So the Virginia Company’s board of directors sent over 104 adventurers, including a goodly number of refugees from the English “enclosure movement”, on three ships, which, in their good time (nearly five months), wandered into Jamestown bay in May 1607. Officially this was to be England’s first North American colonial effort. Let’s forget about Roanoke, and the clone-Sagadahoc Maine initiatives. Why we have in the past modules talked about the elite/Company motivations for the colonial experiment, Jamestown has the heritage of a gold rush frenzy that motivated the colonists to take the risk. Hoping to find gold, a host of opportunistic males descended into the Virginia coastal interior to find quick riches. Is this accurate?
The first observation is that the initial Jamestown experiment was an economic, not political enterprise for those that made the trip over. The reader may think this an effort to establish a permanent settlement, England’s first North American colony, but it was less than an opportunity for quick profits. Jamestown colonists saw the colony as an opportunity to make quick profits; minerals, gold especially was what they dreamed about, but they would settle for almost anything that could be quickly extracted from the immediate area of the camp-fortress. Whatever else they came for, it was not to farm, or even fish.
The idea of a small gold rush comes from John Smith who lived in Jamestown (more or less) for its first two or so years—and its chief authority for one of those years. He couldn’t get the residents to focus on self-sufficiency, farm production primarily and in frustration he wrote the colonists behavior was “no talke, no hope, no worke, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold” in his memoirs. The reality is different. It wasn’t just gold but marketable minerals and natural resources, of native Indian products for export.
It has usually been assumed that their principal thought was of gold … the Jamestown project as essentially a misguided gold hunt. … The record of course does not lack evidence supporting such a view, but there is a need for greater care … not until … 1608 was the settlement stirred by the fever of a real gold hunt [1a] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Louisiana State Press, 1970), pp. 67-9
The problem underlying this complaint was Smith’s inability to command or motivate the residents to take actions to survive the hostile wilderness until the next supply ship arrived. The new colonists were ungovernable, and unwilling to engage in work that was required to make the settlement self-sufficient, at least through the winter. The mismatch between the authority structure of the local government following goals and instructions written in London and the motivations and aspirations, if not the character of its “citizens” who at best were ill-suited for their own governance, which was compounded by the location chosen which was next to a swamp. The neighbors that would kill off these fine folk were less likely to be Native Americans than mosquitoes. This is pretty much today’s official narrative on Jamestown’s first years.
In this module, however, I argue a different point: that it was the decisions of a poorly experienced Virginia Company board of directors, attempting to serve their own private ambitions and those of their King that set up a two-pronged expedition to Maine and Virginia which, while rhetorically were meant to be settlements, but were in fact a poorly stocked, badly recruited conventional trading post or factory (as it was called then) with the Indians and natural resource mining for export. Such factories had in Virginia’s past been set up in mostly Asian countries, whose civilization and development, although different, were pretty much equivalent to the English. Say it another way, the trading post could trade for its food and basic needs, and did not have to incorporate them into the economic base of the post-factory.
The Virginia Company did not even begin to appreciate this economic-development context was not going to be found in the North American wilderness colony. The initial planning of ships, routes, settler composition, supplies and tools, and most critical the “workforce” sent over to man the new settlement was not sent over with a view to “farm and equip” the settlement of a long term. They sent people over to lead-organize-and finance as necessary the trading relationships developed at the new post. The rest of the settlers were meant to be militia, laborers, logistical workers to transport furs and load ships and marine vessels/wagons. In the planning, the farming function was simply attached to the latter grouping.
So let’s begin the story.
In December, 1606 the London-Jamestown corporation sent out three ships with one hundred men and four boys tasked to find the Chesapeake, and construct an outpost-settlement on a waterway (inland, not on the coast) where Spain wouldn’t know it was there, and to facilitate trade with Native Americans. The three ships that made landfall in May 1607 were commanded by Captain Newport, and after some initial scurrying about the coast arrived at the site of the future Jamestown settlement on May 4, 1607.
They had experienced a rather lackadaisical crossing, having first been required by adverse winds to lay anchor for six weeks off the English coast, and then to decamp in the Canaries Islands in February. They finally departed the Canaries in April. It was estimated that, at minimum, six additional weeks of food and supplies, intended for Virginia, were consumed in the nearly six months of travel. That the crossing was made in mid-winter was a mistake made in London, and the time and route to Virginia was quickly recognized as a serious mistake in planning. The second mistake was evident on the second day at Jamestown.
On that day, the unopened instructions from the Corporate Board was opened, and it contained the structure and leadership the board intended to constitute the new settlement’s local government. This was the same procedure imposed on the Plymouth Company’s Sagadahoc venture. From the first, the Virginia settlement was in trouble … Political direction [i.e. who was in charge] and the purpose of the colony, was in practical everyday operation, disarranged. To administer the day-by-day affairs of the settlement, a local council had been appointed by a council in London composed of influential stockholders … [held in secret until in Virginia] … John Smith [who had been placed in on the Council, had on the trip over made himself hated by everybody on board] was barred from accepting his post by his colleagues on the council… More significant the principal questions were not satisfactorily answered: What crops should be planted … what trade should be initiate [and] … the decision to settle in a low swampy area was not desirable from the point of view of health, and it directly contravened the instructions from London … [99] Clarence L. Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, 1607-1763 (Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 22.
Captain Edward Wingfield, one of the fifty-nine “gentlemen” who constituted the initial settlement was selected as the council’s president—a position entrusted with little authority other than moderation of the council and executive branch. As co-founder of our Virginia Company. Thomas Smythe turned to his cousin, Bartholomew Gosnold, to organize the initial 1606-7 project. Gosnold brought in his cousin Edward Wingfield as his chief “recruiter”. Wingfield was an investor and co-founder as well. To observe how well-connected these investors were, Wingfield’s father was so well-positioned with the Tudors, that his godmother was the sister of Henry VIII (Mary Tudor), one time Queen of France. Our Wingfield’s middle name “Maria” (pronounced Mariah) was in her honor. Upon the death of his father, our Wingfield’s mother remarried a noble who was appoint guardian of the successor to the throne, Edward.
Wingfield was born in 1550, a scant three years after Henry’s premature death (56). In a society of nobles, the Wingfield’s were no mere “gentleman”; part of the unwillingness of the “gentlemen” who were early Jamestown settlers to work or accept discipline and authority was that they were “second sons’ (or in Wingfield’s case eighth son) in a society that was based on primogeniture. To them Virginia was an opportunity to “make good” so to develop a fortune sufficient to maintain their social prominence. The “ruffians” or laborers were their intended workforce in their entrepreneurial endeavors. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/wingfield-edward-maria-1550-1631/
Wingfield, educated as a lawyer, was primarily a soldier by career, and as former Member of Parliament (as was his father) was intended to be the council president from the start. His military experience was extensive, in Ireland, the Netherlands War primarily. He was one of the four main “incorporators” of the London Company, and one of eight incorporators of the Virginia Company; he was the only actual shareholder to make the trip.
Wingfield had been tasked to recruit settlers, and it was he who booked the inappropriately skilled “gentlemen”. If you are looking for someone to blame for the failure to anticipate the skills needed for the future settlement, Wingfield is your man. In Jamestown’s first decade a significant portion of those recruited to settle were “gentlemen of quality”; the others were a mixture or soldiers, some sailors for boat-building and trading on rivers, a sampling of artisans, a religious leader or two, and what are often labeled as “ruffians” or laborers. In an earlier module we described these folk as tasked to serve as militia if needed, workers, laborers of all type, and porters for trading ventures. The ruffians were predictably unruly and ill-disciplined, and had little experience in farming and tool-making needed for self-sufficiency.
At the very least ruffians could be made to work by soldiers and sailors. The gentlemen of quality, however, were those who are usually blamed for being gold-rush prone (they really weren’t), equally unskilled at self-sufficiency as the ruffians, and not disposed to common work or living in shared quarters and eating at a mess hall. No kidding! That wasn’t why these gentlemen were there. They were the sons (usually second or lesser sons) of nobles and gentry who were seeking their fortune in the new venture–which they saw in the trading post-factory mentality. They were going to mine gold, iron, and whatever they found there; many were going to trade furs and such with the Native American tribes. Each of these men of quality had behind them families and people of substance who would be able to finance their establishment of a local venture to trade or mine.
Bernard Bailyn recounts the type of “gentlemen” sent over for the first decade and a half after Jamestown’s 1607 founding. They were “drawn from the higher echelons of English society” Included in this number were “well-born soldiers of fortune (George Percy son of the Earl of Northumberland) [and Thomas Dale, plus John Smith hisself). Others were nobles closely linked to the Crown, for example four sons from the West family-“children of Lord de la Warre and his wife, a second cousin of Queen Elizabeth–along with Christopher Davison, the son of Queen Elizabeth’s personal secretary who was also an MP and a Privy Councilor. John Martin (who was later to found Martin’s Hundred, was the son of Sir Richard Martin twice Lord-Mayor of London, and brother-in-law of the Master of the Rolls and also a Privy Councilor. Sir Francis and his brother Haute Wyatt were sons of Sir Thomas Wyatt who led an insurrection against Queen Mary back in the Tudor years. Our friend Edwin Sandys and his brother George who resided in Jamestown were the sons of the Archbishop of York [99] Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and the Social Structure in Virginia” in James Morton Smith (Ed), 17th Century America: Essays in Colonial History, p. 92.
And the list goes on. Sons of investors and members (shareholders) of the Virginia Company corporation, like young John Rolfe, were sent over in droves to make their fortune. None of these people had a clue what they were going to see when they landed in Virginia–settling in a wilderness was not going to be an equivalent experience of settling China, India or even Southeast Asia–nor were they a conquering army like the conquistadors. The Spanish colonial enterprise and experience of the sixteenth century offered little to the English colonialists who started out at the very start of the seventeenth. Powhattan proved to be much different sort than the Incas and Aztec chieftains, who ruled empires with diversified economic bases and large urban centers, a civilization of some duration or tradition, that greeted the Spanish.
In real life Wingfield was extending to these fine folk an opportunity to “make good” and find fortune in the New World; many of these men were friends or relatives of Company investors. As a Company man, however, he was thinking less of establishing a permanent settlement than hacking out a trading company or discovering exportable metals from mining—he wanted a quick profit himself to pay off the investment.
Wingfield’s military background set the tone for the expected “style” the local council was to use in “governing” the Jamestown residents. He was their Captain; he ran the newly founded settlement harshly, relying on orders and discipline—much to Smith’s liking (he treats Wingfield well in his memoirs—although the two clashed repeatedly in their personal relations). Smith no doubt got on with Wingfield, because as a long-standing mercenary soldier himself, Smith had been recruited to supply backup to Wingfield and to independently explore and map “Virginia”. Upon arrival a sort of political coup ensued as John Smith was ejected as council member—the first sign that the gentry was really the key decision-making constituency of the local Council.
Smith had not shown the proper attitude toward these young “second son” gentlemen on the trip over. They intended to make their fortune in Virginia by finding opportunities to trade and mine, and with the “support” of recruited soldiers/sailors they were to serve as the supervisors of the others “ruffian” colonists who were to mine or handle/transport the goods traded with the tribes they encountered. The so-called “Gentlemen” were, more precisely, gentry or lower nobility, closely tied in some way to the London Company. Unused to manual labor, and “to the manor born” they were ill-disposed to discipline or authoritarian leadership. Combined with the “ruffians” (that is how they were described), they were a near ungovernable majority. The remainder were a rag-tag mixture of badly needed artisans, a doctor, a clergyman, four young boys (probably intended to serve the gentlemen), some soldiers, a sailor.
The ruffians had no agricultural experience as they never were never intended to farm once in Virginia. The mindset that led to the enlistment of so many unskilled laborers (as they were sometimes called) came from the 1606 charter itself which specified as one of the chief purposes of the corporate endeavor was the removal from England “of the unprofitable … increase in our people’, the ‘superfluous twigs’ (how ironic considering this book’s title) … True the excess is a base lot; but if compelled to endure a hard life of labor they should prove good members of a commonwealth. Children sent by means of funds of the philanthropic-minded would under severe masters ‘be brought to goodness’ [99] Joseph Dorfman, the Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606-1865 (Book One) (Viking Press, 1946), p. 16
The London Company, it is now obvious, was sending out a group tasked with finding and making whatever yielded quick, exportable profits to pay off the debt, due in only three years. One should think of this gang as little more than economic Vikings—not too far distant than what the British East India Company was doing at the time. That the original list of colonists did not seek out skills that seemed appropriate, and instead carried a disproportionate number of “gentlemen” and gold-seeking opportunists, conformed to the “get-rich quick” so we can pay our investors off in five years realty of the colony’s first investment venture. Be it gold, finding mines and mineral, furs or whatever, they hope was to find quick riches and not farm or create a real settlement.
The Council’s first major decision was, of course, the location of the settlement. Inland as instructed and on the waterfront, they choose some lowland next to a swamp. The actual site was left to the leadership on the spot–and they chose to build Jamestown near a swamp. As Forest Gump said: “stupid is as stupid does“; the location decision was “stupid” in hindsight, although we will see the decision had its merits.
The bad location he chose for Jamestown actually made some sense—military sense. To him it corresponded to his directions from the Company to ensure Jamestown’s fate would not be that of earlier colonial ventures, that is crushed by Spanish men of war whose guns could blow the settlement apart from the water. Also, paradoxically, one past settlement had been destroyed because it could not be supplied from the sea because it was too far inland (a mile). Jamestown, distant from the Atlantic and in shallow waters so Spanish ships could not bombard, was kept close on the coastline for ease of supply. Also, Jamestown’s low elevation (i.e. swamp) impeded Spanish infantry attack.
From his military background Wingfield’s first task, logically, was to build the fort and enclosure to defend against the Spanish (who, of course, were nowhere around). He next cleared a field of fire for his three artillery positions. Practically, all this made very good sense, because on May 27 (less than two weeks after landing), he successfully drove off an attack by an estimated 400 “natives”, i.e. he was outnumbered 3-1.
Over the next year or so, three more serious attacks followed. Truth be told in the initial days, an encounter occurred in the form of a nighttime Indian reconnaissance that, upon discovery, was attacked by the Jamestown defenders. Since some tribes were not openly at war, Wingfield negotiated a trade with “natives” for three weeks of badly needed food, later in the summer, an action that testified that at least some local tribes possessed some capacity to negotiate and bargain and become trading partners. But it was clear those tribes adjacent to Jamestown wanted nothing to do with the fort-settlement.
It was the beginning of a period in which the Indians harassed the colonists almost continually. Any who strayed carelessly outside the palisades of the fort were picked off by bowmen lurking in the nearby tall grass. But worse, by far, than this were the frightful inroads made by starvation and disease. By mid-July this had reached epidemic proportions, and it grew more deadly as the days passed [99] Virginius Dabney, Virginia: the New Dominion (University Press of Virginia, 1971), p. 11
By the time they opened the food kegs (from December 1606), they found them riddled with maggots, “containing as many worms as grains”. Then a “dry spell” hit during the 1607 summer with the worst heat climatologists believe hit Virginia in over 800 years (the first clear evidence of America’s adverse role in climate change). Crop production suffered badly. Since, unlike the Pilgrims, these Virginians ate shellfish and fished, as long as their numbers were limited, they would starve but not to the point of extinction. By the onset of 1607’s winter, nearly half the original settlers were already dead.
After his military and enclosure projects. Wingfield planted, set up strict rations to extend the supply of food available while waiting for the harvest, and required common “barracks-like” sleeping arrangements along with common eating in a common store/deli. The London plan called for communal planting and storage—and food-meals were drawn from the company store. The plan was communal in that all Jamestown property and produce were jointly owned by the residents and Company. The communal approach proved a first-class disaster, although it was not dispensed with until 1612. In this military-style authoritarian lifestyle which from the start characterized day-to-day life in Jamestown we can best see how little the Virginia-London Company had prepared for a long-term settlement rather than a trading output. Wingfield, the local shareholder in command was implementing the board’s preferred style of governance, and that style did little to instill a common, semi-community attitude or behaviors capable of preparing for and coping with the requirements of long-term sustainable town-building.
It took some time to correct this major mistake. Not until a post-1612 Audit by the colonial secretary in London reported its deficiencies were changes made:
When our people were fed out of the common store, and labored jointly together, glad was he who could slip from his labor, or slumber over his taske, he cared not how … neither cared they for the increase [in food], presuming that howsowever the harvest prospered, the general store must maintaine them, so that we reaped not so much Come from the labours of thirtie, as now three or foure doe provide for themselves” [99] Virginius Dabney, Virginia: the New Dominion (University Press of Virginia, 1971), p. 10
Lacking incentive each individual wanted to go hunting for quick riches, and no single individual was rewarded for working the gardens or storeroom. Even Smith spent most of this period exploring—and trading for supplies with the tribes. This, BTW, is the period in which he was first saved by Pocahontas. There was no second planning to overcome the initial deficit; it was not in the plan and was not the priority of many. Many were, after all, unpaid (proto-indentured) servants who traded their labor for a share of the profits, paid at the end of five years. This was not a very motivated workforce. Not all of this was Wingfield’s fault, but his gentry’ crew mates were quick to blame him for nearly every discomfort and ill event.
Wingfield was very soon on the outs with his band of strangers. In September, he was arrested, deposed as President, and placed in a sort of house arrest, a very unhappy camper indeed. A succession of presidents followed over the horrid 1607-08 winter.. Later, in 1607, Wingfield perhaps attempted to leave with loyal soldiers and sailors in a return to England from the remaining ship lodged at Jamestown, but he was captured. Settlers viewed that action as traitorous and constitution desertion deserving the ultimate penalty—John Smith among others successfully resisted. Another Council leader, Captain Kendall was believed to be a Spanish spy, and was tried, convicted and shot. As to the initial years at Jamestown, they were horrible. Jamestown had turned into a New World hell. When Captain Newport arrived in January, 1608 with the “First Supply Ship” only thirty eight of the 104 original colonists remained alive.
Shortly, after the First Supply Ship’s arrival, the common store, church and all but three dwellings burned down—in the dead of winter. Newport transported new “settlers”, including more artisans so vital to the colony, but again the Company sent over many more gentlemen and ruffians. On board were 28 more “gentlemen, 21, ruffians, and 17 artisans (plus about five of unknown background). Newport stayed in Jamestown long enough to rebuild the fortress and supporting buildings. He left in April, leaving behind several sailors to defend the fort, and arrived back in London on April 21st. On board was the ex-president of the council, Wingfield. It would only be upon return that the London board received the first serious news that Jamestown was in very rough shape.
From this point on Jamestown was essentially living off what the supply ships brought, and whatever it could trade or obtain from friendly tribes. There was insufficient crop production and fishing was also dependent on Indian at peace. Moreover, with the infusion of the new settlers it became apparent that new settlers in large numbers quickly caught the “summer sickness”, and a great number eventually died. Their care consume a considerable portion of the supply ship’s supplies. Even if willing to cooperate in self-sufficiency initiatives, new settlers had to become “seasoned” to the climate, water, and illnesses. That focused attention on the Jamestown location, and over the next few months, with tribes still relatively peaceful, colonists would leave Jamestown and attempt to live off the land themselves.
During the summer of 1608 Smith, on the direction of the company, conducted expeditions in search for gold and a passageway to the Pacific Ocean. These two trips, about 3,000 miles reached as far north as New England and provided some sense of the Virginia hinterland up to the Fall Line. When he returned late summer, Smith working with the Council provided firm direction and augmented its authority in effect bailing out the Council which over 1608 had lost what little respect and command it possessed—one of its number, Captain Kendall was shot as a Spanish spy. In September 1608 John Smith was elected president of the council. Smith improved trade with the Indians, supplemented with expertise in hunting and fishing. His dictum “he that shall not worke, shall not eate” worked wonders. In October, Newport arrived with his Second supply ship.
On board were seventy new settlers (25 gentlemen, 12 laborers, 14 artisans, 2 boys, and 8 “Dutch” glassmakers. Also included were two women (the first in the colony). Newport all bore new instructions from the Company on the need to send better quality exports (the first ship sent gold that turned out to be “fool’s gold, iron pyrite). The Company wanted marine-related commodities such as pitch, tar and turpentine, soap and wainscot. The new passengers also include five “Germans” skilled in glassmaking, and Smith put them to work to produce glass for Newport’s return voyage. The other commodities were produced in small quantities as well. More fool’s gold was sent.
With the second ship, the colony had stocked a reasonable livestock herd, composed of chickens and hogs, the latter set up in a nearby “Hogs Island”. On the other hand, local corn supply rotted or was eaten by rats. Smith encouraged settlers to move out to fend for themselves, and relieve pressure on their food supply. With the Indians still at peace this made good sense as the immediate countryside was well endowed with marine, shell, turkeys and deer, and berries in ample supply.
For the first time in the late fall and early winter of 1608, things seemed finally to have stabilized—ironically, in London it was then that Company leadership had come to the general conclusion that Jamestown was in crisis, a crisis that demanded a radical reevaluation of the mission of the colony, and an assessment of the Company’s ability to operate the settlement effectively. The fear of Sagadahoc was at its height, as that colony was terminated at this point.
The Company, as we shall see in the next section, debated, and wrote for the King’s approval a second charter. That charter began, but only began, the Company’s pivot away from its trading-mining outpost mission, and completely revamped Jamestown’s local governance. A relief expedition of 500 new settlers were recruited—with serious consideration given to households suitable for permanent settlement. A governor-general was sent (Thomas Gates). Nine ships were sent, the Third Supply headed by Newport, following a new safer and faster route set off in May 1609. Unbeknownst to Jamestown the colony was being sent a lifeline to achieve its self-sufficiency.
The relief fleet took sail in May 1609. On board the fleet were the new local governance, the Captain General of the Colony; upon his arrival he would replace the olde local council and inform the Jamestown inhabitants of the contents of the Second Charter. Nine ships in all left in May 1609, with 500 new settlers. Yellow fever and a hurricane hit them hard in transit; one ship went down with all hands lost, and worse, a second ship, Captain Newhouse’s command ship was wrecked on a Bermuda coral reef, losing contact with the rest of the fleet and was presumed lost. Interestingly, it is the description of this storm reported in the newspapers that Shakespeare used in his Tempest. On board with Captain Newhouse, and his ship was the new Governor-Captain General, Sir Thomas Gates.
Seven ships did arrive at Jamestown in August. Most of the new settlers, however, arrived sick and weakened—in poor shape to suffer through the “seasoning” that was destined to hit them in the first months in Virginia. Moreover they were “leaderless” as all the expedition’s officers and leaders were on Newport’s lost command ship. Their arrival added to the impossible burden of members of the Jamestown local council. Instead of managing several dozen men, the council now had a small community exceeding 550. Also their food supplies had been badly damaged in the storm by sea water—and by late August the Virginia planting season was over. The even worse news was that Captain John Smith had been injured (badly burned when his gunpowder caught fire and lit up his clothes). When the supply ships returned in October 1609, Smith was on board, never to return to Jamestown.
Even worse than this, with no charter there was no change in Jamestown’s local government, and the inadequate and nearly powerless local Council under new “gentlemen” leadership took over and they were left with continuing the muddle-through, disperse the settlers, rely on livestock and fishing, supplement by still critical gifts and trade for corn with the Indians.—except without Smith Indian relations deteriorated rapidly and significantly. When the new settlers arrived, fifty were sent out to negotiate food with Powhatan, but that ended badly, and their leader was cruelly killed and the rest massacred. By early fall Jamestown was once again under an aggressive Indian siege. Settlers could not disperse outside of Jamestown, access their livestock or fish, and freely visit fields.
Jamestown was now to enter into its worse winter ever, the proverbial “Starving Time”. By the beginning of May 1610, of the 500 plus Jamestown residents left inside the city palisades in October, only 60 were left alive—when of all miracles two ships arrived. One was the lost Newport command ship, complete with Governor Gates and the Second Charter—and some supplies.
Gates a former privateer with Francis Drake, a military veteran with considerable experience, he had been knighted just before his departure; presumably Gates was a Smythe appointment. Whatever was intended in the Second Charter of May 1609, it never was given a chance to be implemented. To Gates, the survivors at Jamestown looked much like the survivors of the Holocaust in WWII. Gates asserted his leadership and determine the Jamestown fort could no longer be held and that another summer in that swamp-hell hole would finish off the survivors. Accordingly, he abandoned Jamestown and moved the survivors onto the four small ships.
The idea was to stock the ships with what they could and head off up north to find another settlement in Newfoundland. Two days later they were stopped by yet another miracle—two ships sent by the Company with new orders from the Company, and the news that a new governor-general, Lord de la Warr, was following behind with a large relief expedition of three hundred, “including many gentlemen of quality”.
De la Warr had been sent after the Third Supply expedition had departed, in part because De la Warr was not immediately available to make the voyage over. But in this case late was better than nothing. De la Warr and Gates joined forces and over the next two years were able to stabilize the colony under the Second Charter. The new governor restored order, but ran the settlement in the manner of a Spartan military camp, complete with communal agriculture. We will return to Jamestown in a later module and carry on with the province of Virginia. But before we do, we must once again return to deliberations of the Company and King/Parliament in England—and we must discuss how the Company was going to handle the huge debt it had incurred to get to this point.
During those years, the Company once again realized the colony was hanging on by the merest thread—almost certainly unable to resist a determined Indian attack, and unable to achieve any meaningful self-sufficiency it was simply living from one supply expedition to the next. Any hope of exports, repaying their debt (five expeditions had been sent, each with their debt issuance) was not going to happen, and fears of the Spanish had not subsided. In 1612, push had come to shove, and the Company restructured once again, confirmed by the King in a Third Charter.
Once again, Jamestown’s fate was determined by a decision in London.
Stabilization of Jamestown and the Company Creates Effective On-site Governance
The turning point for Virginia Company shift to settlement was the 1609 Second Charter of the Virginia Company. No doubt for different reasons, Smythe and his affiliates of the London Company, Sandys and his Parliamentary allies, and the King engineered a remarkable amendment to the original 1606 Charter that fundamentally recast the Company, and the mission of the settlement. While the decision-makers knew at that point they imperfectly understood what they were committing themselves to, Smythe and Sandys (and the King also) decided the colony had to be sustained, and that meant fundamental company reorganization and a serious rethinking and openness of mind to “experiment” what was needed to establish a permanent settlement.
When they sent De La Warr in as the ‘supreme and absolute” governor of the colony in 1610, an empowered Smythe and Sandys mustered together sufficient funds to rebuild the population base, rejiggered a bit the demographic and occupational composition of the settlers, and determined a strong, semi-militaristic authoritarian local leadership was needed to secure site control and undertake the actions necessary for a permanent settlement to be constructed and some level of economic self-sufficiency achieved.
The starting point was reform of the company government in Jamestown. It is hard for us to conceptualize this awfully small hamlet, whose cemeteries were larger than the hamlet, as a province (a colonial state). As part of charter reform, the company had secured an empowered governor/captain general (or commander in chief) to run affairs. They selected a man who was to play a very important role in Virginia’s future. Baron De la Warr, Sir Thomas West, was of noble heritage. great grandson of Mary Boleyn (sister of Anne), he was not only an experienced soldier, but also a former member of the Privy Council. He was intended to replace our proverbial John Smith, but arrived only in 1610. De la Warr literally arrived at the end of the starving period when the colonists had packed up on a boat and were sailing back. De la Warr turned them about and “saved” the colony.
He seems to have caught malaria fairly quickly; got on a return boat and headed back to London–retaining the position of governor. He left behind three brothers, two of who would themselves be governors of Virginia. It was De la Warr that gave the name Delaware to the geography around the river, and it was he that introduced Rolfe to the King to make the deal for Virginia tobacco. His captain general, Thomas Gates became Deputy governor after De la Warr left, until the company replaced him with another soldier, Thomas Dale (Why is everybody named Thomas). By 1611 the company local leadership was finally put in place.
The promoters in England had no intention of deserting the colony. They had already decided that success depended on the right ordering of affairs there ‘by some industrious person’ and planned to send aid in two installments, one under Sir Thomas Gates … and the other Sir Thomas Dale, both of them soldiers of experience and for some years comrades-in-arms in the service of the States-General of Holland. They called for further contributions, and in order to stimulate payments issued ‘A True Declaration of the Colony of Virginia, designed to encourage the faltering souls who must have watched with dismay the tragic failure of the [previous] great fleets. [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol. 1. pp. 112-13
With De la Warr’s return to England (in bad health), Dale became the local authority in Jamestown, and he maintained local order and government authority and took some important actions to further stabilize the colony (1) making peace with the Indians; (2) completing the physical rebuilding of Jamestown; (3) and most important of all, establishing a second settlement, “Dales Town”, todays Henrico, fifty miles upstream. When Sir Thomas Gates arrived in August 1611 with 200 more settlers—nearly all of which were artisans—including twenty women (including Dale’s wife), the battle to stabilize the colony seemed to have been won—but serious problems still remained.
Restoring order and site control, the two turned the refugee colonists back to Jamestown and set them to work to restore the settlement, walls, palisades, communal housing and store house. De La Warr brought 300 new settlers with him. In March 1611, the second installment, three ships with three hundred settlers, ample provisions and large herds of livestock, the Company completed its emergency stabilization plan. Jamestown’s population in 1611 was about 450.
The settler composition, however, was still too rambunctious and ill-disciplined. Smythe would have to step in and require that applicants for settler openings be dropped off at his house, for his review and often personal interview. In Virginia, Dale imposed a hard, harsh authoritarian code of conduct on the settlers. Written into a formal, written code, entitled “Laws Divine, Morall, and Martiall”, this code would be the bible of Virginia settlers through 1616.
The intention, in part, was not only to maintain local order, but to sustain the effort to achieve some measure of self-sufficiency, primarily thru agriculture and some mining/trading exports. While Smythe apparently had nothing to do with the code, he supported it as helping to overcome an image of lawless that saturated the homefront and harmed recruitment. From London, Smythe had little choice other than to support Dale and Gates.
The mortality rate did little to impress either potential immigrants or the corporate board of directors. The authoritarian style of its most effective governor, Sir Thomas Dale was so severe–it had to be probably–that only the toughest endured. The policy system, if such it could be called, was that of a military fort or a prison. “The most draconian penalties were imposed, such as shootings, burnings at the stake, hanging, and “breakings on the wheel” … a whipping for the first offense, a bodkin thrust through the tongue for a second, and death for the third “[99] Virginius Dabney, Virginia: the New Dominion (the University Press of Virginia, 1971), p. 22.
Dale, did have his moments of leniency, but his militaristic bearing and efficiency, displayed intimidation and repression. It established site control, and served as a base for a local governing elite community, but beyond stabilization if the pivot to settlement and self-sufficiency a lot more was required to motivate the ancient settlers and inspire new immigrants-investors. The image of harshness of daily life would survive Dale, who left in 1616, and was succeeded by Sir George Yeardley (yet another soldier who served in the Netherland wars) as acting governor.
Reflections on the Starving Years and Dale’s Stabilization of Jamestown
In 1610, amazingly Virginia’s population was 350, located in Jamestown and its immediate vicinity. In 1611 a second settlement was founded, and from that point on the population in Virginia gradually dispersed away from the two settlements into adjoining hinterland. In this period the heart of Virginia was the James River. The principal impediment to population growth was the mortality rate (transatlantic and “summer seasoning”), and an undocumented reality many settlers returned to England. About 3,500 came over in its first three years; an estimated 3,000 died. Between 1607 and 1624, 6,000 settlers came over; in 1625, local accounting was 1,200 Virginia residents. http://www.virginiaplaces.org/population/. Under auspices of the Virginia Company nothing close to demographic/economic breakout was achieved.
There were several factors each partially responsible for what was essential not slow growth but no growth. First was the financial capacity of the Virginia Company; there were few pounds available for a promotional campaign of any substance. Secondly, the image of the Company, and of life in Virginia was very negative; there was a reason why the earliest settlers were “ruffians” and ill-disciplined-unskilled labors. Thirdly, little appreciated was during these years English and Scots in particular that wanted out of their homelands went to Ireland—not Virginia. Campaigns were organized to settle Derby (Ireland) and there is where the greatest number of emigres’ in this period traveled—better the Irish Sea than an ocean trip across the North Atlantic. Finally, it was not before mid-decade (1616) that serious attention/inducements were made by the Company to both interest settlers and make their settlement a genuine opportunity.
Throughout the next decade and half, the colony in all its settlements hovered at best around 1,000 souls (including women and children, such as there were), and at points Jamestown itself numbered fewer than 400. The colony in 1612 lacked an economic base of any nature, a fort whose maintenance was neglected in hard times, and surrounding fields incapable of self-sufficiency without the arrival of increasing numbers of Company-sent supply ships, and new emigrants to replace those who had died in the last summer sickness. The colony was on Virginia Company life-support.
Ron W. Coan 