Island. Under orders the departing ships tacked about and sailed back to the old place of settlement, and, in the evening of June 8th, 1610, the colonists again took possession of their forlorn habitations.
Forts Henry and Charles
Not long after their return, a white man named Humphrey Blunt, who had strayed off to himself, was killed by some Kecoughtan Indians, near the point on James River which bears his name. To punish the murderers Sir Thomas Gates took a squad of men, and on July 9th, 1610, drove the werowance Pochins and his tribe away from their village; and built near the shore two stockades, called Forts Henry and Charles, “a musket shot apart from one another.” William Box, one of the first settlers, described these small defences as named in honor of “our most noble Prince (Henry), and his hopeful brother (Charles).” “They stand upon a pleasant plaine, and neare a little Revilet they called Southampton River; in a wholsom aire, having plentie of Springs of sweet water; they command a great circuit of ground, containing wood, pasture and marsh, with apt places for vines, corne, and Gardens; in which Fort it is resolved, that all those that come out of England, shall be at their first landing quartered, that the wearisomnesse of the Sea may be refreshed in this pleasing part of the county.” In this opinion of the attractiveness of Kecoughtan, William Strachey, Gate's Secretary concurred: “It is an ample and faire countrie indeed ****** and is a delicate and necessary seate for a citty or chief fortification.”
Southampton River, now known as Hampton River, was named in honor of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, President of the Virginia Company of London from 1620 to 1625, and his name was also given to the splendid body of water into which the rivulet entered “Southampton (Hampton) Roads.” In the autumn following (1610) Delaware withdrew the guards at these two forts, and sent the men on a fruitless expedition to the falls of James River to search for gold, but after his depaurture in 1611, from Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale restored the settlement.
Fort Henry probably occupied the site of the Kecough-
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