He instilled greater discipline among the settlers, enforcing the rule "He who will not work shall not eat." Under Smith's guiding hand, the colony made progress: The settlers dug the first well, planted crops and began repairing the fort that had burned down the previous winter.
Virginians know that Captain John Smith was vital to the survival of Jamestown in its early years. They can quote his order: “He that will not worke, shall not eate.” But few know that Smith's adventures started years before Jamestown.
He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England.
Captain John Smith was a soldier and writer who is best known for his role in establishing the Virginia colony at Jamestown, England's first permanent colony in North America. A farmer's son, Smith was a soldier of fortune in Europe before he joined the Virginia Company of London expedition of 1606–1607.
Captain John Smith has become a mythic hero in American history, largely because of the myths he himself created. Smith promoted the Virginia Company's interests in the New World and he provided the leadership necessary to save the colonists during the early years of the settlement.
Smith grew up on his family's farm and was apprenticed in his teens to a wealthy merchant. At age 16 or 17 his adventuresome spirit found an outlet on the battlefields of continental Europe, where he fought for the Netherlands in its war of independence from Spain.
He began to run things long before he officially received his post, leading the settlers through struggles against disease, starvation, and frequent raids upon the settlement by the Native American tribes. A brash figure with a bold self-confidence, Smith brought his soldiering experience to Virginia.
Myth 4: Pocahontas and Smith fell in love.
Despite what Disney (and numerous authors going back to the early 1800s) would have you believe, there is no historical basis for the claim that Pocahontas and Smith were romantically involved.
The first time Pocahontas met John Smith was in December 1607, when she was about 11 years old. Smith had been captured and brought before her father in his town at Werowocomoco on the northern side of the York River.
So, when Captain John Smith – a member of the Jamestown colony – voyaged throughout the Chesapeake Bay, his primary goals were to discover precious metals and the Northwest Passage. He also set about mapping the area, learning about Indigenous peoples, and claiming land for the English crown.
Captain John Smith was an English explorer who played a pivotal role in settling America. His contact with native tribes and his Chesapeake Bay voyages, documented in maps and journals, helped early English colonists learn about the region that became their new home.
While we cannot know for sure how he spent his final moments, it is known that Captain Edward Smith perished in the North Atlantic along with 1517 others on April 15, 1912. His body was never recovered.
An early advocate of tough love, John Smith is remembered for his strict leadership and for saving the settlement from starvation.
Captain John Smith rebranded the area “New England” in a map he made in 1614. He and the other colonial settlers renamed rivers and villages to claim the land for themselves and erase Native people from their homelands.
Pocahontas married John Rolfe, not John Smith.
When Jamestown's founders arrived, Pocahontas was only 10 or 11 years old. She ended up marrying John Rolfe, who started growing tobacco in 1613 and introduced the first successful crop of the New World expedition.
The marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe in 1614 changed the demographics of Virginia residents. Their only child, Thomas Rolfe, was the first descendent in a line that now spans over seven generations.
In reality, Pocahontas too young for romance when she met Smith, and she didn't prevent his death. The pair did have a relationship, but it was possibly more like brother and sister and political in nature, according to historian David Silverman of George Washington University.
He forced the Patawomekes, the people who had sheltered Henry Spelman after he left Orapax, to trick her into going on to his ship and sailed away with her, so 14-year-old Pocahontas returned to Jamestown as a prisoner.
John Smith is generally regarded to have been a very successful leader, and in fact is often credited with helping to save Jamestown from collapsing...
The sweetest honor came from Prince Zsigmond Báthory of Transylvania, who granted Smith the right to wear "three Turkish heads" on his shield and bestowed on him the title of "English gentleman." John Smith had succeeded in exchanging "farmer" for "gentleman" by the swing of his sword.
In 1612, John Rolfe, one of many shipwrecked on Bermuda, helped turn the settlement into a profitable venture. He introduced a new strain of tobacco from seeds he brought from elsewhere. Tobacco became the long awaited cash crop for the Virginia Company, who wanted to make money off their investment in Jamestown.
She was instrumental to maintaining relations between her father and the Jamestown colonists and is believed to be the first Powhatan Indian to convert to Christianity. She is remembered as a courageous, strong woman who left an indelible impression on colonial America.
John Smith remained committed to the interests of the common man throughout his efforts in Jamestown. This character trait and well as his impulsiveness and temper outbursts weakened him in the eyes of the Virginia Company. Unfortunately, this shortened his time as a leader for the settlers.
On the international stage, Smith rolled to a 100-5 career record that included six world championships (1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992), two Olympic gold medals (1988 and 1992), two Pan American Games gold medals (1987 and 1991) and two Goodwill Games gold medals (1986 and 1990).