the company was profitable: over the decade and a half of its life, its invest-
ment of the then huge sum of £50,000 yielded no return.
The fate of the company was less interesting to colonists than their
own immediate prospects. As they set out on their voyage into the
unknown, they must have pondered long and hard over what they should
take with them. Some had little to choose from, but those with at least a few
resources needed guidance. In 1624, in The Generall Historie of Virginia,
New-England and the Summer Isles,Captain John Smith summed up
advice they had been given: in essence, everything they would need to sur-
vive for a year. His “particular of such necessaries” included three suits;
three “paire of Irish stockings”; four pairs of shoes; 10 yards of canvas “to
make a bed and boulster, to be filled in Virginia, serving for two men”; and
“Victuall for a whole yeare for a man.” The estimated cost was seven
pounds, three shillings—or about the wages of a laborer for four months.
Arms and ammunition were separate items.
Arms would not do the settlers much good against the most feared
of possible enemies, the Spaniards. The last armada had sailed against
England in 1602, and no peace was patched together until two years before
the colonists sailed; the Spaniards had not written off their claim to the
whole Atlantic coast as the English ambassador in Madrid reported. So the
colonists prudently placed their settlement out of sight of the sea, some 30
miles up the James River. It was well that they did, because the Spaniards
had guessed they would choose the Chesapeake. In 1611 Spain confirmed
that guess by sending a caravel into the bay. Three men landed from
the vessel, asking “to lett them have A pylott to bringe their shipp into the
harbour the wch was grawnted. Butt haveinge the pylott noe soener a
board hoysed upp their sayles and caryed the pylott quyte away wth them
Leaveinge the thre wch were surprysed in his steade behynd them.” The
colonists, who were surprisingly well informed of Spanish (and French)
colonizing ventures in Florida, accused the captives of being spies. They
sent the “principall” to England, presumably to be interrogated. The sec-
ond Spaniard died in Virginia. The third man, a “hispanyolated Inglishe
man,” who was an experienced pilot and therefore a particularly dangerous
person, was sent back to England; but just before he arrived, he was
“hanged upp att the yardes Arme.”
106 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA