(The Starving Time..) at Jamestown in the English Colony of Virginia was a period of forced starvation initiated by the Powhatan Confederacy to remove the English from Virginia. The campaign killed all but 60 of 601 colonists during the winter of 1609-1610. The colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived at Jamestown on May 14, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food. Instead, their plans depended upon trade with the local American Indian Powhatan Confederacy to supply them with food between the arrival of periodic supply ships from England. However, the efforts by anti-English, leaders amongst the Powhatan Confederacy succeeded in isolating the tenuous English colony. Additionally, lack of access to water and a relatively dry rain season crippled the agricultural production of the colonists. After Captain John Smith's return to England in October 1609, the Powhatan placed the colony completely under siege and attempted to end the English settlement through starvation. A fleet from England, damaged by a hurricane, arrived months behind schedule with new colonists, but without expected food supplies. On June 7, 1610 the survivors boarded ships, abandoned the colony site, and sailed towards the Chesapeake Bay. However, another supply convoy with new supplies and headed by a newly-appointed governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, intercepted the colonists 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.
