In 1602 Captain Bartholomew Gosnold had sailed to North America where he intended to establish a colony. However, after sailing down the coast of New England and naming areas such as Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard the project was abandoned after relations with the native tribes soured. Following his return to England he became instrumental in obtaining a charter from King James I in 1606 for two companies that included the Virginia Company of London with exclusive rights to settle Virginia.
Having departed London’s Blackwall docks on 20 December, the fleet of three ships was led by Captain Christopher Newport on the Susan Constant. After 144 days they reached the Chesapeake Bay where, on 26 April 1607, they made landfall at Cape Henry. However the orders from the London Company instructed them to establish permanent settlement inland and so, over the next few weeks, they traveled up the James River in search of a suitable location. Eventually they chose a defensible peninsula approximately 40 miles inland from the Chesapeake Bay.
Having moored their ships on the night of 13 May, the settlers began to move their supplies ashore the next morning. They quickly began to construct a triangular fort containing a number of houses alongside a storehouse and a church, which they named James Fort after King James I.
Initially governed by a council of seven, the settlers faced a number of difficulties in the first few years ranging from poor water supplies to food shortages and disease. Around two-thirds of the settlers died before the first supply ships arrived in 1608.
