Sandys is responsible for the Starving Time, with its attendant deaths
and cannibalism, for sending a nine or ten ship fleet of settlers to
Jamestown for a mid-summer landing without warning, and without adequate
provisions. About 500 settlers, survivors of the hurricane apart from
the 180 or so men and women shipwrecked in Bermuda, showed up
unannounced in a colony already desperate to feed the people on hand. It
was too late to plant more corn for them, and they gobbled down green
what little stood. What could Sandys, and the other officers of the
company who authored this blunder, have been thinking?

Not all of the blame for the failure of the Virginia Company and the quo
warranto proceeding after the attacks of 1622 can be laid at Sandys'
feet, but he and his can be heartily faulted for the promotion of the
politically inastute and self-serving tobacco monopoly that played so
large a part in its dissolution, to say nothing of the loss of the
lottery. In any case, Sandys can hardly be credited with "turning around
the fortunes of the colony." Under his administration, and the
administration of his proxy, the colony was not "put on a firmer
financial footing," it went bankrupt. That may have been partly as the
result of the infectious factionalization of the Bermuda Company, for
which Sandys is also blamable, but that's a little too abstruse to get
into here.

It may be--probably is--that Smith preserved the colony from starvation
before the Starving Time by robbing, killing and terrorizing Indians.
That he could not save it from the folly of Sandys' et al cannot be
charged against him. But he should be held to account otherwise, and for
such things as inciting the Native Americans at the falls of the James
to attack and kill West's men. After that delicious bit of  treachery,
Smith was sent back to Jamestown a prisoner under guard, again, (perhaps
at gunpoint, which would explain the spark, perhaps from the lit match
of a matchlock, that fell on the bag of gunpowder at his waist and
ignited it), and shipped back to England to answer charges--barely
escaping assassination while he lay abed waiting.

There is much to be said in favor of Sandys and Smith--the first General
Assembly, ethnographic achievements, the Great Charter, cartographic
accomplishments, etc.--but not one of them is that either was the
Greatest Virginian of the Seventeenth Century.

Dennis Montgomery
Williamsburg


Emily Rose wrote:

> Dear Randy,
>       Captain John Smith did not save the colony as it was abandoned less
> than a year after he left (only to be re-established a couple of hours
> later). No one is as generous giving him credit as he is himself.
> Certainly
> the investors in Virginia did not think he was responsible for saving the
> enterprise.
>         If we are talking of *non-resident* 17thc. Virginians, the credit
> must go to Edwin Sandys, who as 'treasurer' of the Virginia Company is
> credited by many contemporaries with turning around the fortunes of the
> colony. Although he never sailed across the Atlantic, he was
> responsible for
> laying the groundwork for many of the most important institutions in
> Virginia including its representative assembly, recruited a number of
> other
> important Americans (including his nephew the governor Francis Wyatt),
> organized the shipping of unmarried women who settled in Virginia and
> made
> it a colony and not just a military outpost and generally speaking,
> put it
> on a firmer financial footing.
>
>
>> From: Randy Cabell <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: Randy Cabell <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Great/Important 17th Century Virginian
>> Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:02:37 -0500
>>
>> No question about it, Capt. John Smith.  He took command of a mess,
>> instilled military discipline to the benefit of the settlers, and as
>> a show
>> of force to the Indians.  He saved the Jamestowne Colony in its first
>> years.
>> OK, so he wasn't born in Virginia :((, since of course it did not exist.
>>
>> Randy Cabell
>
>
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