Spain, Portugal, and France moved quickly to establish a presence in the
New World, while other European countries moved more slowly. The English did not attempt to found colonies until many decades after the explorations of
John Cabot, and early efforts were failures—most notably the
Roanoke Colony, which vanished about 1590.
1607–1609: Arrival and beginning , showing the terrain and location of the original 1607 fort es along Jamestown Island; the ample wetlands on the island proved to be a breeding ground for
mosquitoes. , depicting the fort, In 1606, English
colonists set sail with a
charter from the
London Company to establish a colony in the New World. The fleet consisted of the ships
Susan Constant,
Discovery, and
Godspeed, all under the leadership of Captain
Christopher Newport. They made a particularly long voyage of four months, including a stop in the
Canary Islands, in
Spain, and subsequently
Puerto Rico, and finally departed for the American mainland on April 10, 1607. The expedition made landfall on April 26, 1607, at a place which they named
Cape Henry. Under orders to select a more secure location, they set about exploring what is now
Hampton Roads and an outlet to the
Chesapeake Bay which they named the
James River in honor of King
James I of England.
Captain Edward Maria Wingfield was elected president of the governing council on April 25, 1607. On May 14, he selected a piece of land on a large peninsula some inland from the Atlantic Ocean as a prime location for a fortified settlement. The river channel was a defensible strategic point due to a curve in the river, and it was close to the land, making it navigable and offering enough land for piers or wharves to be built in the future. Perhaps the most favorable fact about the location was that it was uninhabited because the leaders of the nearby
indigenous nations considered the site too poor and remote for
agriculture. The island was swampy and isolated, and it offered limited space, was plagued by mosquitoes, and afforded only brackish
tidal river water unsuitable for drinking. The Jamestown settlers arrived in Virginia during a severe drought, according to a research study conducted by the Jamestown Archaeological Assessment (JAA) team in the 1990s. The JAA analyzed information from a study conducted in 1985 by David Stahle and others, who obtained drawings of 800-year-old
bald cypress trees along the
Nottoway and
Blackwater rivers. The lifespan of these trees is up to 1,000 years, and their rings offer a good indication of an area's annual amount of rainfall. The borings revealed that the worst drought in 700 years occurred between 1606 and 1612. This severe drought affected the Jamestown colonists and
Powhatan tribe's ability to produce food and obtain a safe supply of water. The settlers also arrived too late in the year to get crops planted. Many in the group were either gentlemen or their manservants, both equally unaccustomed to the hard labor demanded by the harsh task of carving out a viable colony. Two-thirds of the settlers died before ships arrived in 1608 with supplies and
German and
Polish craftsmen, who helped to establish the first manufactories in the colony. As a result, glassware became the foremost American products to be exported to Europe at the time.
Clapboard had already been sent back to England beginning with the first returning ship. The delivery of supplies in 1608 on the
first and second supply missions of Captain Newport had also added to the number of hungry settlers. It seemed certain at that time that the colony at Jamestown would meet the same fate as earlier English attempts to settle in North America, specifically the Roanoke Colony (Lost Colony) and the
Popham Colony, unless there was a major relief effort. The Germans who arrived with the second supply and a few others defected to the Powhatans, with weapons and equipment. The Germans even planned to join a rumored Spanish attack on the colony and urged the Powhatans to join it. The Spanish were driven off by the timely arrival in July 1609 of Captain
Samuel Argall in
Mary and John, a larger ship than the Spanish reconnaissance ship
La Asunción de Cristo. Argall's voyage also prevented the Spanish from gaining knowledge of the weakness of the colony. Don Pedro de Zúñiga, the Spanish ambassador to England, was desperately seeking this information (in addition to spies) in order to get
Philip III of Spain to authorize an attack on the colony. The investors of the Virginia Company of London expected to reap rewards from their speculative investments. With the second supply, they expressed their frustrations and made demands upon the leaders of Jamestown in written form. They specifically demanded that the colonists send commodities sufficient to pay the cost of the voyage, a lump of gold, assurance that they had found the South Sea, and one member of the lost Roanoke Colony. It fell to the third president of the council,
Captain John Smith, to deliver a bold and much-needed wake-up call in response to the investors in London, demanding practical laborers and craftsmen who could help make the colony more self-sufficient.
1609–1610: Starving Time and third supply After Smith was forced to return to England because of an explosion which gave him deep burn wounds during a trading expedition, the colony was led by
George Percy, who proved incompetent in negotiating with the native tribes. There are indications that those in London comprehended and embraced Smith's message. The third supply mission of 1609 was by far the largest and best equipped. They also had a new purpose-built flagship,
Sea Venture, constructed and placed in the most experienced of hands, Christopher Newport. On June 2, 1609,
Sea Venture set sail from
Plymouth, England, as the flagship of a seven-ship fleet (towing two additional
pinnaces) destined for Jamestown as part of the third supply mission, carrying 214 settlers. On July 24, the fleet ran into a strong storm, likely a
hurricane, and the ships were separated. Although some of the ships did make it to Jamestown, the leaders and most of the supplies had been aboard
Sea Venture, which fought the storm for three days before the Admiral of the company, Sir
George Somers, deliberately drove it onto the reefs of
Bermuda to prevent its foundering. This allowed all aboard to be landed safely. The survivors (including Lieutenant-General
Sir Thomas Gates, Captain Christopher Newport,
Silvester Jourdain,
Stephen Hopkins—later of
Mayflower—and secretary
William Strachey) were stranded on Bermuda for approximately nine months. During that time, they built two new ships, the pinnaces
Deliverance and
Patience. The original plan was to build only one vessel,
Deliverance, but it soon became evident that it would not be large enough to carry the settlers and all of the food (salted pork) that was being sourced on the islands. While the third supply was stranded in Bermuda, the colony at Jamestown was in even worse shape. The settlers faced rampant starvation for want of additional provisions. During this time, lack of food drove people to eat snakes and even boil the leather from shoes for sustenance. Only 60 of the original 214 settlers at Jamestown survived. The ships from Bermuda arrived in Jamestown on May 23, 1610. Many of the surviving colonists were near death, and Jamestown was judged to be unviable. Everyone was boarded onto
Deliverance and
Patience, which set sail for England. However, on June 10, 1610, the timely
arrival of another relief fleet, bearing Governor
Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (who would eventually give his name to the colony of
Delaware), which met the two ships as they descended the James River, granted Jamestown a reprieve. The colonists called this
The Day of Providence. The fleet brought supplies and additional settlers. All the settlers returned to the colony, though there was still a critical shortage of food. Relations between the colonists and the Powhatans quickly deteriorated after De La Warr's arrival, eventually leading to conflict. The
Anglo-Powhatan War lasted until
Samuel Argall captured
Wahunsenacawh's daughter Matoaka, better known by her nickname
Pocahontas, after which the chief accepted a treaty of peace.
1610–1624: Rising fortunes Due to the
aristocratic backgrounds of many of the colonists, a historic drought and the communal nature of their workload, progress through the first few years was inconsistent. By 1613, six years after Jamestown's founding, the organizers and shareholders of the Virginia Company were desperate to increase the efficiency and profitability of the struggling colony. Without stockholder consent the Governor, Sir
Thomas Dale, assigned plots to its "
ancient planters" and smaller plots to the settlement's later arrivals. Measurable economic progress was made, and the settlers began expanding their planting to land belonging to local native tribes. That this turnaround coincided with the end of a drought that had begun the year before the English settlers' arrival probably indicates multiple factors were involved besides the colonists' ineptitude. Among the colonists who survived the Starving Time was
John Rolfe, who carried with him a cache of untested
tobacco seeds from Bermuda, which had grown wild there after being planted by shipwrecked Spaniards years before. In 1614, Rolfe began to successfully harvest tobacco. Prosperous and wealthy, he married Pocahontas, bringing several years of peace between the English and natives. However, at the end of a public relations trip to England, Pocahontas became sick and died on March 21, 1617. The following year, her father also died. Powhatan's brother, a fierce warrior named
Opechancanough, became head of the
Powhatan Confederacy. As the English continued to appropriate more land for tobacco farming, relations with the natives worsened. Because of the high cost of the trans-Atlantic voyage at this time, many English settlers came to Jamestown as
indentured servants: in exchange for the passage, room, board, and the promise of land or money, these immigrants would agree to work for three to seven years. Immigrants from continental Europe, mainly Germans, were usually
redemptioners—they purchased some portion of their voyage on credit and, upon arrival, borrowed or entered into a work contract to pay the remainder of their voyage costs. In 1619, the first representative assembly in America, the General Assembly, convened in the
Jamestown Church, "to establish one equal and uniform government over all Virginia" which would provide "just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people there inhabiting." Initially, only men of English origin were permitted to vote. On June 30, 1619, in what was the
first recorded strike in Colonial America, the
Polish artisans protested and refused to work if not allowed to vote. On July 21, 1619, the court granted the Poles equal
voting rights. Afterwards, the labor strike was ended, and the artisans resumed their work. Individual land ownership was also instituted, and the colony was divided into four large "boroughs" or "incorporations" called "citties" by the colonists. Jamestown was located in
James Cittie. Of the
first documented African slaves to arrive in
English North America, on the frigate
White Lion in August 1619, Their baby, named William Tucker, became the first documented African child baptized in British North America. Another of the early enslaved Africans to be purchased at the settlement was
Angela, who worked for Captain William Peirce. A generation later, during
Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, Jamestown was burned and eventually rebuilt. During its recovery, the Virginia legislature met first at Governor
William Berkeley's nearby
Green Spring Plantation, and later at
Middle Plantation, which had been started in 1632 as a fortified community inland on the
Virginia Peninsula, about distant. When the statehouse burned again in 1698, this time accidentally, the legislature again temporarily relocated to Middle Plantation and was able to meet in the new facilities of the
College of William & Mary, which had been established after receiving a royal charter in 1693. Rather than rebuilding at Jamestown again, the capital of the colony was moved permanently to Middle Plantation in 1699. The town was renamed
Williamsburg, to honor the reigning monarch,
King William III. A capitol building and "Governor's Palace" were erected there in the following years. ==Aftermath and preservation==