What if England Lost Virginia in 1610?

In June 1610 the survivors of Jamestown boarded four ships and abandoned the fort. A relief fleet met them downriver by chance and forced them back. This video asks what North America looks like if those ships had never arrived. England's first permanent settlement in North America came within hours of disappearing. After the winter known as the Starving Time, only a few dozen colonists were still alive inside the palisade. Governor Thomas Gates ordered the colony abandoned, and the convoy was already sailing for the Chesapeake when Lord De La Warr's supply ships appeared near Mulberry Island. The Powhatan chiefdom under Wahunsenacawh had not beaten the English in open battle. It had closed the corn trade and waited. This scenario follows what a victory in 1610 would have meant: no John Rolfe and no Virginia tobacco, a Virginia Company facing total loss, and a coastline where Dutch and French trading posts arrive before English plantations do. Covered in this video: the founding voyage of 1607, the Powhatan chiefdom and the corn trade, the Starving Time and the 2012 archaeological findings at the fort site, the abandonment and the turnaround at Mulberry Island, and a step by step alternate timeline running into the later seventeenth century. Sources are drawn from the colonial records, the Jamestown Rediscovery excavations, and published tree ring and climate studies for the period. #alternatehistory #whatif #jamestown #colonialamerica #history