In March 1634, the 400-ton Ark and the 40-ton Dove landed almost 200 English settlers on this island after a stormy passage from England. The 20-year-old Governor Leonard Calvert, brother of Lord Baltimore, was seeking a safe place to plant his colony and found a haven here while he searched for a permanent place for settlement. Ark passenger and Jesuit missionary Father Andrew White wrote that the island had “infinite swarms of Herons” and described it as covered with pokiberries, “a little wilde walnut hard of shell, but with a sweet kernel,” along with acorns, black walnut, cedar, saxafras, vines, salad herbs, and similar growth. He wrote that it was above 400 acres but too little to settle upon, so it was designed for a fort to command the Potomac River, with another intended on the mainland opposite to keep the river from foreign trade at its narrowest point. After the first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, died in 1632, his 27-year-old son Cecil Calvert carried out his plan to settle Maryland, remained in England, and protected his Maryland interests for more than 40 years. The settlers named the island after St. Clement, the Catholic patron saint of sailors and seas. It became Blackistone Island when settler Nehemiah Blackistone married Elizabeth Gerrard and acquired her property in 1669, and Maryland renamed it St. Clements when the state took possession in 1960.