"lewd company" and
"gallants packed thither by their friends to escape worse destinies at
home," the broadsides issued by the company show that the emigrants of
the "Third Supply" were chiefly artisans of all sorts.[18] The Rev.
William Croshaw perhaps stated the case fairly in a sermon which he
preached in 1610,[19] when he said that "those who were sent over at
the company's expense were, for aught he could see, like those that
were left behind, even of all sorts, better and worse," and that the
gentlemen "who went on their own account" were "as good as the
scoffers at home, and, it may be, many degrees better."

The colonists at first made various efforts to obtain supplies; and at
President Percy's command John Ratcliffe, in October, 1609,
established a fort called Algernourne and a fishery at Point Comfort,
and in the winter of 1609-1610[20] went in a pinnace to trade with
Powhatan in York River; but was taken off his guard and slain by the
Indians with twenty-seven of his men.[21] Captain West tried to trade
also, but failing in the attempt, sailed off to England.[22] Matters
reached a crisis when the Indians killed and carried off the hogs,
drove away the deer, and laid ambushes all around the fort at
Jamestown.[23]

Finally came a period long remembered as the "Starving Time," when
corn and even roots from the swamps failed. The starving settlers
killed and ate the dogs and horses and then the mice and snakes found
about the fort. Some turned cannibals, and an Indian who had been
slain was dug out of the ground and devoured. Others crazed with
hunger dogged the footsteps of their comrades; and one man cut his
wife into pieces and ate her up, for which barbarous act he was
executed. Even religion failed to afford any consolation, and a man
threw his Bible into the fire and cried out in the market-place,
"There is no God in heaven."

Only Daniel Tucker, afterwards governor of Bermuda, seemed able to
take any thought. He built a boat and caught fish in the river, and
"this small relief did keep us from killing one another to eat," says
Percy. Out of more than five hundred colonists in Virginia in the
summer of 1609 there remained about the latter part of May, 1610, not
above sixty persons--men, women, and children--and even these were so
reduced by famine and disease that had help been delayed ten days
longer all would have perished.[24]

The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates relieved the immediate distress, and
h