land to contribute. In November the
Company published _A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in
Virginia_ for the purpose of refuting "scandalous reports" tending to
discourage subscriptions. Richard Rich presented, probably at the
suggestion of the adventurers, his _Newes from Virginia, the Lost
Flocke Triumphant_, a poem celebrating the shipwreck of the _Sea
Adventure_ and the providential survival of its passengers. And to this
Silvanus Jourdan added his _Discovery of the Barmudas_, a pamphlet
recounting the experience of Somers and his colleagues in the islands.
It was written, declared the author, "for the love of my country; and
... the good of the plantation in Virginia."

It is not so remarkable that the adventurers failed to achieve their
goal of L30,000 as that they actually secured the subscription of
approximately L18,000 by the spring of 1611. The records of the company
are so incomplete for any time prior to 1619, when the only surviving
court minutes have their beginning, that it is impossible to give the
comparative figures one would like to have. But there is evidence
suggesting that the fund raised in 1609 may not have been larger than
L10,000. If this be true, the success of this second campaign for funds
becomes all the more remarkable. One can hardly explain it in terms of
the ordinary calculations of a business community. Perhaps the
adventurers believed their own propaganda, were themselves responsive
to the kind of patriotic appeal that was made in the spring of 1610,
when they were trying to get Lord De la Warr's expedition ready. "The
eyes of all Europe," said the adventurers, "are looking upon our
endeavours to spread the Gospell among the heathen people of Virginia,
to plant an English nation there, and to settle a trade in those parts,
which may be peculiar to our nation, to the end we may thereby be
secured from being eaten out of all profits of trade by our more
industrious neighbors."

With the new funds, the adventurers equipped two expeditions which
sailed for Virginia in the spring of 1611. The first to leave carried
300 men, in three ships, under the command of Sir Thomas Dale, another
veteran of the Netherlands fighting who had been commissioned as
marshal of the colony. It was impossible not to be impressed by the
evidence that a lack of discipline had contributed to the colony's
woes, and Dale, who sailed in March, undoubtedly was intended to draw
upon his experience as