What led to the failure of the 1607 British colony at Jamestown?

Jamestown Colony, first permanent English settlement in North America, located near present-day Williamsburg, Virginia. Established on May 14, 1607, the colony gave England its first foothold in the European competition for the New World, which had been dominated by the Spanish since the voyages of Christopher Columbus in the late 15th century.

Origins (1606–07)

The colony was a private venture, financed and organized by the Virginia Company of London. King James I granted a charter to a group of investors for the establishment of the company on April 10, 1606. During this era, “Virginia” was the English name for the entire East Coast of North America north of Florida. The charter gave the company the right to settle anywhere from roughly present-day North Carolina to New York state. The company’s plan was to reward investors by locating gold and silver deposits and by finding a river route to the Pacific Ocean for trade with the Orient.

A contingent of approximately 105 colonists departed England in late December 1606 in three ships—the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery—under the command of Christopher Newport. They reached Chesapeake Bay on April 26, 1607. Soon afterward the captains of the three ships met to open a box containing the names of members of the colony’s governing council: Newport; Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the behind-the-scenes initiators of the Virginia Company; Edward-Maria Wingfield, a major investor; John Ratcliffe; George Kendall; John Martin; and Captain John Smith, a former mercenary who had fought in the Netherlands and Hungary. Wingfield became the colony’s first president. Smith had been accused of plotting a mutiny during the ocean voyage and was not admitted to the council until weeks later, on June 10.

After a period of searching for a settlement site, the colonists moored the ships off a peninsula (now an island) in the James River on the night of May 13 and began to unload them on May 14. The site’s marshy setting and humidity would prove to be unhealthful, but the site had several apparent advantages at the time the colony’s leaders chose it: ships could pull up close to it in deep water for easy loading and unloading, it was unoccupied, and it was joined to the mainland only by a narrow neck of land, making it simpler to defend. The settlement, named for James I, was known variously during its existence as James Forte, James Towne, and James Cittie.

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First years (1607–09)

Most Indian tribes of the region were part of the Powhatan empire, with Chief Powhatan as its head. The colonists’ relations with the local tribes were mixed from the beginning. The two sides conducted business with each other, the English trading their metal tools and other goods for the Native Americans’ food supplies. At times the Indians showed generosity in providing gifts of food to the colony. On other occasions, encounters between the colonists and the tribes turned violent, and the Native Americans occasionally killed colonists who strayed alone outside the fort.

On May 21, 1607, a week after the colonists began occupying Jamestown, Newport took five colonists (including Smith) and 18 sailors with him on an expedition to explore the rivers flowing into the Chesapeake and to search for a way to the Pacific Ocean. On returning, they found that the colony had endured a surprise attack and had managed to drive the attackers away only with cannon fire from the ships. However, when Newport left for England on June 22 with the Susan Constant and the Godspeed—leaving the smaller Discovery behind for the colonists—he brought with him a positive report from the council in Jamestown to the Virginia Company. The colony’s leaders wrote, and probably believed, that the colony was in good condition and on track for success.

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The report proved too optimistic. The colonists had not carried out the work in the springtime needed for the long haul, such as building up the food stores and digging a freshwater well. The first mass casualties of the colony took place in August 1607, when a combination of bad water from the river, disease-bearing mosquitoes, and limited food rations created a wave of dysentery, severe fevers, and other serious health problems. Numerous colonists died, and at times as few as five able-bodied settlers were left to bury the dead. In the aftermath, three members of the council—John Smith, John Martin, and John Ratcliffe—acted to eject Edward-Maria Wingfield from his presidency on September 10. Ratcliffe took Wingfield’s place. It was apparently a lawful transfer of power, authorized by the company’s rules that allowed the council to remove the president for just cause.

Shortly after Newport returned in early January 1608, bringing new colonists and supplies, one of the new colonists accidentally started a fire that leveled all of the colony’s living quarters. The fire further deepened the colony’s dependence on the Indians for food. In accord with the Virginia Company’s objectives, much of the colony’s efforts in 1608 were devoted to searching for gold. Newport had brought with him two experts in gold refining (to determine whether ore samples contained genuine gold), as well as two goldsmiths. With the support of most of the colony’s leadership, the colonists embarked on a lengthy effort to dig around the riverbanks of the area. Councillor John Smith objected, believing the quest for gold was a diversion from needed practical work. “There was no talke, no hope, no worke, but dig gold, refine gold, load gold,” one colonist remembered.

During the colony’s second summer, President Ratcliffe ordered the construction of an overelaborate capitol building. This structure came to symbolize the colony’s mismanagement in the minds of some settlers. With growing discontent over his leadership, Ratcliffe left office; whether he resigned or was overthrown is unclear. John Smith took his place on September 10, 1608. To impose discipline on malingering colonists, Smith announced a new rule: “He that will not worke shall not eate (except by sicknesse he be disabled).” Even so, the colony continued to depend on trade with the Indians for much of its food supply. During Smith’s administration, no settlers died of starvation, and the colony survived the winter with minimal losses. In late September 1608 a ship brought a new group of colonists that included Jamestown’s first women: Mistress Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras.

In London, meanwhile, the company received a new royal charter on May 23, 1609, which gave the colony a new form of management, replacing its president and council with a governor. The company determined that Sir Thomas Gates would hold that position for the first year of the new charter. He sailed for Virginia in June with a fleet of nine ships and hundreds of new colonists. The fleet was caught in a hurricane en route, however, and Gates’s ship was wrecked off Bermuda. Other ships of the fleet did arrive in Virginia that August, and the new arrivals demanded that Smith step down. Smith resisted, and finally it was agreed that he would remain in office until the expiration of his term the following month. His presidency ended early nonetheless. While still in command, Smith was seriously injured when his gunpowder bag caught fire from mysterious causes. He sailed back to England in early September. A nobleman named George Percy, the eighth son of an earl, took his place as the colony’s leader.

What led to the failure of Jamestown?

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