The Birth of America
Struggling from one peril to the next, the Jamestown settlers planted the seeds of the nation's spirit
In December of 1606, colonists and crew members squeezed into their three tiny ships docked in London. Within days of departure, men were bickering and seasick from storms and winds that left the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery anchored a month in the English Channel.
Collegiality remained in short supply as the expedition entered the Atlantic. On the flagship Susan Constant, an outspoken commoner named John Smith annoyed a higher-up and was accused of plotting insurrection. He was confined below deck, sentenced to death at the age of 27 once on shore.
Secret seven. On a stop at Nevis in the West Indies, Smith's foes stood ready to hang him. But the skipper delayed the execution, wanting more evidence before giving his passenger the rope. The young captain's luck improved further when the expedition entered the Chesapeake. The four-month ocean crossing ended with the voyagers dropping anchor on April 26, 1607, near the windswept dunes of a Virginia site they called Cape Henry. There the ship commanders opened a sealed box and pulled out a secret document: the company's instructions for starting a colony.
Read aloud was a list identifying seven members of a ruling council, the settlers who would run the colony. The first six names belonged to men of social prominence. The seventh was the bumptious prisoner in the hold. Unknowingly, someone in London had saved the man who, as much as anyone, would save Jamestown.
The company's other instructions could have been penned by a modern PR executive. Among the do's and don'ts: "Have Great Care not to Offend the naturals [the American Indians]." Don't show fear, weakness, or sickness. And, to keep investors investing and settlers settling, never mention anything unpleasant in letters sent home.
For the moment, there was nothing unpleasant to report. One man who went ashore marveled at the "faire meddowes and goodly tall Trees." But for the next 15 years, the English blundered their way from one calamity to another, beginning with the choice of where to settle. Seeking a spot easy to defend, the colonists picked a marshy peninsula 2 miles long and a mile wide that jutted into the river they named the James, 50 miles southeast of present-day Richmond. They erected a trading post, a storehouse, and a church, sprinkled the grounds with tents made of tattered sailcloth, and named the creation James Town.
No one sensed the lethal implications of the low site with its brackish water and mosquito-thick swamps. Nor did the settlers realize how much food had spoiled in the overlong voyage from London. Had they known, they might have used those days in May to plant a garden instead of scratching for gold. Nor did anyone dig a well, even though every low tide was "full of slime and filth." That summer half the colony died. "God (being angrie with us) plagued us with such famin and sicknes that the living were scarce able to bury the dead," Smith later wrote.
In the captain's view, God was "angrie" because too few of the settlers were willing to work. A third of the colonists were "gentlemen" who, by definition, did no manual labor. Some of the Jamestown gents no doubt did grab a shovel or ax, but many, in Smith's words, did nothing but "complain, curse, and despaire."
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