The Jamestown Experiment: The Remarkable Story of the Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results That Shaped America

AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Iwould like to thank the Sourcebooks team in our third book, especially my editor, Peter Lynch. Peter has once again proven himself an excellent editor and shared my enthusiasm, from our initial discussions about the idea to the final edits. The book assumed a very different character over time, and I thank Peter for helping me to shape and hone my thoughts. I have not met anyone in academia, teaching, or writing more sincerely committed to true collaboration. Many thanks go to my publicity team of Liz Kelsch and Heather Moore for organizing the book tours and events for our first two books together.

The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Swem Library at the College of William and Mary provided invaluable support and made this book possible. Two individuals went well beyond the call of duty, as they have done for me over the last several years. First of all, Jim Horn generously offered all assistance in using the materials of the Rockefeller Library at Colonial Williamsburg. Moreover, Mary Cottrill has invited me to speak often about my books and other historical topics to tourists, locals, and interpreters at Dewitt-Wallace Museum. One such pre-publication lecture on this book forced me to focus my thesis much more than just sitting in front of my laptop waiting for inspiration.

During the writing and editing of this book, I returned to teaching history at Peninsula Catholic High School in Newport News, Virginia. I want to thank Jenny Franklin and M.E. Rhodes for their daily support of all of my endeavors, even as I desperately attempted to juggle my responsibilities. I could not ask for a better group of colleagues than the faculty and staff at the school. The students at PC quickly reminded me of why I always loved teaching high school students and are an inspiration to me every day.

My wife, Lynne, has always loved and supported me unconditionally, while my children are still my biggest fans and excitedly await the publication of all of my books. Speaking about the Jamestown colony at their school was a great deal of fun. I would not be able to achieve anything without their love and support.

Finally, of all of my friends who have lent encouragement and been sources of joy, I want to single out Jeff and Jessica Lavoie and their daughter, Carlie. We have been friends since high school and have individually gone through many changes through the years. But our friendship has remained one of the rocks in my life. It is a priceless gift which I have long cherished.

I am dedicating this book to my dear mother, Fran Banta. She has faced many challenges, including the death of my brother, Craig, during the writing of this book, but has been a model of faith, courage, and perseverance. I thank her for all of the love and support she has given me throughout my life.

INTRODUCTION

The American Dream was built along the banks of the James River in Virginia. The settlers who established America’s first permanent English colony at Jamestown were gentlemen adventurers and common tradesmen who bravely voyaged to North America despite its many dangers. They sought personal profit and the greater national glory of mother England. Their venture was part of a grand national struggle with Spain to satisfy their aspiring imperial ambitions.

Yet the hardy adventurers who settled at Jamestown were largely on their own with their venture. The Crown granted them a royal charter for a joint-stock company in which they shared the risk over several investors. But the Crown did not offer any direct financial support. Rather, these free and independent Englishmen were enterprising individuals who risked their lives and fortunes on the venture and stood to reap the rewards of their private initiative.

Whatever these grand visions of profit and glory, the history of the first several years of the colony was simply a struggle to survive and endure. The settlers died in droves, and the colony constantly hovered on the edge of collapse. The old military model of colonization established during the Elizabethan era persisted and threatened to doom Jamestown. The authoritarian model of absolute leadership and the communitarian methods of living were fundamentally at odds with the character of these free individuals. The colonists bristled at draconian systems of law and harsh rulers, while ambitious gentlemen jockeyed and conspired to seize the reins of government. A common storehouse destroyed individual initiative and dampened the work ethic. The result was that the colonists continued to perish in great numbers and disappointed investors in England lost their money.

Even when they utilized modern methods of promoting their colony, they successfully whipped up enthusiasm for settling in Virginia among a credulous English public but achieved little tangible success. After fits and starts for the better part of a decade, innovations were finally introduced that slowly turned things around and put the colony on the path to success. The answers were novel and surprising and yet very much in harmony with the longings of these free men and women.

The solutions to the troubles at Jamestown were rooted in the entrepreneurial spirit that would shape and define the American character. Private property, individual initiative, personal incentives to seek profit, and the freedom to pursue one’s own happiness— these are the traits that helped the colony survive and built a nation. These were the qualities that defined the life and autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, drove Americans to move West and develop a continent, spurred on the Industrial Revolution and mobility of men like Andrew Carnegie, shaped the dreams of millions of immigrants who sought opportunity and a better life, created a global economic and technological powerhouse, and allowed thousands of ordinary men and women to start small businesses and pursue a dream.

These are the characteristics of the dream that are deeply rooted in the American character—and they began at Jamestown more than four hundred years ago. Yet, these results were by no means guaranteed in 1607 when the colonists landed in Virginia. The colony nearly duplicated the failures of other English settlements, most notably Roanoke. Any number of historical factors and decisions made by the settlers based upon the martial colonial model during the first decade could have led to very different results for the colony and America. History is full of contingencies, but the contours of the paths the adventurers took shaped the success of the first permanent English settlement in America and, in time, the creation of the American character. The first settlers themselves might have been surprised by the results of their venture—if they survived until 1624.

Chapter One

GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS AND THE CALL TO EMPIRE

Long before Jamestown was settled, adventurous Englishmen were among the first Europeans to brave the dangers of crossing the Atlantic to stake a claim to the riches of distant lands. On May 20, 1497, the small ship Matthew embarked from Bristol on the west coast of England. The port city had a thriving trade with the Atlantic and Mediterranean in Icelandic codfish, Spanish wine, and local woolens. The captain had letters of patent from King Henry VII for a voyage to discover new lands unknown to all Christians, though no financial backing from the Crown. The king would receive one-fifth of any riches that were discovered, but the captain had to fund the voyage himself. The captain was seeking a northern route across the Atlantic to Cathay (China) and the riches of the spice trade in the Indies. The man who captained the vessel was not even English; he was an Italian with the anglicized name John Cabot.

On June 24, the Matthew landed on the Feast of St. John in northern Newfoundland. He coasted for hundreds of miles along its eastern shore through dense fogbanks and floating icebergs. His sailors went ashore once and saw signs of life but no natives. The men easily scooped up basketfuls of cod from the rich fishing grounds. Having made his discoveries, Cabot ordered his crew to set sail for England. The Matthew made landfall in Brittany in early August and returned to Bristol a few days later.

Cabot traveled to London, and four days later had an audience with the king at Westminster. The explorer did not have a baggage train of spices and gold to show the king, but he had valuable information of a great discovery—Cabot assumed that he had indeed discovered a northwest passage to Cathay and made landfall on an island off the Eurasian continent.

King Henry’s imagination was stirred by news of this new found land, and he offered Cabot a reward of £10 for his discovery. Henry also granted Cabot new letters of patent for a second voyage to establish a colony that would send shiploads of spices to London. This time the king provided and laded a ship, while British merchants invested in four ships filled with cloth to trade for spices. In May 1498, the five ships left Bristol with hopes of bringing home great riches. One of the ships returned shortly, but the other four, including Cabot’s, were never heard from again.¹

This was largely the extent of English overseas ambitions for more than half a century. After this faltering attempt at discovery, the English relinquished the initiative for daring voyages of discovery and the riches of the Far East and the New World to the Spanish and Portuguese.

The English were laggards in the race for overseas empire compared to their Iberian rivals, who had trade relations and imperial possessions in their far-flung empire stretching across the world in the Caribbean, the Americas, the Philippines, the Indies, Japan, and China. As would be later said of other empires, the sun never set on the Spanish Empire in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The Spanish Empire began when the admiral of the ocean sea, Christopher Columbus, sailed to the New World in 1492 and discovered gold on his first voyage, which prompted three more transatlantic crossings to the Caribbean and the South American mainland.²

Rival Portuguese and Spanish claims to the New World caused the intervention of Pope Alexander VI, who issued the papal bull Inter caetera (1493), which led to a claim dispute between the two imperial powers. The next year, the Spanish and Portuguese quickly negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas, setting a line of demarcation at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain won the rights to the territory west of the line, and the Portuguese to the east.³

Over the next two decades, Spanish colonists exported an impressive fourteen tons of gold from the Caribbean to Seville. Still, some were dissatisfied with their personal gain and sought gold over agricultural pursuits, with Hernando Cortés famously quipping, I came here to get rich, not to till the soil like a peasant. Settlers successively moved from Hispaniola to Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba in search of wealth. In 1519, Cortés led an expedition of settlers called conquistadors to the mainland and two years later conquered the Aztec Empire centered at Tenochtitlan in Mexico. In 1532, Francisco Pizzaro conquered the Incan Empire in Peru and seized tens of thousands of pounds of gold and silver.⁴

Bartolomé de Las Casas published an indictment of the Spanish cruelty toward the native peoples, wildly speculating that the colonists had killed twenty million. Although the natives did indeed perish by the millions and the Spanish settlers committed atrocities, the native populations were overwhelmingly wiped out more from smallpox, influenza, measles, and a plethora of other diseases than by the sword. Still, the rumor became fact in the mind of Spain’s enemies, who used it for propaganda purposes to denounce Spanish imperialism.⁵

In September 1519, Ferdinand Magellan led the Armada de Molucca that set sail from Spain to the fabulous riches of the Spice Islands in the East Indies. He braved the tempestuous straits at the tip of South America and entered the vast Pacific Ocean. Although he was killed by natives in the Philippines, his men endured and reached their destination, trading for thousands of pounds of spices, including cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg. Scurvy and starvation claimed the lives of his men, while shipwrecks destroyed some of the vessels with their precious cargoes. Less than twenty of the sailors managed to circumnavigate the globe in one ship with a cargo that more than paid for the three-year voyage.⁶

The Mexican and Peruvian mines fed the Spanish treasure fleets that crossed the Atlantic to Seville every year laden with the precious metals. The wealth supported Spanish ambitions on the Continent, paying Spanish and mercenary armies in Italy and the Netherlands, when the Dutch revolted against Spanish rule. Initially, the fleets had to contend with deadly hurricanes and other dangers of the Atlantic, but then they proved too inviting a target for other Europeans.

For the English, some cod fishing boats joined hundreds of vessels from other European nations traveling back and forth to Newfoundland every summer, but that was the extent of the English overseas ventures. But by the middle of the sixteenth century, all that was about to change.

A new generation of men was on the make with the ascension of Queen Elizabeth. They were rising gentlemen, many of whom came to London from the West Country. Many attended the Middle Temple of the Inns of Court and received a legal education as they prepared to join the queen’s court. They were thirsty for knowledge and intelligent, participating in the humanist circles of a thriving intellectual life at Oxford and Cambridge and London homes, where they exchanged ideas about navigation, cartography, mathematics, and science.

Yet the gentlemen were soldiers, adventurers, and men of action rather than monastic scholars. They were passionately patriotic and envisioned England becoming a great nation. They looked across the oceans and believed that England must build great highways of commerce in gold and spices and an empire of English settlements.

The gentlemen adventurers were fiercely Protestant and were deeply influenced by John Foxe’s The Book of Martyrs (1563), which detailed the violent repression under Mary Tudor, wife of Spain’s Philip II. They saw themselves fighting a worldwide, apocalyptic struggle against the Catholic antichrist. The war included battling the Catholic enemy in the British Isles, on the continent of Europe, and in the New World. It also carried the responsibility to evangelize the native peoples of the New World to Protestantism, not merely to civilize them and save their souls, but to prevent the spread of the falsehoods of Catholicism. The titanic political and religious struggle with Catholic Spain seamlessly wove together, shaping the course of the mid- to late sixteenth century.

But these Englishmen did not merely seek national greatness and glory. They were daring and adventurous and willing to risk their lives in search of their personal fortunes and glory. They wanted to test their resolve against great odds, strong enemies, and dangerous overseas voyages. They were pioneering and restless men who would persevere until they won personal and national honor. Many won great fortunes and fame, while others paid with their lives.⁷

Most of all, they were free Englishmen who enjoyed their liberty to pursue their destinies. The English lived under the protections of the Magna Carta, which limited the power of the monarch and helped create a Parliament. Law and liberty permitted individual initiative to thrive, and the gentlemen adventurers seized the opportunity with ardor. They usually acted without the direct, official financial support of the Crown and invested their own money in joint-stock companies, established trade stations and settlements in distant lands, and voyaged into unexplored regions of the wide oceans and newfound lands.

In the 1550s, English merchants invested their growing wealth in overseas trade ventures. Trade links were established with Morocco to exchange English textiles for African gold and sugar. Trade representatives, or factors, moved to northern Africa and were followed by diplomats dispatched by Elizabeth I to formalize relations and facilitate private trade.

In 1553, a collection of two hundred merchants, officials, and adventurers formed the Muscovy Company, the first joint-stock company. An enterprising group of London merchants funded a voyage to find a northeast route to the East Indies. Its first governor was the son of John Cabot, navigator Sebastian Cabot. The company sold shares to finance the first voyage of three ships, which were commanded by Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor and included several merchants to establish trade relations.

Willoughby and his scores of men froze to death that winter on land short of their destination. Meanwhile, Chancellor survived the brutal winter elements, disembarked in Russia, and made his way by sled to Moscow, where he and his men were welcomed at the court of Czar Ivan IV. They signed a treaty initiating commercial relations between the two nations.

The company was formally chartered in 1555 during the reign of Mary Tudor. Under the terms of the company charter, the consortium of merchants was granted a monopoly over the trade with the Russian port. The instructions directed the company to seek out trade routes by land and sea to the Levant, Cathay, and the Spice Islands, which future voyages followed. The trade links the Muscovy Company had with Russia were modestly successful and provided invaluable experience for the merchant and gentlemen adventurers in overseas voyages and trade.⁸

Sir John Hawkins launched three voyages to break into the highly lucrative African slave trade, which was dominated by the Iberian powers and delivered human cargo to the New World. In 1562 he won the backing of London investors and cruised the coast of Africa, where he purchased some slaves and stole a shipload of Africans from Portuguese slave ships. He sailed to the Caribbean, traded his cargo to Spanish planters in Hispaniola, and returned to England with boatloads of gold, silver, furs, and sugar.

Handsomely rewarded for their investment, the merchants funded Hawkins’s return voyage to the western coast of Africa in 1564. Queen Elizabeth even privately lent her sixty-four-gun, seven-hundred-ton Jesus of Lübeck to the venture. Philip II was outraged by Spanish colonists, trading with the English, but his orders banning the trade were ignored, and Hawkins’s second voyage returned an impressive 60 percent to his investors and won him fame as a national hero.

In 1567 the indomitable Hawkins sailed to Africa again with a fleet of six ships, two of which Elizabeth contributed. After a number of fruitless battles with Portuguese ships, deadly forays into the interior resulted in several wounded Englishmen. Disease claimed others. Meanwhile, the Africans could easily escape the clutches of the foreigners by running into the jungle. Only after a dreadfully murderous raid on a village, with the help of their local enemies, were four hundred Africans rounded up to sell, much fewer than the expected number.

The difficulties Hawkins’s fleet encountered only multiplied when the Englishmen reached the West Indies. Although Hawkins managed to trade the slaves at several ports along the Caribbean coast of South America, it was only after he fired on and burned the towns and captured the uncooperative Spanish officials that he managed to force them to trade with him. Then, in late August, a hurricane battered the ships for three days and sank one of his treasure-laden vessels.

The storm forced the English ships to limp into the Gulf of Mexico, where they put in at San Juan de Ulúa on the Yucatán by hiding their identity until it was too late for the Spanish garrison. The English were making repairs to their ships when a Spanish treasure fleet appeared and trapped them in the harbor. The tense days that followed came to a boil when the Spanish finally attacked, boarding and firing on the enemy ships. The English fleet tried to break out, but the Jesus was mortally wounded, and Hawkins transferred his men and the wealth to another ship. The ships fired broadsides at each other while the cannon of the fort thundered away. When the smoke cleared, Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake managed to sail only two ships out of six away. Hawkins landed in Plymouth in early 1569 with fifteen gaunt survivors of an Atlantic crossing plagued by starvation and scurvy.

Hawkins did not break the lucrative Iberian monopoly over the trade in human beings, but he and Drake soon hatched another, more daring idea.⁹

During the sixteenth century, Spanish treasure fleets brought back tons of gold and silver to fund Philip II’s profligate spending on his armies, which he marched across Europe and tried to quell the Protestants revolting in the Netherlands. Philip’s needs were so great that not even the treasure fleets could adequately pay for his armies, and he was forced to borrow money abroad. Two fleets, one bound for Mexico and one for Peru, sailed from Spain to Hispaniola. The Mexican fleet then went to San Juan de Ulúa, the site of Hawkins’s fiasco. The Peruvian fleet stopped at Cartagena and at Nombre de Díos in Panama, where Peruvian silver was brought by mule trains. Both fleets rendezvoused at Havana before arriving at Seville in Spain. In 1571, Sir Francis Drake roved between Cartagena and Nombre de Díos, intercepted a dozen Spanish ships with the small, forty-ton Swan, and plundered their cargo, netting some £66,000 and exposing the weaknesses of the Spanish Empire.¹⁰

In May 1572, Drake sailed to take his revenge on the Spanish enemy for events at San Juan. His two ships were joined by a third English ship, the William and John, and they rowed three pinnaces (small vessels propelled by sails or oars) to Nombre de Díos. They successfully raided the town, but their leader was wounded, and they were forced to pull out. Drake recovered and plunged into the jungles of Panama to ambush the silver train. He became the first Englishman to look upon the waters of the Pacific and prayed that almighty God of His goodness to give [me] life and live to sail once again in an English ship to that sea. Drake eventually hit the convoy of men and mules carrying several tons of gold and silver. The Spanish pursued him, and he was forced to bury most of his treasure off the trail.

Drake returned to England, and his cargo of precious metals made him and his investors very wealthy. More important, it was evidence of God’s love and blessing towards our gracious Queen and country, as the English believed Providence was on their side against Catholic Spain. Drake also proved that the flow of gold and silver to Spain was vulnerable.¹¹

In late 1577, Drake sought to fulfill his promise to sail the Pacific when he took a fleet toward the Strait of Magellan to plunder the west coast of Spanish South America with the firm support of the queen and her court. Drake’s fleet had not passed the Cape Verde Islands before it started raiding its competitors, taking a Portuguese prize and an experienced pilot named Nuño da Silva.

After making landfall in Brazil, there were troubles in the fleet centered on Thomas Doughty, a proud gentleman. He challenged Drake’s authority on several occasions and was accused of fomenting a mutiny. Drake finally put in at Port San Julián in Argentina and tried and convicted Doughty. Doughty was executed, and Drake addressed his men, laying down the principle of unity of command and discipline in the person of the captain. He stated: Let us show ourselves all to be of a company, and let us not give occasion to the enemy to rejoice at our decay and overthrow…If this voyage shall not have good success, we shall not only be a scorning unto our enemies, but also a great blot to our country forever; and what a triumph that would be for Spain and Portugal.¹²

After scuttling an unseaworthy ship and renaming the flagship the Golden Hind, the fleet of three ships and two pinnaces under the firm command of Sir Francis Drake entered the treacherous Strait of Magellan on August 21, 1578, during the Antarctic winter. Drake had just emerged from the strait a little over a month later, when a storm beat him back into the strait and caused one of his captains to sail the second-largest ship in the fleet back to England. Drake persevered and sailed north for the Spanish ports along the Chilean and Peruvian coasts, which were virtually undefended because no Englishmen had sailed the waters of the Pacific—until now.

Drake surprised the Spanish and looted one port after another as the unsuspecting Spanish believed his ships were their own. First he sacked Valparaiso and took chests of twenty-five thousand gold pesos. Next, the fleet captured two barks with forty large bars of silver.