After the dismal rainy weather the day before I was greeted with a cloudy and mild morning, perfect for wandering the remains of the first permanent English settlement in North America. Speaking of firsts, I was the first visitor at the Jamestown National Historic Site that day.
In December 1606 three ships loaded with 144 men, boys, and provisions left London headed for the New World. The goal was to establish a colony to give England a foothold in between the Spanish and French land claims.
On May 14, 1607, after exploring the Chesapeake Bay a suitable location was finally selected, roughly 40 miles up a river (which they named after their king, James). As the three ships and their sailors returned to England, construction of a fort commenced.
The main prerequisites were that the land be defensible and unoccupied. The fort’s location on a bend in the river provided good sightlines. However, the land was in use by native people, though only seasonally. The Powhatan tribe did not have a permanent village there because, as the newcomers soon discovered, the swampy land wasn’t arable, there was a dearth of fresh drinking water, and the surrounding slack water bred hordes of mosquitoes.
Despite those hazards, and mainly through the largesse of the Powhatans, the colonists survived (unlike the earlier settlers at Roanoke which all mysteriously disappeared in the late 1580s). But survival wasn’t the only goal, the colony needed to find and cultivate materials for export.
Timber and forest products were in high demand in England, though cumbersome to transport. The settlers planted grapes for wine and mulberry trees for silkworms. They even tried glassblowing, mining, and shipbuilding. Of all their attempts, tobacco quickly became their most valuable commodity.
The downside of that cash crop? It was labor intensive. The economic woes in England provided a handy solution. Indentured servants were sent over by the boatload to work off their debts (or crimes, such as murder or even merely stealing a loaf of bread). Sadly, over 55% of them did not survive the harsh working conditions.
While ultimately a success story, I appreciated that the exhibits in the museum and on the grounds attempted to provide a balanced view. This first permanent colony produced a lot of firsts, not all of them good, such as the first plantations and the first slaves (with the arrival of stolen and enslaved Africans in 1619).
We are all fortunate that places such as this have been preserved and are still being studied. As Winston Churchill said in a 1948 speech to the British House of Commons, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
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