Existing comment:
The Struggles of Jamestown
The site was defensible, navigable, and uninhabited by Indians, but it was plagued by mosquitoes and brackish water. The settlers arrived too late to plant crops. Two-thirds of them died before relief arrived in 1608. When an expedition sent in 1609 was shipwrecked by bad weather for a year in Bermuda, the settlers nearly starved; only sixty of the earlier 214 survived. Some turned to cannibalism as relations with once-helpful Indians deteriorated. |