The Completely True History of America, Part II: Arrival and Starvation in Jamestown

So, the colonization of North Carolina didn't go so well. A lot of money was spent, a lot of people died, and nobody really got anything positive in return. But all of that occurred under the leadership of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1603, James I took the thrown and was heard saying at the coronation afterparty, "Of course she couldn't pull it off. She's a woman. I can toooootally do it." A couple years later, he signed a charter to start the Virginia Company of London which was funded by private investors and tasked with the mission to "chop down every last tree and see if we can't turn a profit on that uncivilized, disease ridden continent."

Captain John Smith, looking much more handsome than Disney portrayed him.

In late 1606 a fleet of three ships, Godspeed, Discovery, and the flagship known as either the Susan Constant or the Sarah Constant, set sail for the New World. The reason for the discrepancy in the name of the flagship is that the night before departure Captain Christopher Newport promised the barkeep at the local inn that he'd name his ship after her if she gave him a handjob in the bathroom and by the time morning rolled around he couldn't remember if she said Susan or Sarah. About half way through the journey, another one of the captains on board, John Smith, was accused of covering up a mutiny plot and was ordered to be hanged at the next stop the ships made (This isn't even close to the only detail Grandmother Willow got wrong in her version of the story, but she's a 100 year old tree, what do you expect?). Luckily for Captain Smith, Captain Newport refused to make any intermediate stops en route to their final destination, reminding the crew that he warned them all that they should use the bathroom before they left because so help him God they weren't stopping. This detail would prove crucial in saving Smith's life because upon arrival at Cape Henry, VA in 1607 sealed orders were opened that named Smith as part of the governing council and killing a member of the governing body would have been seen as impolite.

In addition to naming the governing council, the orders also instructed the group to select a location for the colony that was further inland and easily defensible. On May 14, 1607 the settlers selected Jamestown Island for the fort because it was on a curve in the river that provided extended views of the waterway, ships could anchor near the land, and it was uninhabited by native populations. This would have been a good time for somebody to ask the question, "Why is it uninhabited by the people who inhabit basically all of the other land in this area?" Had somebody asked that question the answer would have been that it's isolation from the mainland limited the number of wildlife that could be hunted, there wasn't enough space or high enough quality soil for agriculture, it was swampy and thus plagued with malaria infested mosquitoes, and finally the brackish water in the area was borderline undrinkable. Further dooming the group was the fact that most of them were aristocrats, aka whiny little bitches that didn't want to do any work, and the fact that they arrived too late in the year to plant any crops. Within months 51 had died and many others defected to nearby Indian tribes. These tribes, however, also wanted their members to do work and would eventually drive out the defectors for continuing to refuse to work. The 14,000 natives in the area were a part of the Powhatan Confederacy whose chief offered to relocate the colonists closer to his village and have them become productive members of the Confederacy. Instead they wisely refused any help from the natives and two thirds of them died before the first resupply ship arrived in 1608.

This first supply ship brought German, Polish, and Slovak craftsmen who actually did some work and manufactured the first goods that the Virginia Company could actually make some money on. Unfortunately they now had even more people and still nothing in terms of a self sustaining food supply so the starvation incident got a teensy bit worse. The Germans soon defected to the local tribes and started coordinating an attack with the Spanish and the Indians on the English settlers. The attack was only called off because of the arrival of the second supply ship which was a large, intimidating ship. And while this ship may have prevented an attack, it also brought bad news in the form of a strongly worded letter from the mother company. Investors were really mad that they weren't able to make any money from the hard labor of aristocrats who had been abandoned in a strange continent with no food so they came up with a list of completely reasonable demands: enough sellable goods to cover the cost of the supply ship's voyage, a lump of gold (real gold, not the fools gold that the colonists had already mined so much of), evidence that they had found the South Sea (with all of the boats that they totally had), and a member of the lost colony of Roanoke. John Smith instead sent back a strongly worded letter of his own, known as the "Rude Response," which demanded more supplies and people who would actually work so that they had a chance to survive.

Smith had managed to maintain just tolerable enough relations with the native tribes to keep the colonists from all dying, but his strange obsession with making everybody pull their weight had made him a very unpopular man and several attempts were made to force him back to England. The colonists got their wish when a gunpowder explosion in Smith canoe gave him severe burns and he was forced to return home for treatment. It should be noted here that although the colonists hated the man, John Smith won the PR battle in history. He is now credited with single handidly willing the colony to survival, with creating highly accurate maps of the area that would aid the British cause well after his departure, and with compiling the only written history of the time. It's also possible that he's viewed favorably now because his account is the only account that the time can be judged on. But probably not.

Meanwhile, the investors actually took Smith's harshly worded letter to heart and sent a massive supply ship with additional ships for the third supply effort. This fleet had 214 additional settlers who would all be put to work and more food than had ever been sent before. Unfortunately the fleet was caught in a hurricane and while some boats made it to Jamestown, the big ship was damaged heavily and it's crew was stranded in Bermuda for nine months while they built two new ships. While waiting for supplies, the Jamestown settlers continued starving and actually started eating each other to stay alive. Remember, morals are great and all, but the first one to resort to cannibalism is usually the one who's going to survive. By the time the supplies finally arrived in 1610, only 60 of the 214 original settlers were still alive and most of them just barely. The operation was determined to be a failure and the survivors were boarded on the two new ships to be taken back to England with all of the new crew. On their way out of dodge, the two ships ran into another supply ship headed by Governor Baron De La Warr who convinced them that they should go back and together they would rebuild. Unfortunately there still wasn't nearly enough food and De La Warr was kind of an asshole to the Indians which could only mean one thing: War. But that's a story for another time.

The Completely True History of America, Part I: The Lost Colony

In honor of the fact that soon I'll be moving to the location of America's first successful British Settlement, I've decided to transform my blog into a multi-part, in depth history of the United States. All information comes from peer-reviewed articles, Wikipedia, or my ass. How much history we cover depends on how many posts I write before I get bored and ignore this blog for another six months. Today we start with Britain's first very unsuccessful attempt to colonize the New World.

 The Lost Colony

Sir Walter Raleigh Feeling Especially Fancy (Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard)

The year is 1584, it's been 92 years since Christopher Columbus accidentally ran into North America because he was too stubborn to ask for directions on his way to India and decided to massacre every native group he came across so that there wouldn't be any witnesses to claim he wasn't the first one to find this place. Other than the Spanish who had established a profitable diseases for gold exchange program with multiple native tribes, nobody in Europe had quite figured out how to monetize the new continent yet. This had Queen Elizabeth I rather upset because mama needed some new earrings to match her party crown so she granted a charter Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colony that could exploit North America's raw materials to create goods that could be sold in the motherland. Raleigh wasn't a big fan of long boat rides because he had a crippling fear of pirates stemming from his mother not giving him attention and instead letting him watch Pirates of the Caribbean at age 5 despite it's PG-13 rating so he wouldn't bother her while she drank wine at 2 pm on a Tuesday and watched General Hospital in the other room. Because of this, Raleigh would never actually visit North Carolina himself, but instead sent other men to establish his colony.

The first expedition landed on Roanoke Island, North Carolina on July 4, 1584. The date is still celebrated to this day as the birthday of America. The men of this expedition quickly encountered two local tribes known as the Secotans and Croatoans. That natives, who did not have access to Barney VHS tapes, had never learned to share and didn't want to share their land with the new men. Despite this, the natives decided to allow the men to live and opted instead to play the long game and send two tribe members covered in North American microbes to England with the explorers under the premise of ambassadorship so that they could spread disease among the European population. The British, themselves great fans of the long game, would respond 180 years later by distributing smallpox blankets to the native population of Pittsburgh.

Armed with information obtained from the native ambassadors, Raleigh sent a second, much larger, expedition to Roanoke Island in 1595. Despite several problems along the way and losing much of their food supplies, all five ships from the expedition eventually arrived at the island. Soon after arriving, one dude couldn't find his silver cup and decided to blame the local population, prompting the group to raid and burn a local village. This is widely considered to be the most diplomatic possible move and established the great relations between Europeans and natives that would endure for centuries. Despite being out of food and having just pissed off anybody who could possibly help them, 107 men decided to stay and establish a fort while the ships went back to Britain for more supplies.

The first several months of 1586 came and went without any sign of the resupply ships. The colonists attempted to contact the ships by building a robust telephone network out of tin cans and string made from the colonists own hair. As the first call was being placed, one of the cans cut the face of the phone operator and he immediately died of tetanus. Soon after, Sir Francis Drake decided to stop by for a visit and the colonists, now lacking any way to contact their relief fleet, decided to go back to Britain with him instead of dying of starvation or being killed by the natives. Shortly after this, the relief fleet finally arrived to find the colony abandoned. A few men from this fleet stayed to maintain the claim on the fort while the rest returned to Britain.

In 1587 another group of Englishmen were sent to the New World, this time to establish a colony farther north on the Chesapeake Bay, but they were to stop at Roanoke to check on the group of men that stayed behind the previous year. When they arrived, they found nothing at the fort except a single skeleton. This is the point where a smart commander would say, "Huh, everybody that stays here seems to disappear. Better GTFO while we can." This was not the reaction of Commander Simon Fernandez, who instead said, "I have a great idea. Forget Virginia. North Carolina is where it's at. We're gonna stay here because it takes three times for an Englishman to learn his lesson." After one colonist was killed by natives, the colonists sent Governor John White back to England to ask for help.

White's return to the New World was delayed by several factors. First he wasn't allowed to sail back during the winter. Then this little gang of ships that called themselves The Spanish Armada decided to attack and basically every single boat in England was engaged in a fight with them. Finally White was able to hire two private ships for his expedition, but the captains tried to capture some Spanish ships to steal their gold and instead got themselves captured. Finally in 1590, after the colonists had been expected to survive with almost no food for 3 years, White finally made it back to Roanoke. There he found no sign of the colonists as the fort had been deserted and all of the structures had been taken down. The only clues of their whereabouts were the word "Croatoan" carved in a gatepost and "Cro" carved in a tree. Because their agreed upon safe word wasn't carved in the tree, White believed the colonists moved to nearby Croatoan island and tried to live among the natives. He initially wanted to conduct a search, but a storm was forming and White was famously afraid of thunder, needing to hide in a bathtub anytime he heard it. Because of this he instead sailed all the way back to England and never made another attempt to find the lost colonists. To this day, their fate is unknown. North Carolina was eventually successfully settled in 1663.