Wapping to Jamestown
The story of the first permanent English settlement in America begins just before Christmas 400 years ago. On 19 December, 1606, 105 souls set sail from Blackwall Stairs, aboard the ships Discovery, Godspeed and Susan Constant. The voyage was led by Captain John Smith, now remembered as the lover of Pocohontas. On April 26, 1607, the three craft made land in what is now Virginia - the territory’s first permanent settlement. Only 38 of those settlers survived the harsh first six months in their new home, among them hardy Cockney settler John Laydon. His daughter, Virginia, became the first child born of a Protestant wedding in the territory. But remarkably, the settlers were to survive and eventually thrive.
A series of events marks the 400th anniversary. Community organisation South Poplar and Limehouse Action for Secure Housing (Splash) is working on local estates and in schools to raise awareness of the event and Blackwall’s many links to the settlers’ story. And the ‘Journey to the New World’ exhibition runs at the Museum in Docklands, West India Quay, until 13 May next year.
The fact that the settlers survived at all was the remarkable thing. Since the various European seapowers had ‘discovered’ the New World (as Native Americans might point out, it had in fact been there all along) there had been numerous attempts to secure a permanent footing. Having found this gem of a colony, the English had made 18 attempts to settle, each failing. The most infamous was the lost colony of Roanoke Island, organised by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587 and headed by his friend, artist John White (whose granddaughter Virginia Dare became the first English child to be born in the Americas). Characteristically, the buccaneering Raleigh organised things with more bravura than thoroughness. When supply ships finally made it back to Roanoke three years later, they found the entire colony had disappeared without trace. Eerily, 90 men, 17 women and 11 children had vanished as if into thin air. Speculation about their fate continues to this day.
The Spanish had already managed to found their base: Pedro Menendez de Aviles esablishing St Augustine, Florida in 1565; and Santa Fe, New Mexico was also to be founded in 1607. James I of England was desperate for the riches and trade that the new colony would bring, and so set two companies in competition. He granted rights to the Virginia Company of London and the Virginia Company of Plymouth - who had identical charters but separate territories. The London crew would ‘own’ the land between Cape Fear and Long Island Sound, plus a big chunk of Canada. The Plymouth company had the land between Chesapeake Bay and what is now the Canadian border.
In truth, the idea of the settlers having dominion over such large tracts of land was laughable. A few dozen in number, they faced the problems of all their predecessors, of lacking the critical mass of bodies to feed and clothe themselves, to farm the land and build houses - an outbreak of disease could cripple the entire community. And disastrously, they were already fighting among themselves. Much of Captain John Smith’s glorious story in the history of the early America was from his own pen - the truth is that the Jamestown settlers had already tried to hang the self-aggrandising figure on the journey over, had thrown him out of the colony on occasion, and had sentenced him to death, once again, for treason.
The beleaguered Londoners were dealing with unknown terrain, fierce weather, and an indigenous population with whom they had to trade but who were understandably suspicious if not hostile. Trade they did though: John Smith noted that the Algonquins were ‘generally covetous of beads, and other trifling jewels’.
By 1609, the Plymouth settlers had given up their colony at Popham in Maine. But somehow the Londoners, who had established Jamestown, on the James River (in modern-day James City County, Virginia) survived. The site had salty river water unsuitable for drinking and was plagued by mosquitoes. The settlers panned for gold; there was none. They tried to grow wheat, cotton and silk but none would take. But then a crucial injection of new settlers, in the shape of German and Polish immigrants, arrived in the early years, and finally the Jamestown settlers had success. They tried growing tobacco, which grew well on the unpromising swampy soil of the river banks. Virginia tobacco was born, Jamestown survived, and the story of the modern, English-speaking United States had begun.