As they set sail from London to the distant shores of America in December 1606, the men and boys aboard the Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery were surely expecting the best from their adventure. They would establish a British colony, find gold and silver, a passage to the Orient and, perhaps, the lost colony of Roanoke. The explorers, financed by a group of London entrepreneurs called the Virginia Company, could not have anticipated the fate that awaited most of them: drought, hunger, disease and death.
Their journey started as badly as it ended. The three ships were stranded for weeks off the British coast and food supplies dwindled. During the journey, dozens of people died. But 104 settlers – many privileged gentlemen, but also artisans and laborers – survived to reach the shores of Virginia. On May 13, 1607, they decided to land on the marshy terrain of what was then a peninsula (and now an island) along the James River, about 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Within a month, the colonists had built a wooden fort in the shape of a triangle to protect themselves from the Spanish, who did not want the British to establish any foothold in the New World.
The settlers of the new colony – named Jamestown – were immediately besieged by attacks from the native Algonquins, endemic disease and internal political conflicts. During their first winter, more than half of the settlers perished from starvation and disease. Eventually, more settlers and new supplies were brought from Britain and, despite a fire that destroyed the original fort, the colony found some stability under the leadership of Captain John Smith. Smith, with the help of Pocohontas, daughter of the Algonquian chief Powhatan, managed to negotiate an uneasy peace with the natives before leaving the colony and returning to England in September 1609.
The following winter, disaster struck Jamestown again. Only 60 of the 500 settlers survived this period, now known as the "Famine Period." Historians have never determined exactly why so many people perished, although disease, famine (spurred by the worst drought in 800 years, as climate records indicate), and Indian attacks took their toll. On June 7, 1610, the residents of Jamestown abandoned the ill-fated town, but the next day their ships were met by a convoy led by Virginia's new governor, Thomas West, Lord De La Ware, who ordered the settlers to return to the colony .
In 1612, John Rolfe – who would later marry Pocohontas – began growing tobacco, finally giving the colony a cash crop and hope of survival. The first representative government in the New World was assembled at Jamestown in July 1619, the same year that African slaves—then indentured servants—were first brought to America. Jamestown served as the capital of Virginia until 1698, when its statehouse burned. The following year, the capital moved to Williamsburg and Jamestown began its slow decline.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/death-jamestown-background/1428/
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