August, 1609: Four small, battered ships
wallowed into Chesapeake Bay. They were all that was left of the great Sea Venture fleet that had sailed for
Virginia in June of that year. One of these ships, the Blessing, was captained by Gabriel Archer, whose bones have been
recently unearthed at Jamestown.
By August 11, 1609 the Blessing, the Lion, the Falcon, and the
Unity were moored to trees on the
riverbank at Jamestown. Neither the ships nor their passengers were in good
shape. Gabriel Archer (John Smith’s old enemy) wrote a letter to a friend in
London: “The Unity was sore
distressed when she came up with us, for of seventy land men, she had not ten
sound, and all her Sea men were downe, but onely the Master and his Boy, with
one poor sailor. . . . In the Unity
were borne two children at Sea, but both died, being both boyes.” A few days
later the Diamond arrived, with her
mainmast gone, and “many of her men very sick and weake . . . And some three or
four dayes after her, came in the Swallow,
with her maine Mast overboord also, and had a shrewd leake . . . .”
It is ironic that Gabriel Archer,
who died during the “Starving Time,” also wrote of the colony’s perpetual food shortage. He blamed
“Captain Newport and others” for leading the Virginia Company in London to
believe that there was “such plenty of victuall in this Country, by which
meanes they [the Virginia Company] have been slack in this supply.” “Upon
this,” Archer wrote to his friend, “you that be adventurers [investors] must
pardon us, if you find not return of Commodity so ample as you may expect,
because the law of nature bids us seek sustenance first, and then to labour to
content you afterwards. But upon this point I shall be more large in my next
Letter.” Unfortunately, Archer’s “next letter” has been lost.
Another
Jamestown mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment