Samuel Argall - Shorter Route To Virginia

Shorter Route To Virginia

In 1609, Argall, as an English ship's captain employed by the Virginia Company of London, was the first to develop a shorter, more northerly route for sailing from England across the Atlantic Ocean to the Virginia Colony and its primary port and seat of government at Jamestown. Rather than following the normal practice of going south to the tropics and west with the trade winds, Captain Argall sailed west from the Azores to Bermuda and then almost due west to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. His voyage took only nine weeks and six days, including two weeks becalmed. This new route enabled the English to avoid enemy Spanish ships and to save on provisions.

Upon his arrival at Jamestown, Captain Argall found the colonists in dire straits. He resupplied them with all the food he could spare and returned to England at the end of the summer. The help came to the colony at one of the most critical moments in its history, as it began the Starving Time, during which fewer than one in five survived. However, without the provisions Argall had left, the colony may have been totally destroyed.