Jamestown supply missions


The Jamestown supply missions were a series of fleets from 1607 to around 1611 that were dispatched from England by the London Company with the specific goal of initially establishing the company's presence and later specifically maintaining the English settlement of James Fort on present-day Jamestown Island. The supply missions also resulted in the colonization of Bermuda as a supply and way-point between the colony and England.
The Jamestown colonists initially chose the fort's location because it was favorable for defensive purposes. Although some of them did some farming, few of the original settlers were experienced farmers, and as hunters they quickly exhausted the area's supply of small game. To make matters worse, the most severe drought in 700 years occurred between 1606 and 1612. Consequently, the colonists quickly became dependent upon trade with the Native Americans and periodic supply from England for their survival. Captain Christopher Newport was tasked with the duty of leading the first three re-supply missions back to Jamestown. However, it was not until a fourth mission under Lord Thomas West that the settlement was finally able to establish both defensive and food security.

Original mission

The London Company organized a for-profit expedition to establish a settlement in the Virginia territory in late 1606. The expedition consisted of three ships which set sail on December 20, 1606, from Blackwall, with 105 men and boys and 39 crew members. There were no women on the first ships.
The ships in this fleet were:
The fleet headed south-west towards the Azores. Early in the voyage, on February 13, 1607, near the Canary Islands, Captain John Smith was charged with mutiny, and Newport had him arrested and planned to execute him upon arrival in the Caribbean. The execution was never carried out, after the colonists landed at Cape Henry on April 26, 1607, and unsealed orders from the Virginia Company designating Smith as one of the leaders of the new colony, thus sparing him from the gallows. Passing Martinique on March 23, they also visited Dominica, on March 28, Nevis, and St. Croix, where they replenished their water and food. By April 6, 1607, the fleet arrived at the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico, where they stopped for provisions before continuing their journey. They landed on Mona and Monito Islands on April 7 and left on April 9, the last stop before the mainland.
After an unusually long voyage of 144 days and the death of only one passenger, they made landfall on April 26, 1607, at the southern edge of the mouth of what they named the James River on the Chesapeake Bay. A party of men then explored the area and had a minor conflict with some local "Indians", so the colonists moved north. On, they finally chose Jamestown Island, further upriver and on the northern shore, for their settlement, as it was a location that could be easily defended from attacks by other European states, notably the Dutch Republic, France, and Spain.
However, after the long voyage, their food stores were sufficient only for each to have a cup or two of grain-meal per day. Further, the worst drought in 700 years occurred in the area between 1606 and 1612, affecting the Jamestown colonist's and local Powhatan tribe's ability to produce food and obtain a safe supply of water. In addition to settling, the early colonists were expected to make a profit for the owners of the company. The early settlers were excited by the apparent availability of gold, and from the outset settlers attempted to produce timber for export, given the seemingly inexhaustible supply within Virginia's virgin forests. However, they could not devote much time to developing commodity products, as they were too busy trying to survive. On June 22, 1607, Newport sailed back for London with Susan Constant and Godspeed carrying a load of supposedly precious minerals, leaving behind the 104 colonists and Discovery.

John Smith (1607)

Using Discovery and some assembled shallops left to the colony, Smith undertook three exploratory voyages of the Chesapeake Bay and along the various rivers seeking a supply of food for the colonists in June, July, and August 1607. However, while leading one food-gathering expedition in December 1607, this time up the Chickahominy River west of Jamestown, his men were set upon by Pamunkey natives, and Smith was captured. After being "saved" by Pocahontas, Smith returned alone to Jamestown just in time for the first supply in January 1608.

First supply mission

Arriving back in London on August 12, 1607, Newport delivered a letter from the council alongside his cargo of "gold". He was then put in charge of the urgently needed re-supply mission, containing a few provisions and more than 70 additional colonists.
The ships were:
  • John and Francis with Captain Christopher Newport
  • Phoenix with Francis Nelson

    Voyage

The first re-supply fleet, tracing the same route as the original fleet, arrived at the colony on January 2, 1608. Upon his return, Newport found that the effects of the lack of planning and lack of skills amongst the original colonists, combined with Powhatan attacks, had quickly reduced the original settlement to only 38 survivors. However, despite replenishing the colony's supplies, the two ships also brought an additional 120 men, as recorded later by Smith.
This proved troublesome, particularly when a few days later the fort caught fire, destroying most of the existing buildings, food, and supplies. Despite their original intention to grow food locally and trade with the local natives, the barely-surviving colonists became increasingly dependent upon external supply missions. After expanding fortifications, rebuilding shelters, and placing armed men to defend crops from native attacks, Newport felt he had sufficiently re-secured the settlement by the end of winter. Accordingly, he departed again for England on April 10, 1608, with another cargo of "gold". In his absence, the meagre food supplies quickly ran low, and although Native Americans brought some food, Smith wrote that "more than half of us died".

John Smith explorations (1608)

Smith ventured into the Chesapeake Bay twice more in 1608, in the months between the first and second supply missions, charged by the company to search for gold and a passage to the Pacific Ocean. The first trip lasted from June 2 to July 21; a second, longer expedition spanned July 24 to September 7. Searching for badly needed food, he covered an estimated 3,000 miles, producing a map that was of great value to local explorers for more than a century. This time he successfully traded for food with the Nansemonds along the Nansemond River, and several other groups. He had mixed results dealing with the various other tribes, most of whom were affiliated with the Powhatan Confederacy. These explorations were later commemorated in the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, established in 2006.

Second supply mission

Newport and the ships arrived back in London on May 21, 1608, and despite another disappointment with false gold, an additional re-supply trip was quickly organized. Urgently needed supplies and 70 additional settlers were gathered, including Thomas Graves, Thomas Forrest and Forrest's wife "Mistress Forrest and Anne Burras her maide".
Also included were the first non-English settlers. The company recruited these as skilled craftsmen and industry specialists: soap-ash, glass, lumber milling and naval stores. Among these additional settlers were eight "Dutch-men", Polish and Slovak craftsmen, who had been hired to help develop and manufacture profitable export products. William Volday, a Swiss German mineral prospector, was also among those who arrived in 1608. His mission was seeking a silver reservoir that was believed to be within the proximity of Jamestown. Some of the settlers were the artisans who built a glass furnace which became the first factory in America.
The ship was:
  • Mary Margaret with Captain Christopher Newport

    New colonists manifest

A manifest of "new colonists" in the second fleet was recorded, in Volume 1 of The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles by Captain John Smith, published 1624. Master Francis West and mariners on the voyage are omitted from the document.

Voyage

Newport's instructions were to search for any survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, resume exploring for gold mines, and stage a "coronation" of Powhatan, making him a "sub-king" under James I. On October 1, 1608, the supply ship arrived following a journey of approximately three months. Following his orders, Newport searched for the lost colonists and gold mines and attempted a coronation, all without success.
He then returned to England, this time not with iron pyrite but with products of the New World including: "clapboard, wainscot, pitch, tarre, glasse, frankincense, and sope ashes". He arrived in London in mid-January 1609, and despite all these efforts, profits from these early exports were not sufficient to meet the expenses and expectations of the investors back in England, and no New-World silver or gold had been discovered, as earlier imagined. Despite these disappointments, the need for another, ideally much larger supply mission was conveyed to the leaders of the company.

Samuel Argall

In early 1609, Captain Samuel Argall, as an employee of the London Company, was commissioned to develop a shorter, more direct route for sailing from England across the Atlantic Ocean to the colony at Jamestown. He was also ordered to fish for sturgeon on the voyage. Rather than following the normal practice of going south to the tropics and west with the trade winds, Argall, aboard Mary and John, sailed west from the Azores to the Bermuda area, then almost due west to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. This voyage took only nine weeks and six days, including two weeks becalmed, enabling the English to save on provisions and to also avoid hostile Spanish ships.
Upon his arrival at Jamestown, Argall found the colonists in dire straits, since in April an infestation of rats had been discovered, along with dampness, which had destroyed all their stored corn. He resupplied the colony with all the food and wine he could spare, and also brought the news that the company was being reorganized and was sending more supplies and settlers to Jamestown along with a new governor. Argall then returned to England at the end of the summer of 1609. His unexpected help was significant, in that it came to the colony at one of the most critical moments in its history, as it preceded the Starving Time, and without the provisions Argall had left, the colony may have been totally destroyed.