The Birth of America
Struggling from one peril to the next, the Jamestown settlers planted the seeds of the nation's spirit
Fears of another disaster erupted with the discovery that the entire corn supply had been ruined, either from rotting or by rats. Smith halted all work in Jamestown and divided the colonists into three groups. He sent one bunch upriver to hunt game until the next supply ship arrived. Another went downriver to live on fish. The largest group got by on oysters from the Chesapeake shore.
But nothing Smith could do would give the Virginia Company what it wanted most: gold and a route to the Orient. That summer, the company ordered a new charter with "one able and absolute governor"—not a turn-taking president—serving as Jamestown's boss. Smith was demoted to running a remote lookout garrison. But before that change took effect, an accidental gunpowder explosion burned him so badly that he took a boat to England in October 1609, never to return.
Along with the leadership shakeup came a nine-ship expedition to Virginia, the largest yet, with 500 settlers on board. Since the new governor, Lord De La Warr (for whom Delaware is named), was not ready to leave, a deputy took command. Off the West Indies, a hurricane struck, sinking one ship. Seven of the eight remaining vessels limped into Jamestown just before Smith left for London.
As for the eighth ship, Sea Venture, Shakespeare would write his Tempest from accounts of its bout with the hurricane. For months, the flagship lay wrecked on Bermuda. From its ruin, survivors jury-rigged a new vessel. The deputy governor, Thomas Gates, was on board in May 1610 as it sailed up the Chesapeake Bay. What he found was one of American history's most dreadful horrors.
Survivors called it "the Starving Time." Sensing weakness after Smith's departure, Powhatan had told his subjects to withhold corn. Food dwindled to nothing that winter, and diseases broke out. The famished ate horses and dogs, then cats and rats, and finally the leather of their boots. One man killed, salted, and ate his wife. Of the 500 colonists alive when Smith left in the fall, barely 60 lasted into spring.
Gates decided to shut the settlement and ship everyone to England. They were 15 miles down the James when up the river came a rowboat with wondrous news: The governor, Lord De La Warr, en route from England with 150 men and ample supplies, was in the bay. Three days after it perished, the Jamestown colony was alive again.
His lordship took a whiff of the town he revived, declared it "unwholesome," and ordered a cleanup. Yet troubles persisted. Like many, De La Warr took sick almost as soon as he arrived. Ten months later, he fled to England in search of a cure.
When his successor, Sir Thomas Dale, reached Jamestown in May 1611, the colonists were at "their daily and usuall workes, bowling in the streetes." To eradicate such idleness, the company imposed a severe set of rules solemnly entitled Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall. The draconian regulations had drumbeats starting and ending each workday, with whippings for latecomers and early quitters. A single incident of blasphemy merited the lash. A second meant a needle through the tongue, and a third meant death. Execution was prescribed for thieves, runaways, and adulterers. Dale enforced the rules mercilessly, even having a pregnant seamstress lashed for making shirts too short.
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