possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, as
to him shall seem good," brought home the potato of Virginia. This
Charter bears date 25th March, 1584, and was a new and more extensive
one than the first granted to him, which was in June, 1578. With this
expedition sailed one Thomas Heriot, called the Mathematician, who was
probably sent out to examine and report upon the natural history of such
countries as they might discover. He wrote an account of Virginia, and
of the products of its soil, which is printed in the first volume of De