Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rosier, James
ROSIER, JAMES (1575–1635), one of the early English voyagers to America, born in 1575, sailed with Bartholomew Gosnold [q. v.] on his voyage to New England in March–July 1602, and with George Weymouth [q. v.] on his voyage in March–July 1605. Of the last voyage he published in 1605 ‘A True Relation of Captain George Waymouth his Voyage made this present Year, 1605, in the Discovery of the North Part of Virginia.’ This voyage was really made to the coast of Maine. Rosier's account has been three times reprinted in America—by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1843, by George Prince, Maine, in 1860, and by Henry Burrage for the Gorges Society in 1887 (the completest edition). Though writing accurately and carefully, Rosier speaks some what obscurely of the localities visited by Weymouth, in order that foreign navigators might not profit too much by his narration.
Rosier is said by Purchas (iv. pp. 1646–1653) to have also written an account of Gosnold's voyage and presented it to Walter Raleigh, but this is a mistake, as the treatise in question was by John Brereton (Burrage, p. 37). He died in 1635.
[Rosier's True Relation, 1605, as cited, republished in Purchas IV; cf. Burrage's edition of 1887; Brown's Genesis of U.S.A. pp. 26–7, 35, 829, 988, 1009.]