al attempts by the Company to send to
America boatwrights to construct such ships failed because of the
deaths of the boatwrights. The Company had hoped in 1620 to better its
financial condition by developing an iron industry in the colony, but
this project suffered from the effects of disease, too, as the chief
men for the iron works died during the ocean voyage. The remainder of
the officers and men sent to establish the works died in Virginia
either from disease or at the hands of the Indians. The high cost to
the Company of the labor and services lost because of the early deaths
of persons still indentured for a period of years cannot be estimated.
Nor can the number of goals set by the colonists and the Company but
never fulfilled because of sickness be tabulated. As late as 1623 a
colonist wrote that "these slow supplies, which hardly rebuild every
year the decays of the former, retain us only in a languishing state
and curb us from the carrying of enterprise of moment."

In suggesting the part that famine and disease played in the annulment
of the Company's charter, the effects of one more period of intense
suffering must also be considered. In March, 1622, a bloody Indian
massacre occurred in which more than 350 white men, women, and children
died. Not only did the massacre cause a subsequent period of disease,
famine, and death among the survivors, but the heavy casualties
inflicted directly by the Indians can be explained, partially, by the
weakened condition and depleted ranks of the colonists before the
massacre.

So tenuous was the colony's ability to maintain an adequate and
healthful living standard, that the destructive and disrupting impact
of the massacre brought a period of severe famine and sickness. After
the raid the surviving colonists had to abandon many of the outlying
plantations with their arable fields, livestock, and supplies. And
having had the routine of life interrupted, the settlers--their numbers
unfortunately increased by a large supply of new immigrants, sent by
ambitious planners in England--came to the winter of 1622-23 poorly
provisioned.

Toward the end of this winter, famine reduced the settlers to such
conditions that one wrote to his parents that he had often eaten more
at home in a day than in Virginia in a week. The beggar in England
without his limbs seemed fortunate to the Virginian who had to live day
after day on a scant ration of peas, water-gruel, and a small portion