The Starving Time

The Jamestown settlers imagined life in the New World would be flowing with abundance, but things were not as they expected. Not only were they agriculturally inexperienced, but they had bad luck negotiating with the natives and faced delays of their food shipments from England. In “The Starving Time,” Captain John Smith recounts the bleak conditions of the winter of 1609-10, including tales of people so desperate they resorted to cannibalism. It was a time of starvation indeed—of the colony’s 500 residents, only 60 lived till spring.