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Death At Jamestown - Narrator: Liev Schreiber - 17th Century Jamestown's Dead Secrets

Mar 28, 2024
In the spring of 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, 104 British men arrived on the east coast of the United States to begin a settlement and find prosperity, the colony of Jamestown would become the birthplace of the United States, but not without the most terrible fighting to survive. Within a few months, nearly 70 of the original settlers had suffered agonizing

death

s and over the next three years hundreds of those who came to replace them shared the same horrible fate. Historians and scientists have proposed a number of explanations for the horrors suffered by the early settlers. but they have never fully agreed on exactly what or who was to blame for the

death

.
death at jamestown   narrator liev schreiber   17th century jamestown s dead secrets
The most common theory is that the colonists died of starvation, but graphic descriptions of other terrible physical afflictions have also been found in chronicles left by survivors who led some to be

liev

e that disease and not starvation was responsible and there is further archaeological evidence. of the recently rediscovered site of Jamestown raises interesting new questions about infighting one skeleton exhibits a dark reminder of the

dead

ly infighting that plagued the settlers and a radical new theory suggests that the true cause of the settlers' disappearance is even more transcendental and sinister than anyone suspected. Major political disruptions can be seen in the leadership and major physical disruptions can also be seen in what may well have been sabotage through a poisoning event.
death at jamestown   narrator liev schreiber   17th century jamestown s dead secrets

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death at jamestown narrator liev schreiber 17th century jamestown s dead secrets...

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray. For us sinners now and at the hour of our death, history tells of the pious and hardworking pilgrims who came to New England to found a nation free from British religious persecution. School textbooks teach that they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and from there a great nation was born, but the true beginning is not so comfortable or so noble. The true foundations of the United States were laid long before and far to the south, in what would later become Virginia. The men came to claim the land for the British and seek their fortune in gold myth William Roode's Worker Richard Dickson Knights Captain John Smith Knights The Jamestown settlers were a mix of noble workers and craftsmen William the White Worker James Reid Blacksmith George Percy Knights set sail from England just before Christmas at 16:06 on a voyage that was supposed to take a few weeks, but the winds were unfavorable and the voyage dragged on for months.
death at jamestown   narrator liev schreiber   17th century jamestown s dead secrets
Captain John Smith documented the voyage. We were at sea. Five months in which we both spent our Vittel and lost time and season to plant the long and narrow trip that fostered disputes. among the men who had not yet been told their positions in the colony along the way, they carried sealed orders that were not to be opened until they got here, so the CEO had not been announced and all these gentlemen were vying for that. position and so there must have been a tremendous feeling of tension throughout the voyage, so much so that John Smith, of course, and he always spoke when he was not expected to end up in chains, Smith was later freed because when the ship reached the coast and the sealing The directors opened up, appointing him to the governing council with their orders finally clear.
death at jamestown   narrator liev schreiber   17th century jamestown s dead secrets
The crew spent two weeks looking for a place to settle. There were bitter disputes, but they finally settled on the island, about fifty miles from the ocean up the James River, after such a difficult situation. and tumultuous voyage the men disembarked with great expectations caught up in the spirit of the expedition that had been organized by the London Virginia Company they were eager to begin the road to riches they had finally arrived at what a fort had promised was a delicious land of pearls and gold the main objective of these men to be here regardless of what was officially said about Christianizing the Indians the savages as they call them was to make money for the group of investors the Virginia Company of London from the beginning they were thinking about gold and silver as a principle, what they found was that there was no gold, there was silver, but there was wood, a lot of wood and tar, and I think this is one of the things that probably bothered them. the other kind because they were really hoping to have little nuggets to put in their bags, you know, and all they got was hard work in the heat of their first summer in Virginia, the men set out to fortify their settlement against attacks from Spain.
Spain was England's ancient enemy and she had been colonizing the new world from the south, but the immediate enemy was closer within days of their arrival, the colonists were attacked by Native Americans who thought they would be peaceful, the ordeal of the colonists had begun and although they eventually triumphed their colony was almost forgotten by later generations the legacy of Jamestown was a great and democratic nation but due to the events that shaped the United States it never got the credit it deserved when the Civil War ended with a Union victory in the North Scholars took it out of the history books: a victorious American history began with the sympathetic Pilgrims in New England, but with the first Jamestown colony in the South, Yankee historians still leave very little room for Jamestown and plenty for Timnath, the popular one.
The stories I learned at school had nothing to do with Jamestown, it was always Plymouth, them and the pilgrims and their pious pilgrims with their extraordinary hats with shoe buckles in me I always thought it was very strange, but you know, they were in the Victorian mind. This event threatens everything unfolds, who are the right people? I don't remember if Jamestown was even mentioned in a history in our history classes, so I did this, but once you learn the history, it becomes very clear that the earliest beginnings of what the country became. This was more than a decade before anything happened in Plymouth and, in fact, the things that were happening here in industry and representative government, all these jury systems and these things that are clearly part of American society today They started in Jamestown at first and there was a second explanation for their lack of historic status: the site of the original fort had been washed away by the river taking with it all the remains of the colony's early days, at least that's what they told Bill Kelso when he came to the island as a student in the 1960s.
I felt like I could see the place where it all started and I asked the park ranger where the Ford was and he pointed to the river and said it was somewhere out there and I was devastated You know, I came all the way here, but Kelso had a feeling that The Ranger was wrong, he thought the previous digs had simply picked the wrong place Thirty years and a career in archeology later, he finally got permission to test his theory. It was someone's cane. I know it was me and when the shovel hit the ground. On the ground I just crossed my fingers and luckily I immediately found artifacts that were from the correct period and I was elated, I mean I made out we sat down and walked on the seat on the edge of the river and he just sat down, he just smiled.
You know, big time, you know this is going to be a real adventure. It was going to be a look back at a very difficult time, almost immediately after his ship set sail for the return trip to England, the original settlers were beaten. A devastating disease, John Smith was one of the few who survived and was left to our fate. Fortunately, in ten days, barely ten of us could go or endure such extreme weakness and illness as to suppress us, these strange and sudden afflictions recurring periodically over time. Over the next three years the new settlers perished almost as quickly as they arrived.
Between 1607 and 1610, more than four hundred and forty of Jamestown's first 500 settlers lost their lives. Exactly what was to blame for this extreme death rate is one of the great mysteries of the early times. America no theory has been able to explain all the deaths for many years the tragedy was attributed to a poor choice of colonists lazy English gentlemen and lower class rabble all hopelessly ill equipped to establish a colony the myth would be that the colonists On one hand of the feat there was a group of overdressed knights and on the other side these other guys who very quickly found themselves in rags that is the impression, but the archaeological evidence from the fort shows that a lack of effort cannot be blamed on all the deaths.
Much was achieved. I think one thing that proves that they had some people that did some work is that they quickly built a fort and it seems like about 20 days and that would have involved cutting down over a thousand trees I guess. in an unexplored area in extreme and dangerous conditions and the settlers were skilled tacticians and craftsmen. Traces of the wooden walls on the ground revealed that the fort was built by experts. The configuration of the stockade lines together indicate that the people who came were actually experienced military men. The people who knew how to shape the fort that would be the most defensive against the enemy and who discovered that it was the real one and that it was the local Powhatan Indians.
The thousands of military artifacts discovered at the site indicate that the settlers were well equipped to defend themselves, we have found all types of weaponry, from high-end weaponry to firearms and plate armor. Of course, they ruled out a lot of them early on because they discovered that they didn't really need to have heavy plate armor in the middle of the Virginia summer. I mean, to be effective you had to wear it all the time, you couldn't just carry it with you and put it on when an Indian attacked and here they were when they were attacked, it was usually during guerrilla warfare, skirmishes in the forest, attacks by the Indians.
They were a constant threat, but even in the worst case scenario, the fighting could not have explained the terrible death toll, so there must have been another culprit. Evidence from the site and written records of the colony indicate that perhaps the famine was the fault of George Percy, one of The colonists recounted the struggle to survive during the winter of 1609, a winter that became known as the time of famine in which some were forced to search in the forests and feed on snakes and serpents, where many of our men were killed by the savages and now. famine was beginning to look ghastly and pale on all faces, nothing was spared to sustain life in a rubbish pit on the site.
Kelso found remains that corroborated Percy's words, evidence of the horrible morsels the settlers had been forced to eat. I'm inside a building or a Basement that was probably here in 1610. This is a place that perhaps Captain John Smith might have entered here before when he was abandoned. It was filled with more than 30,000 artifacts that were discarded as trash. We found animal bones. They have been eaten, so it is probably material that was here from a traumatic time like the time of famine in the 69s. 1610. The famine completely forced us to devour those pigs, dogs and horses that were then in the colony along with rats, mice, snakes or whatever.
North Korean vermin, however, we were able to discover told us they had to cut their horses into delicate squares and eat them. They would never eat their horses at home. We have elements of horse legs and in fact you can see the cut marks along the edges where the horse has definitely been butchered and the lady tells us that the rats had to be eaten also this is the first appearance of black rats in the New World we are seeing graphically what they tell us in the records that they had to resort to eating things that they normally would not do, but why was there such a shortage of food?
Archaeologist Dennis Blanton has conducted research in the Jamestown area. He finds it hard to be

liev

e that settlers could have started if conditions then were the same as today. It is difficult to imagine even today and anyone could die of hunger. We are surrounded by a very rich natural area. The streams are full of fish, crabs, oyster forests and full of food of various kinds, but settlers for profit never They had intended to forage, hunt, or grow their own crops. They had naively hoped to trade them for food. Their plans went awry when they discovered that the Indians had no food to spare.
Blanton had an idea of ​​where he might discover why he turned to the cypress trees in the area. , but for hundreds of years they have been quietly preserving details of the past we are lucky to have some of the oldest trees in the country here there are some that are over a thousand years old and there are enough that would allow us to potentially reconstruct the climate there is one type that consistently The lives of that age here and theBald cypresses grow in very humid environments, but we also know that they are very sensitive to wet and dry conditions, looking for evidence of a drought that could have caused food shortages.
Blanton extracted thin samples of wood cores. of the trees with a hollow drill, the delicate samples were sent for analysis to the University of Arkansas. A prolonged dry period would be indicated by the annual rings of the trees forming close together. No one had ever implicated drought in previous studies, so it was met with a bit of skepticism both here and in Arkansas, and lo and behold, they discovered in these tree rings that the worst drought in the last seven hundred and seventy years occurred between the year 1606 and 1612, just at the time when the colonists were suffering and although the colonists finally managed to achieve it. to establish trade with the Indians in those years the growing conditions were so terrible that the Indians could barely feed themselves and had little to offer the hungry settlers.
Famine was clearly a factor, but there are some anomalies that call into question the theory that famine was the sole cause of the high death rate in Jamestown, well, the famine was happening in Jamestown, at Point Comfort in Fort Algren, Captain James Davis lived quite well and records indicate that they had enough food to feed the population. excess for their pigs, so we have hawks about 40 miles down the river, they have excess food to feed the Hawks and yet they are starving in Jamestown, this doesn't seem to fit well. Comfort was close to the Jamestown colony, but the truce with the Indians was never stable and it is possible that at times abandoning the fort was too dangerous or perhaps the settlers were suffering from some other affliction that made them too weak to travel downriver.
A thesis published in the 1970s by geographer Carville Earle proposed that disease, not hunger, was the leading cause of death. Earl thought that the fatal contagion was transmitted in the brackish water consumed by the settlers, with no fresh springs on the island. They were forced to drink from the swampy river even though they knew it was probably not safe, but they had chosen the island for defense, not health. People always said. what a stupid place to set up a settlement and if you're talking in terms of health higher ground would have been much better but from a strategic point of view it wasn't so bad that the ships could get closer to the coast which means that help could come ashore very easily and if needed could leave very easily and you can't really blame them for worrying about health when they first arrived.
He does not care about health until he finds out that he is not healthy. Colonist George Percy confirmed Earl's suspicions. His writings reveal that the settlers had been forced to drink river water that was often foul and sometimes

dead

ly. Our drink was cold water drawn from the river which was full of silt and filth, which was the undoing of many of our men. Earl's theory is that the silt and grime was caused by the settlers' own sewage; especially during the dry summer months, the waste would have stagnated near the fort untouched by the river's currents. He speculated that the waste was actually introduced into the river from the fort area.
It didn't travel very far, it circulated with the tide back and forth and therefore they took their drink from the river and that would have introduced disease and exacerbated many of the problems they faced. The stories of George Percy describe the illnesses that overcame them during the On the sixth day of August John Ashby died of the bloody discharge. Our people are strangely affected by the bloody flow. The use of eggs we heard in the records that many of the men died from what is known as a bloody discharge and when looking at medical books from that time. dysentery period is called bloody flux our men were destroyed with cruel diseases fluxes burning fevers the description of burning fevers matches that of typhoid fever and the contaminated water theory has many supporters, but could the waste have been so deadly as to almost annihilate the entire population?
Evidence from colonies in other parts of the world casts considerable doubt. I often wonder about this because the Thames in London at the time was polluted, the Walbrook stream running down through more fields was clogged with rubbish and yet people drank from it so I'm not sure this was worse than possibly a little better than some of the water people were drinking in London at the time and the water was most likely only a problem in the summers when the river currents failed to carry away the waste, but even if contaminated water would have only caused minor outbreaks, disease in summer and famine in winter would certainly have wreaked havoc on the struggling colony.
The difficulties led to conflicts between men, already on the journey from Europe they had been fighting, but now things got worse and people began to die. Tensions at the fort spiraled out of control. I think there was a big civil unrest situation, especially after people started dying like flies in August. It's mostly a riot and there was a lot going on. of different factions who wanted to leave or wanted to change leadership, so the first president, Edward Wingfield, was removed and replaced, which was only the first in a series of leadership crises and today new archaeological evidence is beginning to paint a picture. chart.
Of how bad it had become, a discovery was unearthed while the team was excavating within the confines of the fort while clearing 400 years of soil they came across its first human skeleton laid the body shedding light on the horrible afflictions that had killed so many. many settlers, on the other hand, scientists were surprised by the evidence of a violent death, a musket ball lodged in his leg, this is what remains of jr1 o2c and we gave him the nickname junior because we discovered that this person probably died from a massive gunshot wound. on his right leg here was an unexpected twist in the deal story: the team snagged ballistics tests with replica muskets that could provide details about the event.
We tried all the different types of weapons that could have been used at that time to see if far back we would get a shot distribution that would mirror the same shot distribution in the wound and if you had to be at least eight feet away, Junior He didn't shoot himself, we know that, so who did the shooting? Junior Kelso began to reflect. Kelso sent the bones to Doug Owsley, one of the top forensic anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. he hoped they would reveal what had happened to Junior. There is nothing in the archaeological record that you can recover.
They can tell you more about a people from the past than the opportunity to learn from the bones. The skeleton can tell you a lot and where appropriate. He is a very special guy, he is full of mystery, we have been trying to figure him out for more than two years and we still have a lot of things we don't understand. Lee's first task was to establish the sex and age, no doubt. In my opinion, this is a man, the characteristics that we see in the pelvis, certainly, the size and length of the long bones, the definition of the insertion areas of the muscles in different places, those are all male characteristics in the Same sense when talking about a man's skull, men tend to have a more sloping forehead on average, while women tend to have a much more upright forehead for him.
All of these characteristics identify this individual as a man with respect to age. One of the things we see in this individual is that this tibia this shin bone the proximal tibia still has a well defined growth plate line right here indicating that this individual is still growing and again comparing it to known reference samples you can use that to assign an agent to an individual home Lee trusted. The skeleton was that of a healthy young man who was about 20 years old when he died. The body had been buried in a coffin inside the fort, indicating that it would have been from the upper class.
A shroud in a shallow grave in the forest would have been sufficient for those of lower status, the way this was excavated is that we go down until we reach the skull, you assume it will be the highest in elevation and that will give you an idea of ​​where there is the rest of the body so you can slowly. We went down to these other pieces, so we literally excavated it, excavated it from head to toe. I remember it very vividly because as we were going down the leg and suddenly here was this musket ball in the bone.
Right at that moment I understood something about trauma. or how challenging it was to be in Jamestown because we would expect to find if the person was shot with arrowheads. I said, wait, you know, this is a European gun that killed this guy and it's different than the Indians having them if the states did it that way. 16:7 point, they are shooting at each other, whether accidentally or on purpose, there is real civil unrest going on, not sure if they think about the people who are starving, the rule change had lead shots all over this area of ​​the bone, but the largest piece in this round The ball was located right here.
This is one of the things about this round ball. They had cut him. Now the function of that may be to cause the bullet to break up on impact, but the mystery of Junior's death went beyond the actual gunshot. Further investigation of the body raised doubts about its origin - from all indications in the archaeological record it should be a very old burial, meaning it should be English - but one of the things we did was look at the bone from it. chemistry and when you do that it doesn't fit with an Englishman and that's the mystery juniors bone chemistry indicated that he had lived on a typically American diet, but bone chemistry changes as a person's tooth enamel grows, however, it only traps minerals when a person is young to determine with certainty where junior Bill Kelso sent a tooth to the University of Bradford in England, where an analysis would reveal details of the junior's childhood if the results showed he was raised in England.
Kelso could feel confident that he was indeed one of the first. Settlers, the reason to really look at a tooth is because tooth enamel is a very good archive, it preserves material consumed by the person or elements of the person's diet over a lifetime and some of those elements can tell us something about where it actually came from. person. where the person actually grew up their enamel is formed in early childhood unlike other tissues in the body like bone bone remodels and changes throughout their life their enamel once it is formed that's it, it's fixed it doesn't go to change obtain a sample of juvenile tooth The enamel was vaporized with a laser beam to release the oxygen isotope contained in the water he drank as a child.
These data were then compared with the results of a mass spectrometry test for the element strontium. Strontium levels reflect specific geological regions. so the two tests together would provide a detailed picture of where the man was from, the evidence was unambiguous, it is actually pointing to Cornwall which is by far the most likely place Jaya could have come from, so Despite initial questions about bone chemistry, Junior's most likely birth in England indicates that he probably arrived early, but the actual events of his death remain a mystery. Well, I think that the scientific techniques that are being discovered now will be an incredible help in discovering more about the past, but it is also true that the various evidence often disagrees, so we continue to generate more questions and answers, but ultimately I believe which will reveal a full story for now.
The only certainty is that Junior was murdered at point-blank range by a settler. weapon and as other finds are made at the fort, the question again shifts to the high mortality rate in the early years of the colony, while the archaeological evidence that has been found so far reinforces traditional theories about the causes of death, many questions remain unanswered, some of the symptoms described by the colonists simply cannot be explained with the usual explanations that the master scribe can access sick with a mad fever and, in view of the weakness of the company and the heat of the year , some have licked the blood that has fallen from their Companions, there were deadly swellings, skin peeling off the bodies, extreme weakness, sudden deaths, strange episodes of madness, not the typical symptoms of typhoid dysentery and hunger, Huell Price was being affected by extreme famine, but a furious and distracted mood came openly to the market blaspheming, exclaiming and shouting. that there was no God the descriptions were horrible and for an independent scientist they invoked global images of politics as well as local suffering dr.
Frank HancockHe traces his ancestry to early Virginia and his heritage has left him fascinated by the history of the Jamestown colony. In the early

17th

century

he was a flashpoint in international affairs at a time when Catholic Spain controlled most of the New World from South America throughout the

century

. He made his way north to Florida and claimed the rest of North America, but so did Protestant England. Jamestown, caught in the middle, became very important as a foothold for North America. England could become a dominant power if it could establish Jamestown. Those who came here first established it. a fort and found the shortest route to the South Seas and discovered any passage here, but he certainly reigned supreme not only in England but possibly globally as pathologist Frank Hancock has never been completely convinced of the traditional explanations for the deaths of the colonists, their suspicions were the first. raised by the sudden appearance of the strange symptoms, everything seemed fine until the time the original ships left to return to England and John Smith states that in about 10 days almost no one could stand or walk and this seems quite a change sudden in health. state that was quite surprising Hancock noted that all the incidents seemed to occur when help was out of reach and in a pattern of distinct episodes, which to him was not a typical disease or famine scenario, they seemed more like a deliberate epidemic that reviewed Historical records and applying his knowledge of pathology and medicine, Hancock came up with a surprising hypothesis: he believed there was evidence of poisoning at Jamestown.
I think this settled uneasily in my mind and then I began to reflect on epidemiological studies and how those studies often track sudden, episodic deaths. diseases to a single cause while I search my memory of some years of medical practice I began to think about an episode of poisoning and I began to think about what the common poisons would be and arsenic poisoning became a concept that seemed rational to me To see If his theory was possible, he began to compile a detailed list of all the symptoms mentioned by the colonists. Now these people are no longer alive, obviously, so they can't be interviewed and all he had were the writings of George Percy and the writings of John Smith, so I went.
I went back and read this and just wrote down any adjectives, any signs, any symptoms, any phrases that could be interpreted as a clinical sign or something. Hancock investigated the toxicity of arsenic and the symptoms of the other diseases mentioned in Jamestown, indeed, he discovered that, while typhoid fever and dysentery could explain some of the diseases, arsenic could explain them, all the lists coincided remarkably. Arsenic could have been responsible for explosive diarrhea and burning fevers, delusions and apparent psychosis. from the extreme weakness of the swelling and hungry appearance and from the bruising and sudden deaths, then, by pure coincidence, Hancock made another significant connection: a murder case in his own hometown brought to light a strange additional symptom of arsenic poisoning suffered by a local man poisoned by his girlfriend. chronic peeling of the skin before death Hancock recalled in the records that similar cases had been recorded in Jamestown.
The skin peeling episode occurred when a group of settlers were sent to what were known as the stark banks to live because the food supply was plentiful there and I described an episode where their skin peeled off and that was a unusual observation, so I looked in one of my general textbooks and exfoliated dermatitis was mentioned as one of the possible consequences of arsenic poisoning, just one more link between settlement and poison, but why arsenic? have been present in Jamestown in the early

17th

century poisoning was common in Europe essentially colorless and odorless arsenic was the poison of choice in aristocratic circles and was widely available at the time in the 17th century, I understand there were two commercial uses of the arsenic One of the uses of the deposit was that women would use arsenic and carry it in a small object on their body so that a small sample could be used to induce paleness because paleness was desired at that time but there were no women in Jamestown and so there is no need for these cosmetic vials its second use however as a pesticide known as rat pain would have justified its presence rat pain would have been an agent that would have been on board a ship and rat pain according to modern dictionaries is trioxide of arsenic John Smith's records indicate that rat pain was present in the colony, but was there a plot to use it on the colonists?
Frank Hancock believes that both domestic conflict and international political posturing could have given rise to such a plan, but others are not so easily convinced of the theory. that there was a conspiracy of someone who deliberately poisoned people in Jamestown to me, well it's possible, it's not probable, I don't see enough evidence, it says that's K. In the case, there were many ways to die here other than that, I mean there. was everything else, you think it's a pretty dumb suggestion, but then, the CIA and my five have done some pretty crazy things too, but it actually could have happened, it really could have happened, because when the English went to have a conference of peace with the king of Chesapeake, the doctor prepared poisoned beer and as a result 200 Indians were poisoned, 30 the head of his family and all his people, for what could have happened.
This horrible poisoning of the Indians occurred in 1623, long after the initial difficulties, but it does indicate that the colonists were not above using poison and that they had the knowledge to do so. Additionally, Hancock was finding evidence that at the time the first settlers arrived in Jamestown, many other vessels of poison were being incubated in Europe. some interesting personal connections between these old world and colonial schemes. I put aside the medical issues and start re-reading the general history and then that takes you back to England where you have to consider English domestic politics and see how internal divisions England or interacting with Spain, the main political conflict in England at that time was between Protestants and Catholics;
Only 70 years had passed since King Henry VIII broke away from the Vatican and founded the Anglican Church. In the years that followed, both sides made a habit of persecuting the other England was officially Protestant, but the Catholic faction was still strong and was often assumed to be allied with Catholic Spain, whose military power was financed by New World gold. . Accusations of treason were common. Everyone thought that there was a Spaniard under control. Hancock began theorizing that one of the Jamestown settlers may have been Catholic and part of an English or English family. Spanish plan to destroy the Protestant colony.
This traitor could have quietly poisoned the city's food supply even though Jamestown has always been considered a Protestant colony. Recently discovered artifacts show evidence that Catholics were present. We have found some artifacts that reflect Catholic iconography and it has been quite surprising, I mean we were a little surprised with pieces of rosaries, some crucifixes and religious medallions that showed the Immaculate Conception and that kind of thing is not what you think of when you imagine to the Anglican Jamestown as if the internal conflict in the colony had intensified suspicions. in fact, Captain George Kendal, one of the settlement's most capable officers, was accused of being a Spanish spy and executed.
The fact that they did that suggests that this level of paranoia must have been very high indeed because you wouldn't throw away one of your best men because you think he may be spying. Perhaps the bullet in Junior's leg was further evidence of this paranoia. Either way, Hancock believes he has evidence to prove that a plot at Jamestown would have been planned from Europe. He might even have been involved in one of the other plots to overthrow the Protestants just a year earlier in one of the most famous terrorist incidents in British history Catholics had attempted to blow up the British Parliament the conspiracy was known as the Gunpowder Plot and its leader was a Catholic named Guy Fawkes, he was arrested on November 5, 1605, a few minutes before the explosion occurred and to this day the British light fireworks on the anniversary of his execution before he was murdered, without However, Fox mentioned several of his associates among them. was a shady character called Baron Thomas Arendelle Arendelle was a fervent Catholic and a notorious conspirator interested in chemistry Thomas Arundel was a fanatical Catholic is the story of this family for over 150 years who were militant Catholics in many ways were disloyal but their goal was to achieve freedom of religion so that Catholics could worship freely in England.
Arendelle fought for freedom in England but he also had a fervent desire to establish a Catholic colony in the New World, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your life. womb jesus holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen at the moment when he thought that there was a possibility that a catholic agreement approved iron law would provide the funds for a ship called the Archangel to leave the coast of Maine and northern Maryland on a reconnaissance expedition and was a great success, but the following year, when the adventure in Virginia was organized, Catholics like Arendelle were effectively sidelined only a year later had another chance to lead an expedition. to the new world but his lack of money and his refusal to swear allegiance to the Protestant Church destroyed his chances.
He was reputed to be captain of an expedition that would include 500 English Catholic soldiers and 500 Irish and they would go to the northern area and colonize it and then everything fell apart again, he couldn't get a patent from the king and he was furious and that's when he really decided to do everything he could to destroy Virginia, in fact, just a few months after the settlers arrived at Jamestown, one of Arendelle's. His associates were arrested on their way to Spain with intention, as it is believed that he betrayed his friends and shows that the Spanish and the media had to defeat this Virginia attempt even more damning.
The only surviving sketch of the Jamestown fort that reveals its exact location on the James River is one found with the papers of Don Pedro de Zuñiga, the Spanish ambassador in London, also in the Spanish archives was a letter from the ambassador to King Philip. III of Spain which described Arendelle's desire to take revenge on the British, according to Zúñiga, Arendelle had offered to leave England. false capture by the Spanish to later take them to the Jamestown colony, the truth is that they have not sent him because it is suspected that he is Catholic, he is actively dissatisfied and has told me that he will perform an extraordinary service in this regard.
This metal baron, Thomas Arendelle, is informed by the ambassador in Zúñiga that he would offer his services to Spain and that he would come to America and show them what it means how to establish Jamestown without resorting to weapons, for one reason or another, the plan did not came to fruition. fruition perhaps at that moment he thinks Hancock devised a more subtle plan. It would not be the first time that Arendelle and his acquaintances had used poison. One of his associates, John Stanley, who came from Spain, was arrested in the and confessed that he was going to spread a poisonous perfume. around Queen Elizabeth and would kill her, the rest of the other person actually put poison all over the pommel of his horse and on an earlier occasion, when Arendelle was arrested for organizing a clandestine international meeting, a telling reference to poisoning was found Among his In the newspapers there are references in his past to having been interested in how to pause in the air to infect the entire camp.
Hancock believes this to be a clear reference to a Catholic plot to quietly poison the Protestant colony. Such an enterprise would have been extremely beneficial to the Spanish, it would have given them the opportunity to prevent British expansion into the New World without the need for a costly military expedition to Arendelle; he would have exacted the sweet revenge he felt he deserved and there are ample indications that he was not above conspiracy, but back to the present, can Hancock really confirm the use of poison in the colony without it? His theory can never be proven. Unfortunately, the only sure test for arsenic poisoning requires soft tissue, hair, or nails, and all of those Jamestown remains have long since been converted.
However, Hancock is able to obtain some human bone samples from the early settlement and asks his colleaguetoxicologist Richard to analyze them for any traces of the poison. The chances of finding traces of arsenic and bones are slim, especially after 400 years. but when the samples are analyzed in a plasma mass spectrometer, the computer readout reveals definite traces of heavy metals, including arsenic, designated as s, essentially what we got was a small presence of these metals and the level was in the lower parts per million range. The results are tempting but not conclusive since at these levels the bones could have been contaminated by the soil after being buried.
However, to Hancock it is forensic evidence that his theory could be correct and gives him the incentive to continue examining the records for more clues. conspiracy and, although it has not been adopted by other experts in the field, it makes sense in the context of the time. For Hancock, international politics, religious turmoil, and personal vendettas may have played their part in the Jamestown tragedy and He is still convinced that one day his theory will be accepted as truth. I think the circumstantial evidence seems somewhat convincing and I think the available literature and writings of that time need to be reread and re-evaluated from this point of view.
I think the possibility of sabotage. in Jamestown, both politically and physically is quite strong and I suspect that events will be proven by now, the weight of evidence still supports a less radical view that the settlers succumbed to a crushing combination of local conflicts, natural disasters and devastating diseases. The bad thing is that after the famine of 1610, the few remaining survivors left the colony in search of a more hospitable sight, but as they left they were met by a new fleet from England and persuaded to return from the ruins. A new beginning was made in The Settler of 1613, John Rolfe, who later married the legendary Pocahontas, grew a sweet variety of tobacco that became the financial savior of the colony.
From that point on, the troubled settlement slowly revived nearly 400 years after the founding of Jamestown. The site is beginning to reveal itself. Their

secrets

and the reality of what these early settlers endured will finally come to light next time New forensics on an ancient African battlefield British colonial suffered a staggering loss and claimed to have been brutally outnumbered by thirsty Slavic tricksters not blood, now the evidence reveals sophisticated techniques and tactics that led to a zulu victory a re-examination of the day of the zulus as lee uncovers

secrets

of the dead we open investigations of the past on pbs online history reveals its forgotten secrets on pbs. org

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