Christopher Newport returned just in time to save John Smith from being hanged on January 2, 1608. The first resupply mission came at a perfect time, but the colony continued to suffer.

Newport and Smith eventually accepted an invitation from Powhatan, which was the first of a series of exploratory trips that Smith would take during the next few months.

As John Smith gallivanted throughout the Tidewater region, Jamestown was crumbling. John Ratcliffe’s administration as well as increasingly hot weather and gold fever killed half of the colonists, and those still alive thought about mutiny.

Once Smith returned from his first journey, the time seemed perfect for a coup, but Smith still wanted to explore. Governing was not on his mind. Not yet at least. But once he completed the second venture, Smith decided to acquiesce, and became the Virginia Colony’s next President.

LINKS TO THE PODCAST:

• John Smith Explores the Chesapeake Bay on Libsyn
• RSS Feed
• VA History Podcast on iTunes
• VA History Podcast on Stitcher

SOURCES:

1. Billings, Warren M.; Selby, John E.; and Tate, Thad W. Colonial Virginia: A History. White Plains, NY: KTO Press. 1986.
2. Dabney, Virginius. Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1971.
3. Deans, Bob. The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James. Plymouth, UK: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009.
4. Firstbrook, Peter. A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Founding of America. London: Oneworld Publications, 2014.
5. Horn, James. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
6. Hume, Ivor Noel. Here Lies Virginia. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963.
7. Hume, Ivor Noel. The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne – An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
8. Kelso, William M. Jamestown: The Buried Truth. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006.
9. Kupperman, Karen Ordhal. Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown The Journal of American History, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Jun., 1979), pp. 24-40
10. Kupperman, Karen Ordhal. Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press published for the Omohundro Institute, 1988.
11. Kupperman, Karen Ordhal. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
12. Mapp, Alfred J. Virginia Experiment: The Old Dominion’s Role in the Making of America, 1607-1781. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2006.
13. Price, David A. Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation. New York: Vintage, 2003.
14. Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1999.
15. Rountree, Helen C. Powhatan Foreign Relations: 1500-1722.Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993.
16. Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. Charlottesville, VA: UVA Press, 2005.
17. Smith, John. The Generall History of Virginia. 1624.
18. Wallenstein, Peter. Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
19. Williams, Tony. The Jamestown Experiment: The Remarkable Story of The Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results that Shaped America. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2011.
20. Wooley, Benjamin. Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America. New York: Harper and Collins, 2007.

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

1. Historic Jamestowne
2. Virtual Jamestown
3. Maps of John Smith’s Chesapeake Voyages

 

 

 

Photo Credit: John Smith’s Map of Virginia on the Encyclopedia Virginia.

Music used for this episode – Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers,”Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” and Klaus Badelt, “The Black Pearl” from Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl both songs are available on iTunes.