Starving Time

The Starving Time at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was a period of starvation during the winter of 1609–1610. There were about 500 Jamestown residents at the beginning of the winter; by spring only 61 people remained alive.^[1]

The colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived on May 13, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food. Their plans depended upon trade with the local Powhatan to supply them with food between the arrivals of periodic supply ships from England. Lack of access to water and a severe drought crippled the agricultural production of the colonists. The water that the colonists drank was brackish and potable for only half of the year. A fleet from England, damaged by a hurricane, arrived months behind schedule with new colonists but without adequate food supplies.

On June 7, 1610, the survivors boarded ships, abandoned the colony site, and sailed towards the Chesapeake Bay. There, another supply convoy with new supplies, headed by newly appointed governor Francis West, intercepted them on the lower James River and returned them to Jamestown. Within a few years, the commercialization of tobacco by John Rolfe secured the settlement's long-term economic prosperity. There is historical and scientific evidence that the settlers at Jamestown had turned to cannibalism during the starving time.^[2][3][4]