Five years later, the
Virginia Company of London sent Sir Thomas Dale to act as deputy-governor or as "Marshall of Virginia" (a new position) for the
Virginia Colony under the authority of
Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (Lord Delaware). Sent with three ships, on 19 May 1611, he arrived at
Jamestown (named after
King James) with men, cattle, and provisions. He found the conditions unhealthy and greatly in need of improvement. Dale immediately called for a meeting of the Jamestown Council and established crews to rebuild Jamestown. He served as acting Governor for 3½ months in 1611 and again for a two-year period between 1614 and 1616. In the interim, he served as the Marshall of the colony, initially serving directly under Deputy Governor Sir
Thomas Gates. Effectively, for five years, he was the highest ranking law enforcement officer in Virginia. He exhibited a certain stern efficiency which was perhaps the best support and medicine that could have been devised. It was during his administration that the first code of laws of Virginia, nominally in force from 1611 to 1619, was effectively tested. This code, entitled "Articles, Lawes, and Orders Divine, Politique, and Martiall" (popularly known as
Dale's Code), was notable for its pitiless severity and seems to have been prepared in large part by Dale himself. A career military officer, he established
martial law (which continued until 1619) and an effective military system, which included offensive operations against nearby Native Americans as well as maintaining at
Jamestown a fortress with three blockhouses (the first begun in 1609 at the isthmus that connected the ) and earthworks. Perhaps Dale's most lasting reform was economic. In 1613, without stockholder consent, Dale abandoned the communal agriculture which had proved unsatisfactory, and he assigned 3-acre (12,000 m2) 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. Not only did food production increase markedly, but the following year John Rolfe succeeded on his plot in raising the first hybrid tobacco − the key to the colony's future. Seeking a better site than swampy and insect-ridden Jamestown Island (notoriously unhealthy during summer months), Thomas Dale sailed up the
James River (also named after
King James) to the area now known as
Chesterfield County. He was apparently impressed with the possibilities of the general area where the
Appomattox River joins the James River, and there are published references to the name "New Bermuda" although it apparently was never formalized. (Far from the mainland of North America, the archipelago of
Bermuda had been established as part of the Virginia Colony in 1612 following the shipwreck of the
Sea Venture in 1609.) A short distance further up the James, in 1611, Dale began constructing a village at
Henricus, in a horseshoe bend of the James River where a canal would later be created to create
Farrars Island. Henricus was envisioned as possible replacement capital for Jamestown and was to have the first college in Virginia. (Ill-fated Henricus was destroyed more than five years after Dale's departure, during the
Indian massacre of 1622, during which a third of the colonists were killed.) In addition to creating the new settlement at Henricus, Dale also established the port town of
Bermuda Hundred and
"Bermuda Cittie" (sic). He began the excavation work at
Dutch Gap, using methods he had learned while serving in
Holland. In 1614, Governor Thomas Dale sent 20 men, under Lieutenant William Craddock, to the area across the Chesapeake Bay from mainland Virginia now known as the
Eastern Shore to establish a salt works and to catch fish for the colonists. They intended to make salt by boiling down the sea water. They settled along Old Plantation Creek at a place named "Dale's Gift" on the mainland, but they established the salt works on
Smith Island, which is located adjacent to the southern portion of the Eastern Shore in present-day
Northampton County near
Cape Charles. == Return to England ==