Jamestown Virginia Quotes

They were a most unusual group of colonists. Instead of noblemen, craftsmen, and servants - the types of people who had founded Jamestown in Virginia - these were, for the most part, families - men, women, and children who were willing to endure almost anything if it meant they could worship as they pleased.

In exchange, he was given a note “with the armes of Englande testifying the receipt therof.”24 Because of the size of his investment—£50, or roughly $10,000 in modern money, compared with the single share price of £12 10s (12 pounds, 10 shillings), or about $2,500 in modern terms—and because of his legal background, he was also appointed to the Virginia Council, the group of men whose job it would be to oversee operations of the colony from London.

It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. The Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the whole colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists’ tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the King. Berkeley himself, returning to England years earlier to protest the English Navigation Acts, which gave English merchants a monopoly of the colonial trade, had said: . . . we cannot but resent, that forty thousand people should be impoverish’d to enrich little more than forty Merchants, who being the only buyers of our Tobacco, give us what they please for it, and after it is here, sell it how they please; and indeed have forty thousand servants in us at cheaper rates, than any other men have slaves. . . .

Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us. In August 1619, just twelve years after the English settled Jamestown, Virginia, one year before the Puritans landed at Plymouth, and some 157 years before English colonists here decided they wanted to form their own country, the Jamestown colonists bought twenty to thirty enslaved Africans from English pirates.4 The pirates had stolen them from a Portuguese slave ship whose crew had forcibly taken them from what is now the country of Angola. Those men and women who came ashore on that August day mark the beginning of slavery in the thirteen colonies that would become the United States of America. They were among the more than 12.5 million Africans who would be kidnapped from their homes and brought in chains across the Atlantic Ocean in the largest forced migration in human history until the Second World War.5

Gates, after dealing with the Indians, left for England. De La Warr, who continued to live aboard ship for a time, called a Council, reorganized the colonists, and directed operations to promote the welfare of the Colony, including the construction of two forts near Point Comfort. He fell sick, however, and, after a long illness, was forced to leave Jamestown and Virginia in March 1611. The now veteran administrator, George Percy, was made governor in charge. With De La Warr went Dr. Lawrence Bohun, who had experimented extensively with the curative powers of plants and herbs at Jamestown.

left Jamestown, and started down the James. The next morning, while still in the river, advance word reached Gates that Lord De La Warr had arrived at Point Comfort on the way to Jamestown and was bringing 150 settlers and a generous supply.

military leave from his post in the Low Countries, arrived as deputy governor of Virginia. With him were three ships, three smaller boats, 300 people, domestic animals, and supplies. He proceeded to give form and substance to the martial law which had been evoked by his predecessors and to the achievement of rather severe regimentation. He began by posting proclamations "for the publique view" at Jamestown. Later, he thoroughly inspected suitable settlement sites and surveyed conditions generally. He wrote, on May 25, that on arrival at Jamestown he found "...

The bad news carried to England by the returning ships of the third supply, late in 1609, had caused considerable stir in Virginia Company circles and had resulted in De La Warr's decision to go to Virginia. Learning of the new supply, Gates hastened back to Jamestown. The new settlement had been saved in a manner that was recognized at that time as an act of "Providence.

Newport reached Jamestown with the first supply for the settlers. He brought food, equipment, instructions, and news from home. The two ships of the supply had left England together, but the second did not reach Virginia until

The work of establishing Jamestown and of exploring the country round about began almost simultaneously

At Jamestown an area was cleared of trees and the fort begun. The soil was readied and the English wheat brought over for the purpose was planted. At this point Newport, in one of the small boats, led an exploring party as far as the falls of the James. He was absent from Jamestown about a week and returned to find that the Indians had launched a fierce attack on the new settlement which had been saved, perhaps, by the fact that the ships were near at hand.

At Jamestown an area was cleared of trees and the fort begun. The soil was readied and the English wheat brought over for the purpose was planted. At this point Newport, in one of the small boats, led an exploring party as far as the falls of the James. He was absent from Jamestown about a week and returned to find that the Indians had launched a fierce attack on the new settlement which had been saved, perhaps, by the fact that the ships were near at hand. These afforded safe quarters and carried cannon on their decks that had a frightening effect on the natives.

Control of trade was sought by specifying that no ships should "break boulke [bulk] or make privatt sales of any comodities" before reaching Jamestown. Taxes were not ignored either for a levy of ten pounds of tobacco, already the common currency it appears, was laid on each male above 16 years of age to help defray the "publique depte [debt]." Lest it be forgotten, it was enacted that obedience was required "to the presente government." Old planters were given special exemption from public service, "they and theire posteritie," while Burgesses were rendered exempt from seizure during Assembly time. "Persones of qualitie" when found delinquent, it was stated, could be imprisoned if not fit to take corporal punishment. It is of note that service to the Governor, or the public, was made contingent on Assembly consent. Of particular interest, too, was the action on the principle of taxation. It was bold, indeed, at this time for the Assembly to declare that; The Governor shall not laye any taxes or impositiones uppon the Colony, theire landes or comodities otherwi[se] then by the awthoritie of the Generall Assemblie, to be levied and imployed as the saide Assembly shall appoint. This was an early word on taxation, but it was to be far from the last word in the next century and a half.

mild "gold rush" at Jamestown as some hopeful looking golden colored soil was found. This all delayed early spring clearing and planting, and boded ill for the coming summer when Smith undertook additional explorations.

September 1608 that Smith became president in fact and inaugurated a program of physical improvement at Jamestown. The area about the fort was enlarged and the standing structures repaired. At this point, in October, the second supply arrived, including seventy settlers, who, when added to the survivors in Virginia, raised the over-all population to about 120.

Among the new arrivals were two women, Mistress Forrest and her maid. Several months later, in the church at Jamestown, the maid, Ann Burras, was married to one of the settlers, John Laydon, a carpenter by trade. This marriage has been ranked as "the first recorded English marriage on the soil of the United States." Their child, Virginia, born the next year, was the first to be born at Jamestown.

In the interval from about February to May 1609, there was considerable material progress in and about Jamestown. Perhaps forty acres were cleared and prepared for planting in Indian corn, the new grain that fast became a staple commodity. A "deep well" was dug in the fort. The church was re-covered and twenty cabins built. A second trial was made at glass manufacture in the furnaces built late in 1608. A blockhouse was built at the isthmus which connected the Island to the mainland for better control of the Indians, and a new fort was erected on a tidal creek across the river from Jamestown.

This was the third supply, and it reached Jamestown in August. Unfortunately it arrived without its leadership and the authority to institute the governmental changes which the Company had authorized.

John Martin was sent to attempt a settlement at Nansemond, on the south side of the James below Jamestown, while Captain Francis West, brother of Lord De La Warr, was sent to settle at the falls of the James. Returning to Jamestown after an inspection

Ruin and desolation were everywhere. Gates, with his Council, on July 7, 1610, wrote that Jamestown seemed "raither as the ruins of some auntient [for]tification, then that any people living might now inhabit it...." Gates promptly distributed provisions, such as he had, and introduced a code of martial law, the code that was strengthened later by De La Warr and made famous by its strict enforcement during the governorship of Sir Thomas Dale.

It developed into one of the original Virginia shires in 1634. This shire, a decade later, became a county. James City County continues as the oldest governing unit in English America. Jamestown was its chief seat, Virginia's capital town and the principal center of the Colony's social and political life.

Jamestown was the first to feel the impact of the advantages and fruits that growth produced.

Participation in the affairs of government was another element in the new Company approach. Soon after his arrival, Yeardley issued a call for the first representative legislative assembly in America which convened at Jamestown on July 30, 1619, and remained in session until August 4. This was the beginning of our present system of representative government.

He had explored and found the site he liked, "a convenient strong, healthie and sweete seate to plant a new Towne in." Already at Jamestown he had prepared "pales, posts and railes to impaile his proposed new Towne.

the colony is removed up the river forescore miles further beyond Jamestown to a place of high ground, strong and defensible by nature, a good air, wholesome and clear, unlike the marshy seat at Jamestown, with fresh and plenty of water springs, much fair and open grounds freed from woods, and wood enough at hand.

Sir George Somers, an experienced mariner, was put in charge of the fleet. Roughly sixty years of age, Somers, from the town of Lyme on England’s southwest coast, had a resume that included service under Essex, Sir Francis Drake, and the privateering Sir John Hawkins.30 A member of parliament, he was an accomplished mariner and navigator. His second in command as master of the fleet’s flagship was Captain Christopher Newport, whose maritime pedigree was every bit as impressive as Somers’s. About forty-nine years of age in 1609, Newport had gone to sea as a young man, sailing to South America and the Caribbean as a privateer. In 1590, when he was about thirty years of age, Newport had been in a sea battle with two Spanish treasure ships off the coast of Cuba. In that battle, Newport lost his right arm but persevered. For the next thirteen years, he was an active Caribbean privateer and was a leading participant in the capture, in 1592, of the Spanish treasure ship the Madre de Dios, a prize that carried about half a million pounds in gems, spices, silks, and other goods. Newport’s long experience as a privateer helped him establish strong links with English merchants. He was also known to King James I, having presented the monarch with two live crocodiles and a wild boar following one of his New World voyages. In 1606, he was named commander of the first Virginia expedition and sailed as captain of the Susan Constant, flagship of the first Virginia fleet.31 By the time he was named sailing master of the flagship of the 1609 fleet, he had made three crossings between England and Jamestown.

have been built in East Anglia in about 1603, the Sea Venture was a three-masted vessel roughly a hundred feet long from the end of her bowsprit to her stern post. The vice admiral, or second-largest ship in the fleet, was the Diamond, probably just a little smaller than the Sea Venture. She was captained by Vice Admiral John Ratcliffe, who had served as captain of the Discovery, one of the three ships of the first Virginia fleet. The third-largest vessel, the Falcon, was called the rear admiral. She was under the command of John Martin, one of the original Virginia settlers who had returned to England in 1608 and who was now on his way back to Jamestown. Sailing master of the Falcon was Francis Nelson, a veteran of one ocean crossing, having made a voyage to the New World as captain of the Phoenix, a pinnace that brought forty settlers to Virginia in 1608.

Since the days of the earliest English voyages to the New World, ships crossing the Atlantic had typically followed a course that took them first to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, and then across the southern reaches of the ocean to the Spanish territories in the West Indies before swinging north to use the Gulf Stream to carry them to the coast of what they knew as Virginia.

The Sea Venture, the “admiral” of the fleet, docked at Woolwich, the bustling royal dockyards about eight miles down the Thames from central London. There she and six other ships of the fleet—the Diamond, the Falcon, the Blessing, the Unity, the Lion, and the Virginia—anchored

They sit roughly 900 miles north and east of the Bahamas; roughly 600 miles east of Virginia; and about 3,500 miles south and west of London.

By 1624 the Colony had grown from a single settlement at Jamestown to a series of communities along the James River and on the Eastern Shore. Until 1611 only Jamestown had proven lasting. In this fourth year, however, Kecoughtan (Elizabeth City) was established on a permanent basis and Henrico was laid out. In 1613 the fourth of the Company settlements was established at Bermuda which was to become Charles City.

1619 at the time of the Assembly meeting, there were eleven localities, or communities, that sent representatives to Jamestown.

In 1625 a total of 27 areas or communities were reported. In this surge of expansion the center of population now passed again from Jamestown and rested in the lower areas of the James. In 1624 and 1625 Elizabeth City was indeed Virginia's most populous community. In fact, early in 1625 the Elizabeth City group (Kecoughtan, Buckroe, Newport News, etc.) had a greater population than did all of the plantations above Jamestown. At this

Samuel Argall, it seems, was attracted to the area west of Jamestown and established his people here. He and his associates had been assigned 2,400 acres for the transportation of 24 persons by Charter of March 30, 1617 issued just before he left England. This was one of the first such grants. There were settlers with him, too, to be employed on land set aside for the support of the Governor's office. Evidently his settlement, or plantation, got underway in 1617 and two years later was listed among the populated areas in the Colony. It was one of the eleven communities which sent representatives

There was little of the religious idealism or of the search for personal freedom that motivated the Pilgrims in 1620 and none of the search to create a “City on a Hill” that spurred the Puritans to take ships for Boston in 1630. To these financial backers, the settlement of Virginia was primarily about trade and money.

The merchant-capitalists knew, though, that changes would have to be made if the English colony was ever to be anything other than a wilderness that devoured men and money with equal ease. Determined to make Jamestown successful, the rich and powerful men who comprised the leadership of the Virginia Company decided to send a large fleet of ships and several hundred settlers—more than had ever been sent before—to Virginia with adequate supplies to place the settlement on a firm footing at last. Of course, sending enough supplies and settlers to guarantee—as much as possible—success in Virginia was an expensive proposition.

Sir Thomas Smythe, a wealthy London merchant, who would be designated the company treasurer. And, like a modern-day public company, the new Virginia Company would be open to any investor, large or small, who wanted to become an “adventurer” by “venturing” money for profits.

Even as the Virginia Company presented its plans to the king—through his privy council—for royal approval, Smythe set out to promote the company’s new venture. Sir Thomas (he was knighted by James I soon after the king took the throne) was one of England’s wealthiest and most powerful merchants. He had long been involved in foreign trade with Russia, through the Muscovy Company, and he was the head of the East India Company. He was also a marketing genius.

spoke from the open-air Paul Cross pulpit at St. Paul’s Church, praising the Virginia Company’s plans to bring the Christian faith to heathen natives of Virginia.19

minister who addressed the original Virginia settlers before their departure from London in 1606. Now he praised Smythe and the adventurers for again backing the Virginia Company, and he ended his sermon with a fervent prayer that the company would be successful in its goals.

One Londoner who saw Virginia as a place he might find financial salvation was William Strachey, a failed civil servant, poetaster, and sometime playwright. The son of a successful gentleman with landholdings in rural Essex, Strachey had studied law at Gray’s Inn, but cut his training short to spend his time scratching out mostly unpublished verse and socializing with London’s literary set.2 Strachey particularly enjoyed London’s lively and rambunctious playhouses. He was a stockholder in Blackfriars Theatre and a regular playgoer who was almost certainly friendly with the company’s actors, including William Shakespeare.

a collaborator with Jonson in the writing of Eastward Ho!, a somewhat scandalous play about the Virginia colony.

Perhaps it was there that Jonson told him—it was advice he gave to others—that the only hope for any man in debt was to flee “to Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia” if he wanted to rebuild his life and repair his credit.6 Strachey had already tried his luck in Turkey, and failed. Now, while Ireland may have beckoned, it must have seemed to the impoverished poet that Virginia offered a better chance to escape his creditors and perhaps, just perhaps, his best opportunity, if not for riches, then for security and freedom.

Of course, he had heard of Virginia. He was obviously fond of the theater, fond enough to put some of his money at risk as a shareholder of the Blackfriars Theatre Company.

By 1609 Strachey, like other Englishmen, knew that Seagull’s words were not true. He knew that no diamonds had been found on Virginia’s beaches, that no golden chamber pots had been discovered. But he also knew that the land across the Atlantic still held hope for men like himself who wanted to flee their problems in search of a new opportunity. And so, in the spring of 1609, William Strachey decided that Virginia was the answer to his troubles.

it was a difficult matter for a private individual to finance the creation of a settlement. And Ralegh’s beloved Virgin Queen was far too cautious with her funds to finance a colonial venture, even if England’s long-running war with Spain had left enough coin in the royal treasury to cover the expense. Then, in 1603, everything changed. Early in the morning of March 24 of that year, Elizabeth I, the queen whose reign was expected to outlast the moon and sun, died in her private chamber in Richmond Palace. The queen’s death and the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England brought quick peace between England and Spain; freed private capital that could be used to finance foreign settlements; and made soldiers and sailors available, indeed desperate, for employment. Suddenly, English capitalists were looking hungrily at Virginia as a potential outlet for

By that time, English merchants had experience taking profits from foreign trade through the formation of joint stock companies like the Muscovy Company. Now they hoped to do the same in Virginia.

asked King James I for government approval for their plans to establish colonies in Virginia—then considered to be the entire swath of land running roughly between Spanish Florida and the French colonies in Canada.

Johnson praised Virginia for its uncivilized yet friendly natives and argued that the English settlers’ goals included the betterment of the savages. Of course, the truth was different, as Johnson and Gray might have known had they visited the land they praised so lavishly. The English had high enough purposes, to be sure, but they were all too ready to take by force any land they wished. The Powhatan people, of course, were just as ready to fight to protect their way of life.

At about the same time that Sir Stephen visited Smythe, William Strachey formalized his intention to go to Virginia by agreeing to buy two company shares for £25. Given his financial problems, Strachey almost certainly had to borrow the money to make his investment, perhaps from his brother-in-law, Edmund Bowyer, who invested in the company a year later. In any case, Strachey’s name appears on the list of investors included in the charter—investors King James called his “trustie and welbeloved subjects.” Sir Stephen’s name is also listed in the charter, as a member of the “Counsell for the said Companie of Adventurers and Planters in Virginia,” though he is misidentified in the document as “Sir Stephen Poole.”25

In addition to those who risked money, more than six hundred men and women—those who dreamed of a new life in a new land—“invested” themselves in the venture, signing on to make the voyage to Virginia and to work in the colony for seven years. In return, each of these “planters” would receive free passage, one share of stock, and, at the end of their seven-year term of service, a grant of land, as well as a share of any profits earned by the Virginia Company from its New World venture.

Virginia was seen as a convenient place to send the poor and unemployed and to dump some of the criminals who infested London’s crowded streets and alleyways.

the Virginia Company had floated an idea that all English pirates might be pardoned if they agreed to move to Virginia.

more than one hundred Virginia-bound settlers would squeeze themselves into a space not much larger than a middling-sized English cottage. By that time, carpenters would almost certainly have built crude partitions dividing the already small space into a maze of tiny compartments designed to provide some privacy for the passengers who would soon be jammed on board. From below, the three would have climbed a ladder to the mate’s cabin, situated just below the great cabin aft and now turned into a crowded dormitory for a few of the gentlemen settlers who were making the voyage to Virginia.

the Sea Venture was the largest vessel in the fleet, she was small compared with all but the most modest, modern oceangoing vessels. Described as a galleon, she was in reality a merchant ship, properly called a carrack. The ship’s provenance is uncertain. It is believed that she was about six years old and that she was owned by a group of businessmen known as the Company of Merchant Adventurers, for whom she made trading voyages between London and Holland, carrying mostly wool and cloth. In 1609 she was purchased or chartered by the Virginia Company as the flagship of the Virginia-bound fleet. Like other ships of her type, she had a high sterncastle and forecastle and a wide, well-rounded hull that allowed her to carry large amounts of cargo. Because of her short, chubby hull shape and high profile, the Sea Venture, like other vessels of this kind, had a tendency to wallow and roll alarmingly in high seas and was not well able to sail into the wind.

Like many other merchant vessels, the Sea Venture was armed. Though England and Spain had signed a peace treaty in 1604, soon after James took the English throne, there were still scores of Spanish vessels sailing the Atlantic and the Caribbean just waiting to fall on ships like the Sea Venture. And since the Spanish continued their claim to the lands the English knew as Virginia, the company had every reason to fear Spanish attempts to keep it from resupplying Jamestown. The “admiral” herself carried sixteen cannon and at least one small swivel gun that could be used to repel boarders. To save space below, where passengers and stores would be jam-packed for the voyage, these heavy guns were mounted on the Sea Venture’s upper deck instead of on the main deck, or in the ’tween deck area, their usual location. As Newport and Somers looked at the heavy cannon—minions that weighed 1,500 pounds each, sakers that weighed 3,500 pounds, and demi-culverins that tipped the scales at 4,500 pounds each, as well as the smallest of the guns, falconers, that weighed as much as two large men—their eyes would have narrowed with concern as they imagined how all that weight topside would unbalance the vessel in strong seas and high winds.

There had been no difficulty recruiting sailors willing, even anxious, to sign on for the voyage to the Chesapeake. Since the end of the war with Spain and the end of privateering, out-of-work sailors thronged every port looking for any work that would put a few shillings in their pockets. Taverns near the London waterfront and inns and all along the docks must have been filled with talk of how a fleet headed for Virginia was taking on able-bodied men. To these men, work—any work—would have been attractive,

In mid-1608, or at about the time that Strachey started thinking of emigrating, Captain John Smith, the Virginia settler, had written a long letter to a friend about conditions in Jamestown.

Strachey, no doubt hungry for firsthand information about the colony, would have passed the bookseller a few coins, snapped up a copy of Smith’s brief report, and hurried home to read it voraciously as he searched for clues about what he could expect in Virginia. He would have learned of the Indian attacks that started soon after the English landed on the banks of the Chesapeake. He would have read of “such famin and sicknes, that the living were scarce able to bury the dead,” a time when settlers died one or sometimes two or even three at a time until more in the colony were dead than were alive.4 He would have read of all the struggles to survive in the colony’s early days. What he read would naturally enough have made him think carefully about his decision to leave the safety of London for the dangers of Virginia. After all, debtors’ prison in London, though terrible, was better than death in Virginia.

Most who boarded the Sea Venture as passengers were men like Strachey who had fallen on hard times. These were men—there were probably fewer than a dozen women on board—who were turning their backs on debt and hunger and toil and hoping for better times in Virginia. And as they boarded the vessel and settled themselves for the long voyage, Somers and Gates and Newport would have observed them all, the rich and well dressed in their finery as well as the more common people in their rough-made clothes and shoes, looking for any signs of potential trouble and knowing as they looked that a long ocean voyage with passengers and crew thrown together in danger and fear and discomfort could bring out the worst in people, as well as the best.

Then there were the people the Virginia Company called the “naturals”—the roughly nine thousand Indians gathered into a loose-knit confederation of disparate groups ruled by the paramount chief, Wahunsonacock, who was known to the English as Powhatan. Trouble between the Indians and the settlers started on the first day the English stepped ashore on the banks of the Chesapeake. Late that day, as an exploring party of about two dozen armed settlers returned to the safety of the three ships anchored off a spot of land they called Point Comfort, a group of natives crept from the woods “like Beares,” in the words of settler George Percy, “with their Bowes in their mouths.” When the Indians—there were only five or six—got close enough, they loosed a volley of arrows. Gabriel Archer, one of the colonists, was wounded in the hands and a sailor, Matthew Morton, “in two places of the body very dangerously.”16 The English responded with a volley of musket fire that drove the Indians back into the woods.

In fact, it is unlikely that all the men on the island went in search of food and water. While some went foraging, others would have set about building rough shelters, thatched with palm fronds, above the high-water mark. At the same time, sailors, probably under the watchful eye of Sir George Somers, made repeated trips to the grounded vessel, salvaging anything that might be of service. Planks above the waterline were torn from the ship’s oaken frames and hauled ashore along with hatches and any undamaged spars that could be removed and metal fittings and canvas and cordage and tools and even books and the important charts from Newport’s cabin and, of course, the instructions and a copy of the new Virginia charter given to Gates by the officers of the Virginia Company in London. Somehow the heavy ship’s bell was hauled ashore, as were several heavy cooking kettles and at least one of the smallest cannon. Within days, though, the salvage operation came to an end as the Sea Venture slipped beneath the waves, to rest where her bones still lie, between the two coral outcroppings that trapped her. Even though the survivors must have known the ship was lost once it struck the reef,

Of course, Sir George and Sir Thomas and Captain Newport had worries other than just food and water and shelter. They were bound, by duty and by desire, to fulfill their obligations to the Virginia Company. The men and women in Jamestown were waiting for their arrival and the supplies they carried, while others in Virginia and in England and in Bermuda, too, had invested heavily in the Virginia venture. Somehow, the Sea Venture survivors had to escape the islands and make their way to the Chesapeake.

Within a week or two weeks of their grounding, Gates and the others knew that the other ships in the fleet had either been lost in the storm or had sailed on to Jamestown. If any of the other sea captains had decided after the storm to search for the Sea Venture and those who sailed in her, they had abandoned those efforts as futile within just a few days. Those in Bermuda knew that they had to try to let the Virginia colonists know of the shipwreck and, if possible, to arrange for their own rescue.

Ravens and the others were able to find water deep enough to handle the longboat’s twenty-inch draft. Before his departure, Ravens promised Gates and Somers and Strachey and the other survivors that if he lived and arrived safe in Virginia, he would return by the time of the next new moon, or by late September. Ravens, in turn, was told that the survivors would light a signal fire to guide him back.

Even before those in Bermuda knew that Ravens’s mission was unsuccessful, Sir Thomas Gates ordered the construction of a pinnace that could carry survivors on to Jamestown. He may have figured there were no ships in Virginia large enough to rescue all the survivors—more than 140 following the departure of Ravens and his shipmates—or he may simply have been pragmatic about the likelihood that the longboat might never make it to the Chesapeake. In any event, the same day that Ravens left, the keel of the pinnace was laid on Buildings Bay, just south of the beach on which Gates and the other survivors first came ashore. There, a group of men set about building a large pinnace under the direction of Frobisher, the able ship’s carpenter. But even as they laid the keel and began fashioning the ribs of the vessel they hoped would carry them to safety, trouble was brewing, trouble that would ultimately threaten tragedy for all the Sea Venture survivors.

it is unlikely that any of the ships’ captains seriously considered steering their damaged and undermanned vessels to either Barbuda or the Bermudas in search of the Sea Venture. Instead, the storm would have convinced all the captains to steer for Virginia and what they hoped and prayed would be safety.

The bad blood that pitted Archer and Ratcliffe against Smith had its beginnings in 1607, in Jamestown’s earliest days, when the three men served together on the colony’s ruling council. In the months when colonists were dying of hunger and illness, Smith discovered that the duo, along with a few others, were planning to steal supplies and a small boat they could use to flee Virginia for the safety of England. While Smith would almost certainly have been happy to see the last of the two men he thought of as cowards and traitors, he knew the colony could not survive without the boat and that the supplies the men were about to steal were sorely needed by the hungry colonists. Smith, in typical John Smith fashion, soon spiked those plans when he ordered several of the settlement’s cannon turned on the boat and ordered those on board to come ashore or be shot out of the water. Neither Archer nor Ratcliffe was the type of man to take such effrontery lying down, especially from a man they would have considered their social inferior. A few weeks later, the two saw an opportunity to even the score. At that time (it was after Smith’s rescue by Pocahontas, when he returned to Jamestown), Archer and Ratcliffe used the Bible as a legal text and charged Smith with murder under Levitical law. Ludicrous as it seems, the two argued that the “eye for an eye” verse made Smith responsible for the deaths of two of his men who had been killed when Smith was captured by the Powhatan people. It is a measure of Smith’s unpopularity with the “better sort” of colonists (not only Ratcliffe and Archer) that he was—within hours of his return to Jamestown—charged, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to die, with the execution scheduled for the next morning. That night (it was in early 1608), Smith was saved from death when Captain Christopher Newport, the man who later served as the Sea Venture’s captain, unexpectedly sailed up to Jamestown with a handful of new colonists and a shipload of food and other supplies. Newport, who recognized Smith’s value to the colony even if some of the other leaders did not and who, no doubt, saw the idiocy of making Smith responsible for the death of the men who had been killed by the Indians, immediately ordered him freed and all charges against him dropped.

Now Archer and Ratcliffe and, to a lesser degree, John Martin, another of the original settlers whose laziness had angered Smith in the colony’s early days, and who had departed in 1608 only to return on the Falcon, all saw their chance to repay Smith for his cheek by stripping him of his office. Of course, Smith was not about to give up without a fight. He said, with justification, that since the colony’s new leaders and the new charter authorizing the change in leadership were somewhere out on the Atlantic (or at its bottom), there was neither need nor authority for him to give up his post. And he certainly did not want to turn the leadership of the colony over to men he knew were ill suited to guarantee its safety or survival. For his part, if Smith had known what lay in store in the next few weeks, he might well have simply thrown up his hands and ceded control to the men he found so distasteful. As it was, at one point, he said he would give up his commission to Martin, a man he apparently found slightly less offensive than Ratcliffe and Archer. Martin accepted, but kept the job for only three hours before deciding the responsibility was more than he wanted to shoulder and turning the task back to Smith. As much as Smith disliked Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, he felt no better when he surveyed the new settlers dispatched by the Virginia Company. They were, in Smith’s view, a pretty sorry lot.

At the same time, Smith decided that the best way, indeed the only way, to guarantee Jamestown’s future was to disperse settlers. In making this decision, he was taking a page out of the Indians’ playbook since the Powhatan people routinely broke into small groups when food was scarce so that they could better forage and live off the land. Smith opted to send about sixty colonists downriver under the leadership of John Martin and George Percy (two of the men he counted as enemies). At the same time, he dispatched roughly 130 colonists up the James to a spot near the village of Powhatan, ruled by Wahunsonacock’s son, Parahunt. This group he placed under the leadership of Francis West, whose only claim to leadership was that he was the twenty-three-year-old younger brother of Thomas West, Lord De La Warre, the man who had been named “governor for life” of the Virginia colony, and who was expected to arrive in Jamestown at almost any time. These groups, Smith believed, would be able to trade for supplies and live off the land, enabling those who remained in Jamestown to survive the fast approaching winter. Smith, as well as the men who left the protection of the settlement to live off the land, were unaware that Wahunsonacock was no longer willing even to feign friendship

It took no time at all for trouble to break out between the colonists sent north with West and the natives living near the falls on the James River, near the site of present-day Richmond. More interested in searching for gold—that nonexistent Virginia gold yet again!—than in planting crops or in peaceful trade, the colonists built a fort of sorts on some low land close to the river and then simply demanded that the natives supply them with food. When the natives resisted, the English took what they wanted. “That disorderlie company so tormented those poore naked soules [the Indians], by stealing their corne, robbing their gardens, beating them, breaking their houses, and keeping some prisoners,

One of President Wingfield's first acts in May, 1607, after the construction of James Fort was underway, was the dispatch of a party to explore the river above Jamestown. Twenty-two men under Capt. Christopher Newport left on May 21 and proceeded inland to the falls of the James. in six dayes they arrived at a [Indian] Towne called Powhatan, consisting of some twelve houses, pleasantly seated on a hill; before it three fertile Iles, about it many of their cornefields, the place is very pleasant, and strong by nature ... To this place the river is navigable: but higher within a mile, by reason of the rockes and isles, there is not passage for a small boat, this they call the Falles.

From time to time there emerged in the West voluntary communist societies. One of them was the Virginia Company in Jamestown (1607); another, New Harmony of Indiana, founded in 1825 by the British philanthropist Robert Owen. All such attempts broke down sooner or later, largely because of their inability to resolve the problem of “free riders,” members who drew a full share of the community’s harvest while doing little if any work.

He thought back to his experience seeing the pottery gleaming from the dirt and imagined what it must have been like to find so many of these different items.

The idea of America as “the world’s best hope” came much later. Historic memory has camouflaged the less noble origins of “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” We all know what imagery springs to mind when patriots of our day seek confirmation that their country is and was always an “exceptional” place: modest Pilgrims taught to plant by generous Indians; Virginia Cavaliers entertaining guests at their refined estates along the James River. Because of how history is taught, Americans tend to associate Plymouth and Jamestown with cooperation rather than class division. And

As a result, Jamestown and the other Virginia forays survived on Indian charity

The leaders of Jamestown had borrowed directly from the Roman model of slavery: abandoned children and debtors were made slaves. When indentured adults sold their anticipated labor in return for passage to America, they instantly became debtors, which made their orphaned children a collateral asset. It was a world not unlike the one Shakespeare depicted in The Merchant of Venice, when Shylock demanded his pound of flesh. Virginia planters felt entitled to their flesh and blood in the forms of the innocent spouses and offspring of dead servants.36

In the United States, the country was basically started as an investment. The settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, arrived in 1607 because their financial backers in England expected the settlement would ultimately return multiples of the sums that were invested to get the settlers there. That turned out not to be a great investment for the initial backers. In the past half century, the gold standard as an investor, and thus as a predictor of the future, has been Warren Buffett.

The twenty or so captives hauled into Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619, beginning African American history, were Angolan.

MyBoys3 Press Supports Did You Enjoy Shadows at Jamestown

notwithstanding,

BECKONED to the square to listen to a representative of the Virginia Company of London. He seemed an unpretentious man, a clerk, if you will, who had some important points to make before the Jamestown colonists started mingling with the new members. The man stepped up on a makeshift wooden box and spoke to the good people gathered for the day’s celebration. As he looked out at the more delicate gender, he released a sigh of satisfaction. The bride ship had come through, and it was hoped these ninety women would secure the colony’s growth. The clerk waved a document in the air and the crowd hushed, anxious to hear what he would say. “Each woman,” he called out, to reach the hearing of those standing furthest away. “Each woman, upon entering into marriage with a man of Jamestown, will receive as promised, one new apron, two new pairs of shoes, six pairs of sheets…” He droned on, reciting the promises made by the Virginia Company of London. As each new item was listed, gasps of delight flickered in the air. The gifting lent the day even more enjoyment for these items were needed to set up a good home and many of the women were arriving with few possessions. The representative talked at length about marriage licenses and how each couple would be married, one after the other, until all were satisfied. When all was said, and done, there would be a lot of paperwork, but these contracts were the foundation of the colony, the building blocks that would ensure the birth of children on this new soil. It wasn’t just the Virginia Company of London who wanted the population to grow in the colony, it was also the wish of Scarlett. These people who would be her neighbours, these men who would make business deals with her husband, these children who would grow by her child’s side, were the herd. From these people, would she harvest, and as they prospered, so would she.

In the muddy area below, the men of Jamestown gathered. Their excitement was obvious in the way they greeted each other, the rapid pumping of arms and the boisterous slapping of backs. Heads nodded as they conversed and waited to mingle with the ladies who would soon be their help mates. These men had pioneer spirits and courage. They had travelled to an unknown land to make a new life for themselves in a country where even the climate could kill. When these adventurers had first arrived, trade had been established with the Powhatans. Then the fort had been built. Then another, after the Indian raids. Then, the men of God came, and disease came, and the first two women, followed by families, and then winter. Cold, deadly winter followed by four years of Indian wars, and the hollow ache of starvation. Still, year after year, the settlement had survived and one year after the ship, The White Lion, brought the first black people, the settlement was thought safe for women—European women. Wives! It was a glorious day, for now each hard-working man could claim his bounty in female flesh. Of course, there would be opportunities to talk to a woman before making a life-binding decision, and there would be a celebration meal, ale and, no doubt, a dance.

ship built by English settlers in the New World. In 1607, at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine, the Plymouth Company erected a short-lived fishing settlement. A London shipwright named Digby organized some settlers to construct a small vessel with which to return them home to England, as they were homesick and disenchanted with the New England winters. The small craft was named, characteristically, the Virginia. She was evidently a two-master and weighed about thirty tons, and she transported furs, salted cod, and tobacco for twenty years between various ports along the Maine coast, Plymouth, Jamestown, and England. She is believed to have wrecked somewhere along the coast of Ireland.6 By the middle of the seventeenth century, shipbuilding was firmly established as an independent industry in New England. Maine, with its long coastline and abundant forests, eventually overtook even Massachusetts as the shipbuilding capital of North America. Its most western town, Kittery, hovered above the Piscataqua. For many years the towns of Kittery and Portsmouth, and upriver enclaves like Exeter, Newmarket, Durham, Dover, and South Berwick, rivaled Bath and Brunswick, Maine, as shipbuilding centers, with numerous shipyards, blacksmith shops, sawmills, and wharves. Portsmouth's deep harbor, proximity to upriver lumber, scarcity of fog, and seven feet of tide made it an ideal location for building large vessels. During colonial times, the master carpenters of England were so concerned about competition they eventually petitioned Parliament to discourage shipbuilding in Portsmouth.7 One of the early Piscataqua shipwrights was Robert Cutts, who used African American slaves to build fishing smacks at Crooked Lane in Kittery in the 1650s. Another was William Pepperell, who moved from the Isle of Shoals to Kittery in 1680, where he amassed a fortune in the shipbuilding, fishing, and lumber trades. John Bray built ships in front of

The state of New Hampshire boasts a mere eighteen miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline. The Piscataqua River separates the state's southeastern corner from Maine and empties into the Atlantic. On the southwestern corner of this juncture of river and ocean is Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The smaller town of Kittery, Maine, is on the opposite side of the river. The port of Piscataqua is deep, and it never freezes in winter, making it an ideal location for maritime vocations such as fishing, sea trade, and shipbuilding. Four years before the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1603, Martin Pring of England first discovered the natural virtues of Piscataqua harbor. While on a scouting voyage in the ship Speedwell, Pring sailed approximately ten miles up the unexplored Piscataqua, where he discovered “goodly groves and woods replenished with tall oakes, beeches, pine-trees, firre-trees, hasels, and maples.”1 Following Pring, Samuel de Champlain, Captain John Smith, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges each sailed along the Maine-New Hampshire coastline and remarked on its abundance of timber and fish. The first account of Piscataqua harbor was given by Smith, that intrepid explorer, author, and cofounder of the Jamestown settlement, who assigned the name “New-England” to the northeast coastline in 1614. In May or June of that year, he landed near the Piscataqua, which he later described as “a safe harbour, with a rocky shore.”2 In 1623, three years after the Pilgrim founding of Plymouth, an English fishing and trading company headed by David Thomson established a saltworks and fishing station in what is now Rye, New Hampshire, just west of the Piscataqua River. English fishermen soon flocked to the Maine and New Hampshire coastline, eventually venturing inland to dry their nets, salt, and fish. They were particularly drawn to the large cod population around the Piscataqua, as in winter the cod-spawning grounds shifted from the cold offshore banks to the warmer waters along the coast.

Few records exist to establish a definitive date as to when the first ships were built in the Piscataqua region. Fishing vessels were probably constructed as early as 1623, when the first fishermen settled in the area. Many undoubtedly boasted a skilled shipwright who taught the fishermen how to build “great shallops”as well as lesser craft. In 1631 a man named Edward Godfrie directed the fisheries at Pannaway. His operation included six large shallops, five fishing boats, and thirteen skiffs, the shallops essentially open boats that included several pairs of oars, a mast, and lug sail, and which later sported enclosed decks.5 Records do survive of the very first ship built by English settlers in the New World. In 1607, at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine, the Plymouth Company erected a short-lived fishing settlement. A London shipwright named Digby organized some settlers to construct a small vessel with which to return them home to England, as they were homesick and disenchanted with the New England winters. The small craft was named, characteristically, the Virginia. She was evidently a two-master and weighed about thirty tons, and she transported furs, salted cod, and tobacco for twenty years between various ports along the Maine coast, Plymouth, Jamestown, and England. She is believed to have wrecked somewhere along the coast of Ireland.6 By the middle of the seventeenth century, shipbuilding was firmly established as an independent industry in New England. Maine, with its long coastline and abundant forests, eventually overtook even Massachusetts as the shipbuilding capital of North America. Its most western town, Kittery, hovered above the Piscataqua. For many years the towns of Kittery and Portsmouth, and upriver enclaves like Exeter, Newmarket, Durham, Dover, and South Berwick, rivaled Bath and Brunswick, Maine, as shipbuilding centers, with numerous shipyards, blacksmith shops, sawmills, and wharves. Portsmouth's deep harbor, proximity to upriver lumber, scarcity of fog, and seven feet of tide made it an ideal location for building large vessels. During colonial times, the master carpenters of England were so concerned about competition they eventually petitioned Parliament to discourage shipbuilding in Portsmouth.7 One of the early Piscataqua shipwrights was Robert Cutts, who used African American slaves to build fishing smacks at Crooked Lane in Kittery in the 1650s. Another was William Pepperell, who moved from the Isle of Shoals to Kittery in 1680, where he amassed a fortune in the shipbuilding, fishing, and lumber trades. John Bray built ships in front of the Pepperell mansion as early as 1660, and Samuel Winkley owned a yard that lasted for three generations.8 In 1690, the first warship in America was launched from a small island in the Piscataqua River, situated halfway between Kittery and Portsmouth. The island's name was Rising Castle, and it was the launching pad for a 637-ton frigate called the Falkland. The Falkland bore fifty-four guns, and she sailed until 1768 as a regular line-of-battle ship. The selection of Piscataqua as the site of English naval ship construction may have been instigated by the Earl of Bellomont, who wrote that the harbor would grow wealthy if it supplemented its export of ship masts with “the building of great ships for H.M. Navy.”9 The earl's words underscore the fact that, prior to the American Revolution, Piscataqua's largest source of maritime revenue came from the masts and spars it supplied to Her Majesty's ships. The white oak and white pine used for these building blocks grew to heights of two hundred feet and weighed upward of twenty tons. England depended on this lumber during the Dutch Wars of the