Ed Southern - The Jamestown Adventure: Accounts of the Virginia Colony, 1605-1614

The Jamestown Adventure

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Copyright 2004 by Ed Southern
All rights reserved under
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council on Library Resources.

DESIGN BY DEBRA LONG HAMPTON
COVER MAP

from John Smiths The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, published in 1624

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Jamestown adventure : accounts of the Virginia colony, 1605-1614 / edited by Ed Southern.

p. cm. (Real voices, real history series)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-89587-302-8 (alk. paper)

1. Jamestown (Va.)History. 2. Jamestown (Va.)HistorySources. I. Southern, Ed, 1972- II. Series.

F234.J3J325 2004

975.54251dc22

2004016037

Printed in Canada

Table of Contents

Working on this project made me wish, for the first time ever, that I had stayed in graduate school, particularly during my early, clumsy attempts at research. I owe great thanks, therefore, to those who did their best to fill in the yawning gaps in my knowledge. John Kneebone was an invaluable and generous resource in alerting me to the breadth and the location of Jamestown materials available. Two previous Real Voices, Real History editors, Vicki Rozema and Patrick Minges, anticipated many of the questions I would ask and set an excellent example to follow. An enthusiastic amateur like myself could not produce a modest volume like this, of course, without the diligent and skilled scholarship of the real historians whose work will be cited throughout this text. Naturally, I am grateful to those among the Jamestown colonists who saw fit to record their experience, whatever their motivation; while the accounts are testaments to the human will to endure, the fact that the accounts exist at all is a testament to the equally strong human will to leave a story behind.

I have the great good fortune of living in the same town as my alma mater, Wake Forest University, in whose Z. Smith Reynolds Library I was able to find first editions of most of the narratives used in this volume. Any editor can tell you the value of primary source materials, as opposed to later copies. As a book lover, though, access to four-hundred-year-old books, the actual physical texts that, however unlikely, could have been read by Shakespeare or John Donne, is an unrivalled thrill. I owe more thanks than I can express to rare books librarian Sharon Snow and her staff, whose support and hospitality never waned, no matter how many times I asked them to lug out all four massive volumes of Purchas his Pilgrimes.

Finally, I thank those who offered their support and encouragement. My co-workers at John F. Blair, Publisher, were enthusiastic about this project from the first mention. Carolyn Sakowski, Anne Waters, Steve Kirk, Kim Byerly, Sue Clark, Margaret Couch, Debbie Hampton, Dr. Heath Simpson, and Jackie Whitman were always willing to lend an ear or a good word. Ed Wilson and Susan Faust at Wake Forest are still as supportive as they were when I was a teen-aged undergrad, but have become better friends. My parents, Lynn Southern and Bob and Suzette Southern, and my siblings, Anna, Drew, and Jamie, were more excited about this book than I was, and my children, Corbyn and Molly, were gratifyingly curious. And for her patience, understanding, and strength, I owe the most thanks, always and above all, to Courtney.

And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, followed the sea with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea Hunters of gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

In December 1606, three shipsthe Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discoverysailed from London into the Thames reach described by Conrad. The small fleet carried 144 passengers and crew, each of them, to one degree or another, an employee of the Virginia Company of London, and each of them bound for a land that had already claimed more than its share of English lives.

In May of the following year, little more than 100 men would disembark to settle on a small peninsula in a river they called the Kings, or, more personally, the James. Eight months later, only 38 men were still alive in the fort they had named Jamestown.

Jamestown is well known as the first permanent English settlement in the New World; largely unknown is how fragile that permanence washow close the colony came to failure, and in how many ways. Most Americans have a general awareness of the dangers faced on any frontier, but not the particular hardships that confronted the Jamestown colonistsstarvation, disease, conspiracy, incompetent leaders, and, of course, intermittent war with the neighboring Native Americans. The colonists even packed up and left, once, only to meet their relief in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

The Jamestown Adventure: Accounts of the Virginia Colony, 16051614 is part of the Real Voices, Real History series released by John F. Blair, Publisher. The titles in this series are concise, accessible presentations of first-hand accounts of some of the most challenging episodes in American history, such as slavery or the Cherokee removal. This volume collects contemporary accounts of the first successful colony in what would become the first thirteen United States. The earliest text dates from 1605, two years before the first landing; the last describes events up to 1614, when the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe secured a brief measure of peace for the beleaguered colony. Most of the accounts were written by the colonists themselves; others reflect the perceptions and expectations of investors and observers back in England, while two reveal the keen and hostile interest taken in the colony by Englands chief rival, Spain. Several of them were written for widespread publication; others were either private letters or reports meant only for certain audiences. These narratives take the reader from the London stage to Powhatans lodge, from the halls of royal power to the derelict hovels of the Starving Time. They speak of unimaginable suffering, cruelty, hope, and perseverance. They show the modern reader what an adventure the founding of English America wasthe desperate battles and fraught negotiations with Powhatan and his warriors, the political intrigues in Europe and Virginia, the shipwreck that inspired a literary masterpiece, the captures and escapes, the discoveries that thrilled the colonists, the discoveries that broke their hearts.