Jamestown's Desperate Gamble

Jamestown was not built for freedom. It was a business. The Virginia Company sent 104 men in 1607 to find gold and a shortcut to Asia. Instead they got a malarial swamp, brackish water, and no food. Worse, most were gentlemen and their servants who had never farmed, hunted, or swung an axe in their lives.

Within eight months, roughly two-thirds were dead. The men who could not farm did not farm, even as supplies ran out. They quarreled over who outranked whom while the granary emptied. By the leanest stretch, survivors were eating rats, snakes, and boiled shoe leather, waiting for ships that were slow to come.