First British Settlements in North America
Two half-brothers, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, were the first Englishmen to undertake serious ventures in America.<注1> Gilbert, one of the more earnest seekers of the Northwest Passage<注2>, went to Newfoundland in 1578 and again in 1583 but failed to colonize the territory either time and lost his life on the return voyage to England after the second attempt. Raleigh, in turn, was granted<注3> the right to settle in "Virginia" and to have control of the land within a radius of 200 leagues<注4> from any colonists to the new continent. The first landed on the island of Roanoke off the coast of what is now North Carolina and stayed less than a year; anything but enthusiastic about their new home, these first colonists returned to England with Sir Francis Drake<注5> in the summer of 1586. Undaunted, Raleigh solicited the financial aid of asgroupsof wealthy Londoners and, in the following year, sent a second contingent of 150 people under the leadership of Governor John White. Raleigh had given explicit instructions that this colony was to be planted somewhere on the Chesapeake Bay, but Governor White disregarded thesgroupsand landed at Roanoke. White went back to England for supplies; when he returned after much delay in 1590, the settlers had vanished. Not a single member of the famed "lost colony" was ever found, not even a tooth.
After a long war between England and Spain<注6> from 1588 to 1603, England renewed attempts to colonize North America. In 1606, two charters were granted—one to asgroupsof Londoners, the other to merchants of Plymouth and other western port town. The London Company was given the right to settle the southern part of the English territory in America; the Plymouth Company was given jurisdiction over the northern part.
So two widely separated colonies were established in 1607: one at Sagadahoc, near the mouth of the Kennebec River, in Maine; the other in modern Virginia. Those who survived the winter in the northern colony gave up and went home, and the colony established at Jamestown won the hard-earned honor of being the first permanent English settlement in America.
Hard-earned indeed! When the London Company landed three tiny vessels at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in 1607, 105 people disembarked to found the Jamestown Colony. Easily distracted by futile "get rich quick" schemes, they actually sent shiploads of mica and yellow ore back to England in 1607 and 1608. Before the news reached their ears that their treasure was worthless "fool's gold," disease, starvation, and misadventure had taken a heavy toll: 67 of the original 105 Jamestown settlers died in the first year.
The few remaining survivors (one of whom was convicted of cannibalism) were joined in 1609 by 800 new arrivals, sent over by the reorganized and renamed Virginia Company.<注7> By the following spring, frontier hardships had cut the number of settlers from 838 to 60. That summer, those who remained were found fleeing down river to return home to England by new settlers with fresh supplies, who encouraged them to reconsider. This was Virginia's "starving time".
Inadequately supplied and untutored in the art of colonization, the earliest frontier pioneers routinely suffered and died. In 1623, a royal investigation of the Virginia experience was launched in the wake of an Indian attack that took the lives of 500 settlers. The investigation reported that of the 6,000 who had migrated to Virginia since 1607, 4,000 had died. The life expectancy of these hardy settlers upon arriving was two years.
The heavy human costs of first settlement were accompanied by substantial capital losses. Without exception, the earliest colonial ventures were unprofitable. Indeed, they were financial disasters. Neither the principal nor the interest on the Virginia Company's accumulated investment of more than￡200,000 was ever repaid (approximately ,000,000 in today's values). The investments in New England were less disappointing, but overall, English capitalists were heavy losers in their quest to tame the frontier.