Their agent in residence was as usual vested with public authority over the dwellers on the domain, limited only by the control of the Virginia government in military matters and in judicial cases on appeal.[5] After delays from bad weather, the initial expedition set sail in September comprising John Woodleaf as captain and thirty-four other men of diverse trades bound to service for terms ranging from three to eight years at varying rates of compensation.  Several of these were designated respectively as officers of the guard, keeper of the stores, caretaker of arms and implements, usher of the hall, and clerk of the kitchen.  Supplies of provisions and equipment were carried, and instructions in detail for the building of houses, the fencing of land, the keeping of watch, and the observances of religion.  Next spring the settlement, which had been planted near the mouth of the Appomattox River, was joined by Thorpe himself, and in the following autumn by William Tracy who had entered the partnership and now carried his own family together with a preacher and some forty servants.  Among these were nine women and the two children of a man who had gone over the year before.  As giving light upon indented servitude in the period it may be noted that many of those sent to Berkeley Hundred were described as “gentlemen,” and that five of them within the first year besought their masters to send them each two indented servants for their use and at their expense.  Tracy’s vessel however was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send.  It was in fact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve of sailing:  “I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upper extre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye mareners hath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we will trust to marsi for he must help be yond hope.”  Fair winds appear to have carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took charge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had given dissatisfaction.  Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; but it may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of its inhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622.  The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, but eventually the land was sold to other persons.

[Footnote 4:  Records of the Virginia Company of London, Kingsbury ed.  (Washington, 1906), I, 350.]

[Footnote 5:  The records of this enterprise (the Smyth of Nibley papers) have been printed in the New York Public Library Bulletin, III, 160-171, 208-233, 248-258, 276-295.]