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.