Three English
ship, carrying 144 men and boys, set sail on December 20, 1606, bound for
Virginia. Sailing the favored southerly course across the Atlantic Ocean, using
trade winds and making stops at numerous islands to resupply, after more than
four months at sea and 6,000 miles in very cramped quarters with unsanitary
conditions, the English finally saw the Virginia coast.
A reconnaissance party was sent ashore while the ships dropped anchor at Cape Henry. A small band of Indians attacked the scouting party and they retreated to the ships with two wounded men.
That night the Virginia Company orders were opened and the names of the seven men appointed to the colony’s council were read.
Several days later the settlers raised a cross and named the cape in honor of Prince Henry, the son of James I. This ceremony confirmed English claims to Virginia established twenty years earlier by the Roanoke colony.
But England’s
first successful colony in America was not established by the English
government, but by a privately owned business called the Virginia Company of
London. The investors hoped to profit from the potential wealth of the New
World. In 1606 King James granted the organizers of the company exclusive
rights to settle in Virginia.
The Company
was planning to find wealth, to convert the Indians to Christianity, to create
jobs for the English unemployed, to seek a route to the Orient, and to tap
whatever resources were found in the New World.
“A charter
granted land to two branches of the Virginia Company – the London branch was to
plant a colony near the Chesapeake Bay, while the Plymouth branch was granted
land in the New England area. The Company paid all the costs of establishing
each colony, and in return owned all land and resources there and required
everyone to work as a servant to the Company.”
According to
the museum, the investors were called “adventurers” who purchased shares of
company stock to “help finance the costs of establishing overseas settlements
or trading posts.”
The money from
the sale of stocks bought ships, supplies, and recruited laborers. The eventual
profits were to be shared among all of the “adventurers.”
One share of
stock in Virginia Company cost 12 pounds 10 shillings, which represented more
than six months’ wage of an ordinary worker. Shareholders could buy stocks
individually or in groups. Almost 1700 people bought shares and the investors
were found among people of different classes, occupations, wealthy women,
guilds, towns, and cities. Merchants, especially from London, joined before
1610 and purchased more than half of the investments. As profits failed to
materialize, the London merchants lost their interest even though they were the
driving force of England’s expansion. Shares in New World companies, including
the Virginia Company, were advertised in pamphlets, plays, sermons, broadsheets
in order to raise awareness in the New World investments.
The largest
shareholder in the Virginia Company of London was the Third Baron De La Warr,
Thomas West, who was appointed Lord Governor and Captain General of Virginia
for life in 1610. When he arrived in Jamestown in June 1610, he was able to
save the struggling colony from being abandoned. Thomas West was the cousin of Queen
Elizabeth I and a member of the Privy Councils of both Elizabeth I and James I.
In poor
health, Thomas West returned to England in 1611. Lord and Lady de la Warr were Pocahontas’
sponsors for her court presentation to King James and Queen Anne on January 6,
1617.
Thomas West
died in 1618 while attempting to return to Virginia to resume his duties as
governor.
