10 a short history of the united states
II, the Spanish king, struck back in 1588 with a mighty Armada of 130
ships armed with thousands of cannons, hoping to subdue the English
and restore them to Catholicism. Between the intrepid British sailors,
their highly maneuverable ships, and punishing storms at sea the ar-
mada was crippled, and only about half the original number of Spanish
ships reached the safety of their ports. England could now make a bid
for possession of a healthy chunk of the North American continent.
A few years earlier, in 1585 , Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched a small
group of settlers, who landed on a tiny island off present- day North
Carolina and named it Roanoke. The attempted invasion of England
by the Spanish Armada postponed any effort to keep Roanoke sup-
plied. When assistance did arrive in 1591 , the would-be rescuers found
the island completely deserted. No one, to this day, knows what hap-
pened to the settlers.
Despite this disaster, adventurous English merchants still had hopes
of sponsoring colonization of the New World in the expectation of
imitating the discoveries of the Spanish. A group of them formed a
joint- stock company, the London Company, in which shares were sold
to stockholders for twelve pounds ten shillings, in order to sponsor col-
onization by settlers in North America. A charter granted by James I,
the fi rst of the Stuart kings, who succeeded Elizabeth upon her death
in 1603 , allowed the company to develop the land from the coastline
westward to the Pacific Ocean. The area was named Virginia after
Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen because she had never married.
Three ships, the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery,
sailed from England in December 1606 and landed in Virginia in April
1607 : the settlement was named Jamestown.
These colonists searched for gold, but there was none. Conditions at
the triangular fort they built worsened with each month. John Smith
took control of the colony during the terrible winter of 1609 – 1610 known
as the “starving time,” and those who survived ate roots, acorns, berries,
and even their horses. They received help from the Powhatan tribes
who taught them how to grow corn and where best to catch fi sh. But
relations between the Indians and the English became strained to the
breaking point because of the rapaciousness of the English, and Smith
was taken prisoner by a hunting party while on an exploring expedition.
He was turned over to Opechancanough, who was probably the half