The Jamestown Experiment (20 page)

By March 1610 a great deal of progress had been made on the two pinnaces. But there was a rising tide of resentment among the men in Somers’s camp that broke into a “deadly and bloody” conspiracy “in which the life of our governor with many others were threatened.” They stole swords, axes, hatchets, saws, and hatchets to execute their nefarious scheme. When some of the conspirators lost their nerve, they went to Gates and informed him of the scheme. The governor could not uncover the names of the ringleaders and told his men to “wear his weapon” and doubled the “sentinels and nightwarders” of the camp. Everyone was advised to “stand upon his guard, his own life not being in safety whilest his next neighbor was not to be trusted.”
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On the night of March 13, Henry Paine, a gentleman, was deviously collecting weapons when his commander called Paine out for his turn on watch. Paine and the senior officer exchanged heated words, and then Paine “struck at him” and “doubled his blows.” He walked away from his duty, scoffing at the governor for appointing the extra watch because of the threat of violence.
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The guards warned Paine to close his mouth because “if the governor should understand of this his insolence, it might turn him to much blame.” Paine sneered irreverently, with so much
cursing that it would, in the words of the chronicler, “offend the modest ear too much to express it in his own phrase.” He said that the “governor had no authority…whatsoever in the colony.” Paine mocked that the governor could “kiss [off].”
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The guards told Gates about Paine’s disrespectful words and violent actions. Gates believed the “transgression so much the more…odious as being in a dangerous time.” Such impudence would not be tolerated, and the governor summoned Paine. In front of the whole company, many witnesses testified that Paine had slandered the governor. Gates, with the “eyes of the whole colony fixed upon him,” instantly “condemned him to be hanged.”
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Since the gallows was already erected and the “ladder being ready,” the hangman prepared to put the noose around Paine’s neck. Paine proudly stated that he was a gentleman and preferred that he “might be shot to death.” Toward the evening, a firing squad carried out the sentence. The shots echoed in silence, and Paine “had his desire, the sun and his life setting together.”
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Fortunately, the pinnace that Gates’s men was soon finished, and the one Somers’s men were building was “ready to launch in short time from that place…to meet ours at a pond of fresh water where they were both to be moored until such time as, being fully tackled, the wind should serve fair for our putting to sea together.” But Gates had more trouble before they departed. Some who sympathized with Henry Paine saw his fate and “like outlaws betook them to the wild wood” to hide out. They wanted to remain on the island forever and sent an “audacious and formal” petition to the governor demanding “two suits of apparel and [provisions] for one whole year” for each of them. Gates answered simply that duty bound him to transport them to Virginia rather than leave them there “like savages.” Somers agreed and rounded up almost all of the rebellious men in his camp, except Christopher Carter and Robert Waters.
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Carter had joined John Want’s group, which had refused to work on Gates’s pinnace back in September and probably feared a harsh punishment in Virginia. Waters also was anxious about justice in Virginia, even though he had barely escaped the noose for a brutal crime on Bermuda. Soon after the wreck of the
Sea Venture,
Waters had argued with another sailor, and Waters grabbed a shovel and dealt the man a deathblow.

Gates tried and convicted Waters, sentencing him to die the following day since it was already twilight. Waters was tied “fast to a tree” all night, with five or six guards watching him. When the sentinels fell asleep, some sailors freed Waters and “conveyed him into the woods, where they fed him nightly.”

Somers intervened and asked Gates to pardon the convicted man. The governor assented to the admiral’s wishes. Now, inclined to stay on Bermuda, Waters and Carter decided to take their chances on the island, lest Gates have a change of heart in Jamestown.
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The two small ships were now ready to sail. They were products of the creative use of salvaged and local materials. It had taken nearly ten months, but when no help came, the castaways took the initiative and built oceangoing vessels that would bear them to their destination. Still, many wanted to remain on Bermuda, but their governor was intent on fulfilling his mission.

The appropriately named
Deliverance
was the bigger boat, with a forty-foot keel and nineteen feet broad. The
Patience
had a twenty-nine-foot keel and a width of fifteen feet. The castaways loaded the ships with salted pork and fish, fresh water, and tortoise oil for frying.

Thomas Gates then ordered the erection of a memorial to commemorate their remarkable experience. He selected the tallest cedar tree in Admiral Somers’s garden, and some men lopped off the top branches to prevent its blowing over in a tempest, so it
might endure as a symbol of English imperial ambition. In the middle of the arm of the cross, which was appropriately fashioned from a piece of wood from the
Sea Venture,
Governor Gates nailed a silver coin bearing the image of King James as well as a piece of copper with a Latin and English engraving. It read: “In memory of our great deliverance, both from a mighty storm and leak, we have set up this to the honor of God. It is the spoil of an English ship of three hundred tons called the Sea Venture, bound with seven ships more (from which the storm divided us) to Virginia or Nova Britannia in America. In it were two knights, Sir Thomas Gates, Knight Governor of the English forces and colony there, and Sir George Sommers, Knight, Admiral of the Seas. Her captain was Christopher Newport.” The named gentlemen adventurers had survived a shipwreck, discovered and claimed an island for England, and fulfilled their destiny to settle in North America.
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More than 150 castaways then boarded the salvaged ships. They were leaving their home of nearly a year, one that had served as their deliverance from their terrible ordeal. They carried with them an important lesson: the martial organization of the colony was incompatible with the individualistic, entrepreneurial spirit of free Englishmen.

In May 1610, the
Deliverance
and
Patience
caught a westerly wind for the two-week voyage to Virginia. They could only guess at what God had in store for them when they arrived in Jamestown. If they had known, even more people might have pressured the governor to remain on Bermuda.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he castaways in Bermuda weathered the strange environment relatively well during the winter, especially since the island provided most of their needs. The story was very different in Virginia. Winter came on as usual there, and temperatures dropped. The hungry, emaciated colonists felt the cold even more than usual. The storehouses were virtually empty—by February 1610 there was no food to eat. The colonists felt the “sharp prick of hunger.” President George Percy thought that no man could truly describe the awful experience except “he which hath tasted the bitterness thereof.” He recorded the events, portraying the winter as a “world of miseries.”
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Entrepreneurship involved calculated risks, and losses sometimes occurred. These settlers though had not merely gambled their fortunes but also risked their lives on migrating to the New World. They were now about to lose everything.

The people were barely subsisting on meager rations that did not provide them with the nutrition or calories needed to sustain
life. They were malnourished and slowly starving to death. The “eight ounces of meal and half a pint of peas for a day, the one and the other moldy, [was] rotten, full of cobwebs and maggots, loathsome to man, and not fit for beasts.” Yet that was their only food, and they eagerly consumed it, although it did little to relieve their hunger.
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Some forlorn individuals ignored the consequences and desperately broke into the storehouse to “satisfy their hunger” by stealing the last precious morsels. They were caught, however, and Percy had no choice but to execute them. He was forced to make an example of them, chaining one man to a tree with a “bodkin thrust through his tongue” until he starved to death. Others believed their only option was to “flee for relief to the savage enemy”; they were all slain by the Indians.
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With their hunger growing more acute, the surviving colonists searched the village for food. They slaughtered horses and roasted them. They fed on the tough meat, eating it greedily and not conserving enough for another day. “Having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted,” Percy explained, they continued to think about what they could kill for their next meal.

Although the dogs and cats in the village were thin themselves, they were also killed for food. By catching mice and rats, the pets were actually competing with the settlers for food. Tempers flared as the wretched villagers fought over who would get to eat one of the animals. The cats and dogs were roasted, but there were too few of them to feed over two hundred people. Everyone thought only of themselves.

With the cats and dogs out of the way, the colonists hunted for rats and mice. Without large stores of corn in the storehouse, the vermin did not exist in large numbers. The settlers caught a few and cooked them, and then carefully picked the meat off every bone,
leaving nothing that was even partially edible. Although it seemed like a feast to the famished diners, they still suffered hunger pangs.

The villagers would have caught fish except there were none to be caught. Sturgeon were absent now from the James River. Fish would have supplied some necessary protein but not enough calories to make a difference. The winter cold also made it impossible to “endure to wade in the water as formerly to gather oysters to satisfy our hungry stomachs.” Moreover, the settlers could not venture out of Jamestown.
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Hundreds of Wahunsonacock’s warriors surrounded the fort and killed anyone who ventured outside it. They killed dozens of colonists over the winter. Despite the great danger, several Englishmen risked leaving the safety of the fort’s palisade. Those who were strong enough to stand skulked through the woods with as much stealth as possible. The hunters overturned rocks or looked in holes in the frozen ground for any creatures, including “serpents and snakes.” Anything creeping or crawling was fair game.

The Englishmen also tried to “dig the earth for wild and unknown roots” and were “constrained to dig in the ground for unwholesome roots, whereof we were not able to get so many as would suffice us.” They crammed just about anything into their mouths. While they frantically searched for food on their hands and knees, they were picked off by Indian arrows or beaten to death. “Many of our men were cut off and slain by the savages,” Percy reported.
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Back in the village, the colonists found a few other items to “satisfy their cruel hunger.” When friends began to die around them daily, the colonists starting chewing on “boots, shoes, or any other leather some could come by.” As they tried to work the leather in their mouths, they did not look into each other’s eyes. They knew that eating their shoes would not delay the inevitable. They even
resorted to choking down the “excrement of man,” but they retched it back up. There was nothing else in their bellies to regurgitate. They continued to die of starvation.
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In such critical circumstances, civilization broke down. The colonists were “beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face that nothing was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible.” They “were driven through unsufferable hunger unnaturally to eat those things which nature most abhorred, the flesh of man.” And they ate not only the “flesh of man” but woman as well.
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The stronger preyed upon the suffering of the dying as they “licked up the blood which had fallen from their weak fellows.” Many died where they were standing or in their beds at night and were rapidly set upon by the living. The cannibals did not bother to cook the flesh but instead ate it raw.
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Even the bodies in the graveyard were consumed. Using shovels and hands, a corpse was “dug by some out of his grave after he had lain buried three days. They “wholly devoured him.” The graveyard became the cannibals’ storehouse.
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When the dead failed to satisfy their hunger, the living were driven mad by hunger to murder and eat the warm, meager flesh of their victims. One man murdered his pregnant wife “as she slept on his bosom.” He “ripped the child out of the womb and threw it into the river and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food.” The man’s evil deeds were soon discovered, and Percy had the culprit hanged by his thumbs and attached weights to his feet until he confessed his crime. He was executed and welcomed death as a release from his suffering. No one fed on his roasted flesh—although they may have wanted to.

The Jamestown colonists knew that they would perish even as the inevitable spring brought new life to the land with budding
plants and singing birds. The Christians made peace with their Savior and prayed for death. The Jamestown experiment was over.

In May 1610, two small ships appeared off Chesapeake Bay as the sun peeked over the horizon. Checking their depth, the sailors discovered they were in only nineteen and a half fathoms of water. It was not long before someone saw land. Their first impression of Virginia was magnificent. “We had a marvelous sweet smell from the shore…strong and pleasant, which did not a little glad us.”
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A few days later they entered the bay and sailed to the mouth of the James River. Within two miles of Point Comfort, they encountered a hostile welcome from the fearful settlers at the fort who thought they might be a pair of Spanish warships. They were approaching the fort “when the captain of the fort discharged a warning piece at us.” Considering what the survivors of the
Sea Venture
had been through for the last year, they did not appreciate the greeting. Nevertheless, they understood that it was a reasonable precaution considering the belligerent intent of their European enemies.
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Moreover, Thomas Gates, George Somers, and Christopher Newport aboard the
Deliverance
and
Patience
understood that the Virginia colonists presumed them dead. They dropped anchor and put a skiff into the water to make contact with the fort. After establishing their identity, the governor went ashore and exchanged news. The colonists were amazed to see Gates and the other survivors and enthusiastically listened to the tale. However, the news the captain of the fort shared was less welcome. Gates learned of “new, unexpected, uncomfortable, and heavy news of a worse condition of our people above at Jamestown.”
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Gates received the news with wonder. After all, the garrison at Point Comfort did not seem to lack provisions. President Percy had visited them and found that they had plenty of crabs and hogs
to eat. In fact, they had such a bounty of crabs that they fed the surplus to their hogs. Percy commented that any share of the food “would have been a great relief unto us and saved many of our lives” upriver at the settlement. The garrison “concealed their plenty from us above at Jamestown,” and Percy suspected that “their intent was for to have kept some of the better sort alive and with their two pinnaces to have returned to England, not regarding our miseries and wants at all.” The president was planning to bring the surviving colonists down to the fort “to save our lives” just before the two ships from Bermuda appeared. Gates probably wondered why the people at Jamestown were not already at the fort.
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As the small fleet set off on the quick thirty-mile journey up to Jamestown, a storm darkened the sky and their moods. “A mighty storm of thunder, lightning, and rain gave us a shrewd and fearful welcome.” The weather seemed to represent the gloomy news of the state of the colony.
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Although Gates and his men had been warned about Jamestown’s condition, they were shocked at what they found. They had expected to find a thriving colony with several hundred people and well stocked with provisions. They were the ones who had survived a harrowing Atlantic crossing and hoped for a grand welcome and reprieve. But ironically they were in much better condition than the colonists.

When they came within sight of the shore, a few curious, pathetic people came to the dock to see who had arrived. Most were too weak to climb out of their beds and walk to the river. The eyes of the new arrivals widened and registered shock at what they saw. The people of Jamestown “were lamentable to behold.” They “looked like skeletons, crying out, ‘We are starved! We are starved!’”
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The governor looked at Somers and Newport as he vigorously went ashore to find out exactly what was going on. The sailors and passengers followed behind.

John Smith had left five hundred settlers at Jamestown the previous fall. Thomas Gates expected to find that number or something close to it, allowing for some deaths or expeditions that were away in the wilderness. Moreover, he knew when he sent instructions that some anarchy might result from his absence, but he never expected the colony to be in complete disarray. As he marched toward the fort, he was both shocked and angered by what he saw. “Viewing the fort,” he found “the palisades torn down, the ports open, the gates from off the hinges.” Several of the houses were empty or “rent up and burnt” for firewood during the winter. It looked like the scene of a major battle.
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Gates strode over to the Anglican church to summon the Jamestown residents together. He wanted to see who was in charge in his absence and why the colony was in such a decrepit condition. The church itself was in ruins. “Our much grieved governor, first visiting the church, caused the bell to be rung, at which all such as were able to come forth of their houses repaired to church.” Even so, many could not stir from their houses.

Minister Richard Buck opened the assembly with a prayer. He mostly prayed for God to relieve the pitiable condition of the colonists who sat unmoving in the pews. Buck “made a zealous and sorrowful prayer, finding all things so contrary to our expectations, so full of misery and misgovernment.” Some may have started weeping that someone actually came with food—their ordeal seemed to be over.
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Although exactly what the minister or governor said to the small congregation is lost to history, William Strachey and other gentlemen blamed the settlers themselves and defended Virginia as an abundant land for anyone who would work hard. He averred that “sloth, riot, and vanity” were responsible for “all these disasters and afflictions descended upon our people.” He warned his readers
not to blame their “wants and wretchedness…on the poverty and vileness of the country.” He affirmed that the new arrivals tested the soil and found that it supported English crops. Some might be absolved of guilt, but the fault clearly lay in the “ignoble and irreligious” practices of the inhabitants. The “debauched” people only had themselves to blame.
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