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Re: Paddling Notes
I couldn't help but think of paddling in 2020 the other day when I ran across Joseph Kelly's description of the colonists who deserted Jamestown in his book Marooned:
But we should not forget [the deserters]. Their rebellion, such as it was, might not have amounted to much of a political act. Probably it was a simple calculation of self-preservation. They could stay in Jamestown under the tyranny of Percy, where they would almost certainly die, or they could flee to the Indians. Nevertheless, that so many did flee "civilization" and found refuge among those whom Perry called "savages" indicates that they were changed. They were no longer the same Englishmen and Englishwomen who had set out from London but a year earlier. The trauma of Jamestown, like the experience of shipwreck in Bermuda, was transformative, especially for those who arrived on the Third Supply. When they sailed from London, they knew they were going toward a wilderness, but none could have fully understood what that meant. As they watched people die, one after another, from starvation - as they buried the dead, turning from the fresh graves, feeling the constant pain of an empty stomach - they could not help but feel abandoned. No help was coming from England. For all intents and purposes, they were lost. The ties that bound them to their old lives, their old habits of duty and loyalty and even citizenship, had come unwound. They were stripped bare. Their old world was irretrievable. The Company had no regard for their welfare. As so many later put it, under the Company's regime it as "as if they had been slaves!" Their contract had been a sham. They had been tricked into coming to Virginia. Some died in earthen holes. Some waited in their beds to die. Others took their lives into their own hands. In a willful act of self-creation, they ran away (387-388).
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Originally Posted by SeanEasley
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