JAMESTOWN By Steve Montgomery

The voyage from England took over 120 days.

The colonists arrived on three ships.

The largest ship of the three was the Susan Constant. She carried 71 passengers and crew.

You can only imagine how overcrowded the ship must have been during its 4 month journey.

The second ship, was the Godspeed.

Not as large as the Susan Constant, overcrowding must have been much worst.

The last ship of the three was the Discovery.

The ship was very small. I can’t imagine sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a ship as tiny as this.

I’ve seen sailboats on Oneida Lake that are bigger.

On May 17, 1607 the 3 ships decided on a location for its settlement.

That’s when the Jamestown Colony was created.

One of the problems with the site was that there were swamps nearby.

Once the colonists landed, the first thing they did was build a fort.

The fort was triangular in shape, with walls that were 300 X 300 X 400 feet in length and stood over 12 foot high.

The fort had a number of cannons to protect its inhabitants from the Spanish and the Powhatan Indians who lived nearby.

The muskets the colonists used were very crude. But the indians didn’t have anything like them.

The colonists also used body armor to protect themselves in battle. This armor weighed 40 pounds!

Two re-enactors demonstrating how the armor fit.

Conditions inside the fort were spartan at best.

The colonists existed at a subsistence level.

There was never enough food to go around.

One of the first things the colonists did was build a church.

It was the most magnificent building in the fort

But even in these conditions, skilled craftsmen were needed. Here a blacksmith practices his trade

But conditions at Jamestown were tough and without the help of the Powhatan girl Pocahantas and…

the colony would not have survived.

John Smith instituted the rule, “no work, no food”. Without this decision, all the colonists would have starved

How do we know so much about the Jamestown colony ?

Because of the hard and dedicated work of many archeologists.

Who spent thousands of hours using nothing more than a dentist pick and a toothbrush to unearth clues to Jamestown’s existence.

Finally, let’s not forget the role the Powhatan Indians had in Jamestown's early survival.

They taught the colonists what materials were available for shelter.

How and where to hunt,

what to grow and how to farm,

and where to fish.

Without their help the Jamestown colony would have never survived.