Chapter #2-Blog #2: Describe the development of the jamestown colony from its disastrous beginnings to its later prosperity.

    The London Company dispatched three ships, the Godspeed, the Discovery, and the Sarah Constant, to repopulate the settlement.  They arrived in May of 1607.  A mercenary soldier, Captain John Smith, was commissioned to bring order to Jamestown.  He decreed that anyone who did not work would not eat.  While waiting for crops to grow, Smith sustained the settlers on food seized from surrounding Indian camps.  Over time, the raids grew increasingly violent, eventually leading to Smith’s capture by the Indians.  Tribal chief Powhatan took pity on the starving Jamestown settlers, returning John Smith to his people, along with a large supply of corn. During a period known as the Starving Time of 1609-10, nine out of every ten settlers died from either starvation or disease.  With Jamestown on the brink of extinction, the Virginia Company dispatched emergency shipments of food and supplies.  In 1611, the colony’s new governor, Sir Thomas Dale, arrived with threats of harsh and oppressive penalties for those who failed to meet food production quotas.  When his intimidation tactics failed to improve conditions, Governor Dale abducted the Indian princess, Pocahontas, demanding a large supply of Chief Powhatan’s corn as ransom.  At the age of eighteen, she married Jamestown planter John Rolfe—a union that launched a period of friendship and sharing between the settlers and Indians.  Jamestown survived, becoming the first permanent English colony in America. Pocahontas changed her name to Rebecka, traveling to England in 1616 with Rolfe and their infant son, Thomas.  Tragically, her immune system was unaccustomed to viruses common among the English, and she died in 1617.  Her grief-stricken husband, John Rolfe, returned to Virginia to develop his tobacco crop, a product of growing appeal in England.