The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
The Virginia Company was an English trading company chartered by King James I on 10 April 1606, with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of America. The coast was named Virginia, after Elizabeth I, and it stretched from present-day Maine to the Carolinas. The company's shareholders were Londoners, and it was distinguished from the Plymouth Company, which was chartered at the same time and composed largely of gentlemen from Plymouth, England.The biggest trade breakthrough resulted after adventurer and colonist John Rolfe introduced several sweeter strains of tobacco from the Caribbean. These yielded a product that was much more appealing than that of the harsh-tasting tobacco native to Virginia. Cultivation of Rolfe's new tobacco strains produced a strong commodity crop for export for the London Company and other early English colonies and helped to balance a national trade deficit with Spain. The company failed in 1624, following the widespread destruction of the Great Massacre of 1622 by indigenous peoples in the colony, which decimated the English population. On May 24, James dissolved the company and made Virginia a royal colony from England. But the right to self-government was not taken from the colonists.: 90–91