by John Butman
SIR THOMAS WEST and his fleet of three ships left London for Virginia in April 1610 with 150 colonists. They reached America after a two-month crossing and weighed anchor at Point Comfort on the north bank of the James River. There, the new Lord Governor West got word that the colonists were preparing to abandon the settlement upriver at Jamestown.
The settlers had every reason to have lost hope. As West later learned, the colony had descended into a wretched condition. During the winter, the Powhatans besieged the town, preventing anyone from leaving the fort to go in search of food. As a result, supplies ran dangerously low and the colonists began “to feel the sharp prick of hunger.”13 They eventually resorted to eating anything they could catch and consume: cats, dogs, horses, rats, mice, snakes, and, finally, their fellow colonists. “Nothing was spared to maintain life,” Percy recalled, and they did “those things w[hi]ch seem incredible.” They dug “corpses out of graves” and proceeded “to eat them.” One man was so ravenous that he slaughtered his pregnant wife, “ripped the child out of her womb,” threw the baby in the river, and then “chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food.”14 It was Percy who gave this period the name for which it would be remembered forevermore: the “Starving Time.” More than four hundred settlers died, leaving a diminished colony of about sixty survivors.
When West got the news that the colonists were planning to depart, he dispatched a small boat to alert them that he had arrived with new settlers and supplies and to urge them to stay. As the little vessel proceeded upriver, it met four ships coming downstream from the direction of Jamestown. At the helm of one of the vessels was Thomas Gates.
After they finally met each other, Gates told West the remarkable story about what had happened to him and the Sea Venture the summer before. On July 23, 1609, when the Gates-Somers fleet was within a few days of reaching Jamestown, the ships had encountered the “dreadful tempest” that separated them. In the definitive account of the episode, William Strachey, a well-traveled former diplomat with literary ambitions, reported that while he had encountered many dangerous gales before, this one made the ocean and sky “like an hell of darkness.” It was so intense that “all that I had ever suffered gathered together, might not hold comparison with this.” Such was the violence that the caulking between some of the ship’s planks burst out and seawater rushed in through the open seams. In the darkness, “with candles in their hands,” the crew searched for the leak. But by the time they found it, the gape was too large to be plugged. They resorted to bailing and pumping and, when this made no difference, throwing ordnance and chests of belongings overboard to lighten the load.15
For three days and four nights, the storm raged. Just as the passengers prepared to commit themselves “to the mercy of the sea,” the admiral of the fleet, George Somers, who had lashed himself to the ship, “cried ‘Land.’” Miraculously, they had come upon one of the Bermudas, an archipelago of more than one hundred islands. Long known as “The Devils Islands” for their dangerous shoals, they were “feared and avoided of all sea travelers alive, above any other place in the world.”16 At last, the storm abated and the Sea Venture—all 150 of its men and women alive, if traumatized—made landfall on an island they named Smith’s Island, after Sir Thomas.
The place, which Sir Humphrey Gilbert had identified as a possible site for a settlement thirty years earlier, turned out to be a paradise—sumptuous in its wildlife, with birds, turtles, an abundance of fish, oysters, lobsters, crabs, and whales. The island ran with hogs, which had been left by previous voyagers for the very purpose of providing sustenance to survivors shipwrecked on the dangerous reefs.17 The English hunted them, boasting that they could bring in “thirty, sometimes fifty boars, sows, and pigs” in a week.18
Some settlers found the Bermuda Islands so alluring that they argued it would be better to settle there rather than to continue on to Virginia. One of these was Stephen Hopkins, a radical Protestant who cited the Bible in his effort to question the authority of Sir Thomas Gates in a strange land. He was very nearly hanged for mutiny—but was finally pardoned. Meanwhile, Gates ordered Richard Frobisher, an experienced shipwright and possibly a kinsman of Sir Martin, to recover what material he could from the Sea Venture, which lay on the coral reef close to the island, and construct two pinnaces.19
In May 1610, after the castaways had spent ten months on the Bermuda Islands, they set sail in Frobisher’s vessels, Deliverance and Patience, and sailed the seven hundred miles to Jamestown, arriving there two weeks later. When he beheld the horribly reduced condition of the settlers and the settlement, Gates must have rued the day that he decided to leave Bermuda. It did not take him long to conclude that the prospects for the settlement were hopeless and that Jamestown should be abandoned. Gates and the Jamestown colonists boarded four ships and set off for the voyage back to England. It was then, as they wended their way down the James River, that they encountered West’s little boat, learned that there was a new group of settlers and fresh supplies, and decided to stay.
West and his contingent proceeded to Jamestown, arriving there in June. The first aristocrat to govern an English American colony, he took control with much pomp and circumstance, guarded by fifty red-coated soldiers wielding halberds. He then got straight down to the work of revitalizing the settlement, sending Somers back to Bermuda to collect hogs and other supplies from that wonderland. At the same time, to keep Smythe and the other investors happy, he ordered the gathering of sassafras and other commodities that could be sold for a profit in London.
Strikingly, West did not devote time or effort in a search for the lost colonists of Roanoke. Nor did he go looking for gold mines or a passage to the East. These goals, once so prominent in the minds of the men who masterminded England’s ventures to America, had dropped down the priority list. For the first time, America came to be seen as a destination in its own right rather than as a source of Spanish-style mineral riches or a stopover on the way to Asia. But the quest for a fast route to Cathay was not abandoned by London’s merchants. As he dispatched West to Jamestown, Smythe was busily laying the groundwork for another organization: the Northwest Passage Company.
WEST SENT GATES back to England to collect more settlers and still more supplies—and, of course, to prove he was alive and show that God was on the side of the colonists. He arrived in September 1610, having been away for more than a year. Until then, most of London thought that he had perished on the treacherous coral reefs of the Bermuda Islands. He brought with him Strachey’s account of the Sea Venture, which appeared in a letter to Sara, Sir Thomas Smythe’s wife.20 Not published until 1612, it was nevertheless passed around as an unpublished manuscript, enthralled everyone who read it, and may even have provided Shakespeare with the inspiration for his final play, The Tempest.
Gates’s survival and Strachey’s report—especially the unexpected opportunity of Bermuda and the great needs of Jamestown—energized the investors once again. The Virginia Company’s leaders sought to raise a further £30,000, which they calculated would be enough to deploy three supply convoys, whose goal was pretty much the same as it had been before: to create “a very able and strong foundation of annexing another Kingdom to this Crown.”21
In March 1611, when the first of these convoys departed England with a contingent of three hundred settler-volunteers, there was a new man in charge: Sir Thomas Dale, a grit-hard soldier who had served with West in the Netherlands. Personally recommended by Prince Henry, he was to be Jamestown’s marshal, supporting the lord governor by imposing martial law.22 But when he arrived in May 1611, Dale found the colony in disarray once again and West nowhere to be seen. It turned out that the lord governor had sneaked out of Jamestown after suffering several bouts of ill health. Officially lord governor “for life,” he had stayed barely ten months, and even then, he spent much of this time on board his ship, apparently reluctant to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi.23
Like so many others, Dale had been persuaded
by the Virginia Company’s marketing campaign. He had read the pamphlets, heard the sermons, and listened to the captains. Now he could see with his own eyes that their claims of a prosperous, thriving colony were baseless. In an act of frustration, he turned to Christopher Newport, took hold of his beard, and threatened to have him hanged for misleading him and other adventurers.24
Without a designated governor, Dale seized control of the colony and moved swiftly to carry out the Virginia Company’s instructions that had been given to Gates and then, with modifications, to West. In imposing martial law, he drew up a set of rules with the help of Strachey, who had trained at Gray’s Inn. Later published as Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, it was the first legal code in America, and it was mercilessly enforced. Major crimes—including theft—carried the death sentence. Minor crimes—such as slander—were punishable by imprisonment, whippings, hard labor on the colony’s galleys, or “passing the pikes,” where the guilty had to go through a row of soldiers holding weapons: they were lucky if they reached the other end alive.25
Tough with the colonists, Dale was tougher still with the Powhatans, exacting severe retribution for the besieging of Jamestown during the “starving time.” Although he never received the army of two thousand soldiers he wanted to fight the Powhatans, he vowed to “over master the subtle-mischievous Great Powhatan,” and force him to sue for peace or “leave then to our possession his country.”26
Also, Dale set about establishing a new “principal residence and seat” for the colony beyond the falls, which lay fifty miles farther up the James River. Jamestown, by now regarded as a marshy “unwholesome” place, was to be continued only as a useful port, populated “with a convenient number of men.”27 When it was finished, the new town featured “3 streets of well framed houses, a handsome church and the foundation of a more stately one laid of brick, in length an hundred foot, and fifty foot wide, besides store houses, watch houses, and such like.”28 Dale christened the new town Henrico—in honor of fourteen-year-old prince Henry, who was starting to be recognized as “the Protector of Virginia.”29
SOON AFTER FOUNDING Henrico, Dale took his men downriver to a fertile land, creating another settlement called Bermuda, after the now famously bountiful Bermuda Islands. As he did so, Smythe and the Virginia Company considered ways to finance the colony—and settled on an intriguing and relatively new financing vehicle: a lottery. It would be the third public lottery in England’s history, the first having been launched by Elizabeth in the 1560s for raising money to pay for building royal ships and developing ports.30 Anyone could buy a lot and get a chance to receive a prize. All the money collected would go to support the Virginia colonies.
The Virginia Company commissioned a “Lottery House,” where the lots would be drawn, at the west end of St. Paul’s Cathedral.31 Thomas Smythe launched a marketing campaign, approaching companies for subscriptions and engaging Robert Johnson once again to write a new pamphlet—this one called The Lotterys best prize, declaring the former successe and present state of Virginia’s Plantation. Published in May 1612 as The New Life of Virginea, it acknowledged that, like all excellent things, “the business and plantation of Virginia” had been “accompanied with manifold difficulties, crosses and disasters.” Now, however, was the time for citizens throughout England to take part in an enterprise “of such consequence” for the nation. Even if they did not win a prize in the lottery, they could rest assured that their “money goeth to a public work.”32
When the lots were drawn, Thomas Sharplisse, a tailor, emerged as the winner of the first prize—four thousand crowns “in fair plate,” which “was sent to his house in a very stately manner.”33 The Virginia Company was a big winner, too. According to the Spanish ambassador, the lottery raised 60,000 ducats.34 Indeed, the London lottery was so successful that the scheme was rolled out across the country.
But even this new funding source could not be counted on to sustain the Virginia Colony indefinitely. Dale fired off a warning to Smythe arguing that the loss of Virginia would be as bad a mistake as the state had made “since they lost the Kingdom of France”—as bad, that is, as the loss of Calais in 1558. It was a comparison calculated to resurrect painful memories for Smythe: his grandfather, Sir Andrew Judde, had been Mayor of the Calais staple when the city was captured by the French.35
Along with his warning, Dale sent a potential solution—a sample of an aromatic leaf that might calm Smythe’s nerves: tobacco.36 During the planting season of 1612, John Rolfe, one of the survivors of the Sea Venture wreck in Bermuda, had sown the seeds of the plant Nicotiana tabacum, which produced a leaf of the Spanish style, much milder than the bitter local leaf, Nicotiana rustica, favored by the Powhatans.37 Rolfe had done so, as one colonist wrote, “partly for the love he hath a long time borne” for the habit of smoking tobacco, and partly for the purpose of finding a profitable commodity for the investors back in London.38 At this time, the English were spending around £200,000 per year on tobacco—although most of this came from Spain’s colonies.39 Rolfe’s harvest proved popular, and by 1615 thirty-two of Jamestown’s fifty inhabitants were farming tobacco.40
The prospects of Virginia were further boosted when Dale struck a peace deal with the aging Indian leader Wahunsonacock—an agreement sealed by the marriage of his favorite daughter, Pocahontas, to John Rolfe. During the Anglo-Powhatan War, the English had taken Pocahontas hostage. She was brought to Jamestown and subsequently transferred to Henrico, where she was instructed in the Christian religion and learned English. She established a relationship with Rolfe, who had lost his wife and daughter during his stay in the Bermuda Islands. For his part, Rolfe said he was moved not by “unbridled desire for carnal affection but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the glory of God, and for my own salvation.”41
In England, this was spectacular news—the first Christian convert among the Indians, the first Anglo-Indian marriage, and, within a year, the first Anglo-Indian child: a boy called Thomas. Thomas Smythe and the rest of the Virginia Company, always alert to marketing opportunities, invited Pocahontas, now known as Lady Rebecca Rolfe, to visit London. Arriving in June 1616 to a rapturous welcome, she led a delegation of about a dozen Powhatans. One of the Indians, Uttamatomakkin, a senior Powhatan counselor, had been given the task of preparing a report on the salient aspects of the country of England—especially the size of its population. To that end, he carried with him a long stick on which he was to cut a notch to represent each person he saw as he traveled through the country. Very quickly, however, as the chronicler Samuel Purchas reported, Uttamatomakkin lost count of all the people he saw and “his arithmetic soon failed.”42
The Pocahontas visit was a remarkable collision of cultures—very different from any previous visit to England by an American or New World native. During her stay, Lady Rebecca sat for a portrait, commissioned by Smythe (who commissioned one of himself, too). She is dressed as a fashionable English lady, with a tall beaver-fur hat, lace ruff, pearl earrings, and a fan of ostrich feathers.
But if her visit began promisingly, it ended tragically. In March 1617, as she prepared to cross the Atlantic and return home, she fell ill and soon succumbed to a respiratory ailment that had gone undiagnosed and untreated. She was buried at Gravesend, on the south side of the Thames estuary. For Smythe and the Virginia Company, however, her visit brought long-lasting benefits. While in London, Rolfe met with tobacco merchants looking to sell Virginian “smoke” in England, mainland Europe, and the markets of the East Indies.43 Smythe, governor of the East India Company, seized on this opportunity, eventually sending out tobacco-trading voyages to the markets of the Far East. The people who lived on the Cape of Good Hope, where English sailors stopped to trade, soon came to recognize “Sir Thomas Smythe’s English ships.”44
IN 1616, THE year of Pocahontas’s visit, some twenty-five hundred pounds of tobacco were imported from Virginia (and Bermuda). The following year, the imports jumped to 18,839 poun
ds. And it spiked up again the year after that—to 49,518 pounds.45 But even with the success of the tobacco business, the Virginia Company’s venture did not match the success of the East India Company’s overseas trade. In the EIC’s first twelve voyages, organized between 1601 and 1612, the profit ranged from 95 percent to 234 percent.46 By contrast, in 1616, the Virginia Company failed to pay the cash dividend it had promised to its investors. But if the colony had not realized its hoped-for potential as a source of valuable commodities, the Virginia Company could still claim ownership of vast quantities of American land. And under Dale’s leadership the colony had expanded, occupying and developing a substantial amount of the territory along the James River.
A survey carried out by Rolfe counted six settlements around Jamestown: on the coast was Dale’s Gift, a fishing settlement with seventeen people; farther inland was Kecoughtan, with twenty people, mainly farmers; then came Jamestown itself, with fifty people, followed by West and Sherley Hundred, named for De La Warr and his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Sherley, with twenty-five people dedicated to tobacco farming; and then, up by the falls, lay Henrico, with thirty-eight people; and Bermuda Nether Hundred, the biggest settlement, with 119 people.47
With this expansion, it seemed as if the colony had turned a corner. Leaders of the Virginia Company concluded that “the chief brunt and doubt of the colony is now overpast.”48 Yet there was work to be done. Farm animals outnumbered people. Rolfe counted 216 goats, 144 cattle, six horses, a “great plenty” of poultry, and so many “wild and tame” hogs, supplied from Bermuda and London, that they were “not to be numbered.” Yet there were only 351 colonists, including sixty-five women and children. Rolfe reported that this was “a small number to advance so great a work.” Virginia was a “country spacious and wide, capable of [housing] many hundred thousand inhabitants.” If only there were “good and sufficient men,” it could be transformed into a “firm and perfect Common-weale.”49