nd approximately where their land
would lie for three full years. Whether for these or for other reasons,
Bermuda grew while Virginia languished. By 1616 over 600 colonists had
reached the Somers Islands, where most of them survived. In contrast,
Virginia had that year 350 people.

The Bermuda subscribers had been separately incorporated as the Somers
Island Company with its own royal charter in 1615. Indeed, ever since
1612, when the Bermuda adventurers helped to relieve the financial
embarrassment of the Virginia Company by paying L2,000 for its newly
acquired title to Bermuda, the Somers Island adventurers seem to have
functioned increasingly as a separate corporation. But the membership
of the two companies was much the same. It had been the more active and
interested of the Virginia adventurers who subscribed to the Bermuda
joint-stock in 1612, and for twelve years thereafter the active
membership of the Virginia Company came so close to duplicating the
membership of the Bermuda Company that the two bodies often met
virtually as one. Until 1619 Sir Thomas Smith served as governor of
both companies.

The growing interest of the London adventurers after 1612 in the
colonization of Bermuda did not mean that Virginia was wholly
neglected. Funds secured from the lottery and from suits against
delinquent subscribers were enough to keep the project alive. In 1612
the adventurers even sent out a stock of silkworms for a test of silk
production. Needless to say, returning ships brought back no silk; nor
did they bring sugar or wine. Lumber, including the valuable black
walnut, seems to have provided the chief cargo for return voyages. A
shipment of tobacco, Virginia's first, in 1614 gave some ground for
arguing that the agricultural experimentation to which the colonists
had been committed for several years now would pay off eventually. So
argued Sir Thomas Gates on his return home this same year after three
years of service in the colony, but the fact that he had come back
from Virginia apparently made more of an impression than did his
argument. Others also came home, their contracted term of service
ended, and rarely did they bring any news from Virginia which added
good to its name. Instead, they talked of the severe discipline under
which they had been forced to live, and made sport of the too hopeful
propaganda which had first persuaded them to become adventurers in
Virginia. The discipline, chiefly associated with