It all started here

Work with me here.  Imagine you are an English merchant sick to death of the damned Dutch or the Portuguese or those bloody Musselmans selling you pepper, spices and that damned sweet smelling and tasting tobacco for a king's ransom.  You're pretty miffed, I can tell you.

And you speak with your friends and business associates pointing out that everyone else seems to be bloody well going everywhere finding things, colonizing places and generally sourcing all the stuff you want for a whole lot less money... and in the process earning a bucket load of ducats for themselves and you ask yourself one question:

"Why is it that the Hanseatic League is doing so well?"

Answers to the question may come in such as the Dutch are good and energetic sailors and get everywhere.  But they may equally come in as being that they have the support of the Dutch crown who has blessed their endeavors and enabled them to go forth and do business (which of course includes kicking the Portuguese out of pretty much all their colonies in the east) across the seas wherever they may find it.

So why doesn't our queen, then king allow us to do the same thing?

Well in 1606 King James I of include (and VI of Scotland) did just that when petitioned by the Virginia Company.  Adventurers such as Drake and Raleigh had scouted the American coast and found the waterway currently known as Chesapeake Bay and suggested that as it was a major waterway, it may be the way through to the Indies in the far east that the Portuguese had found a century earlier.

It was also a foreign colony and a potential use of some of the surplus manpower left over from a century of foreign wars.

And it was between the Spanish to the south and the French in the north.

So it was on 20 December 1606 a fleet of 3 ships left England for the Americas intent being to take 2 months in the journey, sufficient to arrive in Virginia at planting season to enable the first colonists to survive the first likely terrible winter.

Immediately they hit a storm in the English Channel delaying the fleet for 5 weeks so that they struck land in the Canary Islands in February 1607 and the various island specks in their southerly route through the Caribbean in March and April 1607.  

The southerly route

They finally arrived off Virginia in April 1607 and opened the classified letter from HQ which would give them their final instructions:

1) Explore the Chesapeake Bay as a potential waterway through to the east indies.

2) Set up a colony such as to avoid contact with the Spanish, Dutch and French.

After discovering that the Chesapeake Bay was NOT the way through to the Indies, the party decided to work on Plan B -- a settlement.  They chose it based on their experiences: near water, easily defensible on as many sides as possible, deep water harbor.

The ships that made the journey

This meant in the salt water of Chesapeake Bay, a problem that was was not immediately appreciated as the first discovery was that there were no natives, hostile or otherwise around, which was considered to be a good thing.

Issues immediately arose when natives showed up to trade.  They realized the English had superior technology in so many different areas and were willing to trade food and other necessities.  However cultural differences soon arose which turned to violence exacerbated when the English discovered just why the natives weren't located anywhere near the first settlement that they'd named Jamestown after the King, which were:

1) there was no drinking water

2) there was little food

3) there were loads and loads of disease carrying bugs

The natives had arrived 16,000+ years previously so had had plenty of time to get acclimated to the area but the English had arrived with only their England knowledge and experiences to go on... which proved to be actually of little use.

Within a year 1/2 of the original party were dead of (1) poor water related disease, (2) heatstroke, (3) starvation or (4) arrow wounds ... with #4 being a far distant #4.

If it wasn't so tragic it would be funny.  The tour guide we had reminded us that the English settlers arrived with linen and wool clothing for the summer season when the Indians went around in loin cloths.  They did coat themselves in bear grease to not only ward off the nasty bugs but also which acted as a sunscreen.  The settlers sweated and struggled ... and died in droves.

This carried on for the next 10 years with the new settlement being wholly dependent on resupply from England -- including Sir George Somers who'd rebuilt his fleet in the winter of 1609 in Bermuda and sailed to Jamestown in 1610.  He and Sir Thomas Gates reinforced Fort James along lines designed in England's failed attempts to settle Ireland in the late 1500's but who also gave up on the settlement and had actually embarked everyone on ships abandoning the colony when yet another supply fleet this time led by Lord de la Warr, the new Governor and major shareholder of the Virginia Company, who turned them around and led them back.

Fort James today... in a bit better condition.  This is the 1610 rendition.

By 1618 the Virginia Company was dissolved by the Crown who took possession in the King's name and following a major native rebellion in 1622, the settlement was finally firmly established.  

By 1699 settlement had spread inland and the colony's capital was moved to Williamsburg so Jamestown returned to being a backwater, an irrelevant one at that, and reverted to farm fields.  

Nicotiana plants ... did I mention that this was the early settlement's only cash crop?  The tobacco was tart and stingy not like that perfumed, sweet mush from the Musselmans.  It became a global best seller... and the only crop grown in Virginia other than for immediate subsistence.

It was 300 years later that archaeologists found the original outlines of the original settlement and the discovery centre in Jamestown Settlement was established.  As they correctly say:

"On May 16th, 1607 at a spot about a mile from where you are standing now, a group of 104 colonists disembarked from 3 small sailing ships to establish the first permanent English establishment in North America.  This settlement called Jamestown is where the United States of America really began.  The founding of Jamestown sparked a series of cultural encounters that helped shape our nation and the world."

Like I said before, forget Columbus.  This is how it all began.

Shame it all ended for the British some 170 years later about a 40 minute drive from Jamestown at a small, insignificant fishing village called Yorktown.

This was great.  Go there.

We were there!

Bermuda connections

Everyone in Bermuda knows that discovery happened by accident in 1609 when Admiral Sir George Somers commanding HMS Sea Venture ploughed into a reef off what is now commonly known as the Club Med beach in St. George's.  It happened during a tempest -- actually THE Tempest as recorded by Shakespeare -- so you can't really blame him, but it is the details I find fascinating.

And by the way this is not a blog about Bermuda.  It is a blog about the founding of America.

Forget Christopher Columbus.  He never landed in the US.  His discovery launched the Spanish American colonies not the lower 48.

The Portuguese started it.  Trade with the east has been going on forever.  Europe had acquired the taste for silks and spices, but they were so expensive.  And the trade was controlled by the Muslims and their Venetian lackeys.  During our 2011 trip to Kotor in Montenegro Ali and I discovered that that port was the end of the Silk Road, being a very deep water port and one substantially controlled by Venice.

So having dispelled the flat earth theory and managed the first circumnavigation of the world, the Portuguese also discovered you could go straight to the place of production and cut out all those pesky non-Catholic middle men.

So they did.  Then it was the Spanish to South America and the French to Canada.

The English however were still struggling with the end of the Reformation and the religious struggles that followed.  Elizabeth I would have liked to do something but was limited to allowing privateers like Drake and Frobisher to become a nuisance to the Spanish.  In the process they gained valuable geographical information and Sir Walter Raleigh named the part of the American coastline between the Spanish in the south and French in the north Virginia, in honour of the queen.

Her cousin James became King in 1603 joining the crowns of England and Scotland in the process settling a number of issues: he was Protestant so that was that; James was also practical so stopped persecuting Catholics; he also had sons so the dynasty was secure; and he made peace with Spain so that worry was over too.  But he was also concerned that the never ending troubles had created a surplus of men that needed something to do.

It was also around this time that the merchant class was starting to gain a voice and that voice said let's look overseas before everything is gone.

It was also the beginning of joint stock companies -- precursor to today's companies.  It was a way to raise capital from a variety of people, some active investors, some passive.  The East India Company started then as did the Virginia Company.  King James granted a royal charter giving exclusivity and the planning began.

When you learn about the mishaps and the near disasters that ensued, you may be tempted to think that a bunch of gnarly sailors and adventurers simply hopped onto a ship and rolled up in Virginia and set up.  Not a bit of it.  The planning went on for more than a year.  One of those hardy first batch, the renowned Captain John Smith, left little money but a dozen volumes of notes, diaries and books detailing the immense amount of work that went into that planning.

An actor portraying Captain John Smith's landing at Jamestown in May 1607... 400 years later in 2007 when the Queen attended too

Bottom line though is they also had no real idea where they would end up, what or who they would face, and what they really needed to do to make it all work.

History shows that they did but it's the journey that is the fascinating bit.

It all happened in Jamestown, Virginia.  About 2 hours down the road from Charlottesville on the I64.  Viv and I went there yesterday.