JAMESTOWN

By Steve Montgomery

The voyage from England tookover 120 days.

The colonists arrived on three ships.

The largest ship of the three was the Susan Constant. Shecarried 71 passengers and crew.

You can only imagine how overcrowdedthe ship must have been during its 4 monthjourney.

The second ship, was the Godspeed.

Not as large as theSusan Constant, overcrowding must have been much worst.

The last ship of the threewas the Discovery.

The ship was very small. I can’timagine sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a ship as tiny as this.

I’ve seen sailboatson Oneida Lake thatare bigger.

On May 17, 1607 the 3 ships decided on a location for its settlement.

That’s when the Jamestown Colony was created.

One of the problems with the site was that therewere swamps nearby.

Once the colonists landed, the first thing they did wasbuild a fort.

The fort was triangularin shape, with walls thatwere 300 X 300 X 400 feet in length and stood over 12 foot high.

The fort had a number of cannons to protect its inhabitants from the Spanish and the Powhatan Indians who lived nearby.

The muskets thecolonists usedwere very crude.But the indiansdidn’t have anything like them.

The colonists also usedbody armor to protectthemselves in battle.

This armor weighed 40 pounds!

Two re-enactorsdemonstratinghow the armor fit.

Conditions inside the fort were spartan at best.

The colonists existed at a subsistence level.

There was never enough food to go around.

One of the first things the colonists did was build a church.

It was the most magnificentbuilding in the fort

But even in these conditions, skilled craftsmen were needed. Here a blacksmith practices his trade

But conditions at Jamestownwere tough and without thehelp of the Powhatan girlPocahantas and…

the colony would nothave survived.

John Smith instituted the rule,“no work, no food”. Without this decision,all the colonists would have starved

How do we know so much about the Jamestown colony?

Because of the hard and dedicated work of many archeologists.

Who spent thousands of hours using nothing more than a dentist pick and a toothbrush to unearth clues to Jamestown’s existence.

Finally, let’s not forget the role the Powhatan Indians had in Jamestown'searly survival.

They taught the colonistswhat materials were available for shelter.

How and where to hunt,

what to grow and how to farm,

and where to fish.

Without their help theJamestown colony would have never survived.