Smith started to build a fort "for a retreat" on Gray's Creek,
opposite to Jamestown (the place is still called "Smith's Fort"), but
a remarkable circumstance, not at all creditable to Smith's vigilance
or circumspection, stopped the work and put the colonists at their
wits' end to escape starvation. On an examination of the casks in
which their corn was stored it was found that the rats had devoured
most of the contents, and that the remainder was too rotten to eat.[6]

To avoid starvation, President Smith, like Lane at Roanoke Island, in
May, 1609, dispersed the whole colony in three parties, sending one to
live with the savages, another to Point Comfort to try for fish, and
another, the largest party, twenty miles down the river to the
oyster-banks, where at the end of nine weeks the oyster diet caused
their skins "to peale off from head to foote as if they had been
flead."[7]

While the colony was in this desperate condition there arrived from
England, July 14, 1609, a small bark, commanded by Samuel Argall, with
a supply of bread and wine, enough to last the colonists one month. He
had been sent out by the London Company to try for sturgeon in James
River and to find a shorter route to Virginia. He brought news that
the old charter had been repealed, that a new one abolishing the
council in Virginia had been granted, and that Lord Delaware was
coming, at the head of a large supply of men and provisions, as sole
and absolute governor of Virginia.[8]

The calamities in the history of the colony as thus far outlined have
been attributed to the great preponderance of "gentlemen" among these
early immigrants; but afterwards when the company sent over mechanics