The investors of the Virginia Company of London had expected to reap rewards from their speculative investments.

With the Second Supply, they had expressed their frustrations and made demands upon the leaders of Jamestown in written form.

They had specifically demanded that the colonists send commodities sufficient to pay the cost of the voyage, a lump of gold, assurance that they had found the South Sea, and one member of the lost Roanoke Colony.

It had fallen to the third president of the Council to deliver a reply.

By this time, Wingfield and Ratcliffe had been replaced by John Smith.

Ever bold, Smith has delivered what must have been a wake-up call to the investors in London.

In what has been termed "Smith's Rude Answer", he composed a letter, writing (in part): "When you send again I entreat you rather send but thirty Carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons and diggers up of trees, roots, well provided; than a thousand of such awe have: for except wee be able both to lodge them and feed them, the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can be made good for anything."

Smith did begin his letter with something of an apology, saying "I humbly intreat your Pardons if I offend you with my rude Answer...", although it should be noted that at this time, the word 'rude' is acknowledged to mean 'unfinished' or 'rural', in the same way modern English uses 'rustic'.

There are strong indications that those in London comprehend and embrace Smith's message.

Their Third Supply mission is by far the largest and best equipped.

They even have a new purpose-built flagship constructed, the Sea Venture, placed in the most experienced of hands, Christopher Newport.

With a fleet of no fewer than eight ships, the Third Supply, led by the Sea Venture with veteran captain Christopher Newport in command as Vice Admiral, leaves Plymouth on June, 1609.

Also aboard the new flagship are the Admiral of the Company, Sir George Somers, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Gates, William Strachey and other notable personages in the early history of English colonization in North America.

The convoy transporting five hundred new colonists and supplies across the Atlantic Ocean runs into a strong and massive storm, possibly a hurricane, which lasts for three days.

The Sea Venture and one other ship are separated from the seven other vessels of the fleet.

Admiral Somers, who had had previous experience sailing with both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, has the Sea Venture deliberately driven onto the reefs of Bermuda to prevent her sinking, leaving the survivors in possession of a new territory. (William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is thought to have been inspired by William Strachey's account of this shipwreck.)

One hundred and fifty passengers and crew members all land safely on July 28, 1609, but the ship is now permanently damaged.

The island is claimed for the English Crown, and the charter of the Virginia Company will be extended to include it.

One ship had returned to England in the aftermath of the great storm.

The other seven ships had arrived safely at Jamestown, delivering two hundred to three hundred men, women, and children, but relatively few supplies, since most had been aboard the large flagship.

In the Colony, there is no word of the fate of the Sea Venture, its supplies, passengers, or the leaders who had been aboard her.

Captain Samuel Argall, piloting one of the ships of the Third Supply which made it to Jamestown, is among those who hurry back to England to advise of Jamestown's plight.

No further supply ships from England will arrive that year, however, nor the following spring.

John Smith in the previous month had been walking with his gun in the river, and the powder was in a pouch on his belt when his powder bag exploded.

He is sent back to England for medical treatment on October 4.

While back in England, Smith will write A True Relation and The Proceedings of the English Colony of Virginia about his experiences in Jamestown.

These books, whose accuracy has been questioned by some historians due to some extent by Smith's boastful prose, are to generate public interest and new investment for the colony.

Jamestown's colonists had never planned to grow all of their own food.

Instead, their plans depend upon trade with the Powhatan Confederacy to supply them with food between the arrival of periodic supply ships from England.

The efforts by anti-English leaders among the Powhatan Confederacy have however succeeded in isolating the tenuous English colony.

Additionally, lack of access to water and a relatively dry rain season has crippled the agricultural production of the colonists.

A drought earlier in 1609 during the normal growing season has left the fields of the colonists of Virginia barren.

With Smith gone, Chief Powhatan feels clear to end the truce and he begins a campaign to starve the English out of Virginia.

The Powhatans stop trading with the colonists for food.

John Ratcliffe, captain of the Discovery, has became colony president and tries to improve the colony's situation by obtaining food.

Hoping to emulate Captain Smith, John Ratcliffe attempts a trade mission shortly after being elected, but is captured by Chief Powhatan and tortured to death, along with fourteen of his men, leaving the colony without strong leadership.

The Powhatans carry out additional attacks on other colonists who come in search of trade.

Hunting also becomes very dangerous, as they kill any Englishmen they find outside the fort.

The Powhatans place the colony completely under siege and attempt to end the English settlement through starvation.

Between the lack of trade with the natives, and the failure of the Third Supply to arrive with expected supplies, the colony finds itself with far too little food for the winter.

With the new arrivals, there are many more mouths to feed.

The relationship between the Virginia natives and the colonists will become more strained during the next several years, but never more so than during the period of poor crops for both the natives and colonists which becomes known as the Starving Time in late 1609 and early 1610.

Faced with impending disaster, the colony has attempted numerous attempts to break the Powhatan siege with armed foraging expeditions, diplomatic expeditions, and trading expeditions.

All attempts have been beaten back by the Powhatans, with most of the expedition personnel captured or killed.

The Powhatans' campaign kills all but sixty of the two hundred colonists during the winter of 1609–1610.

There are few records of the hardships the colonists experience in Virginia during this winter.

Arms and valuable work tools are traded to the Powhatans for a pittance in food.

Houses are used as firewood.

Archaeologists have found evidence that the colonists ate cats, dogs, horses, and rats.

At least three respected authorities in early 2007 concluded, based on some credible evidence, that the starvation conditions were so severe that corpses were dug up, and human flesh was eaten.

A scientist has suggested another sinister possibility: arsenic poisoning.

Chief Powhatan meanwhile has relocated his principal capital from Werowocomoco, which is relatively close to Jamestown along the north shore of the York River, to a point more inland and secure along the upper reaches of the Chickahominy River.

The survivors of the Sea Venture, shipwrecked on Bermuda, had soon fitted the ship’s longboat with a mast and sent it to sea to find Virginia; it and its crew will never be seen again.

The remaining survivors have spent nine months on Bermuda building two smaller ships, Deliverance and Patience, from Bermuda cedar and materials salvaged from the Sea Venture.

Then, leaving two men to maintain England's claim to the newly discovered archipelago, the remainder sail for Jamestown.

The publication in England of Captain John Smith's books of his adventures in Virginia—during the period that the Sea Venture had suffered its misfortune, and its survivors were struggling in Bermuda to continue on to Virginia—had sparked a resurgence of interest in the colony, helping lead to new interest and investment in the Virginia Company.

There is also a moral call in England by clergymen and others for support for the stranded colonists.

Three more ships are dispatched from England on April 1, 1610, bound for Jamestown, equipped with additional colonists, a doctor, food, and supplies.

Heading this group is the new governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, better known in modern times as "Lord Delaware".

John Rolfe, who has left a wife and child buried in Bermuda, is among the survivors of the Sea Venture, who finally arrive to Jamestown on May 23, 1610.

Here, Rolfe will marry Chief Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas.

The new arrivals, led by Gates (the new governor) and George Somers, had assumed they would find a thriving colony in Virginia.

Instead, they find the colony in ruins and practically abandoned.

Of the five hundred colonists living in Jamestown in the autumn, they find less than one hundred survivors with many of these sick or dying.

Worse yet, many supplies intended for Jamestown had been lost in the shipwreck at Bermuda, and Gates and Somers have brought along with them only a small food supply.

It is decided to abandon the Virginia colony.

The survivors, together with the one hundred colonists just arrived, board ships on June 7, 1610, abandon the colony site, and sail towards the Chesapeake Bay and home.

However, another supply convoy with new supplies and headed by a newly appointed governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, intercepts the would-be returnees on the lower James River and orders them back to Jamestown, then places the colony under martial law, thereby establishing the first permanent English settlement in America.

West is the son of Thomas West, 2nd Baron De La Warr, of Wherwell Abbey in Hampshire, and his wife, Anne, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and Catherine Carey.

West had received his education at Queen's College, Oxford, had served in the army under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and, in 1601, had been charged with supporting Essex's ill-fated insurrection against Queen Elizabeth, but he had been acquitted of those charges.

He succeeded his father as Baron De La Warr, in 1602, and became a member of the Privy Council.

He has been appointed governor-for-life (and captain-general) of Virginia, and he has outfitted their three ships and recruited and equipped these men at his own expense.