James Fort

The replica of the original Jamestown Fort that we also visited on Monday was really fantastic!! The children had so much fun. It was very hands on, with lots of activities they could do to help them understand that time period. Here is the main gate to the fort.

Virtually all of the gardens/fields were located outside the walls of the fort, so it was easy to imagine how horrific the winter of 1609/1610 was (known as "the starving time"). Of 500 colonists inside the fort at the beginning of winter, only 60 survived.

All the children had fun trying on armor. Here are L and G,

2 year old A,

and 5 year old C.

C also tried his hand at carrying water. There was really water in both buckets and it was very heavy!!

I was fascinated by this fence around a small garden inside the fort. Not only were the nails wooden (of course) but they were hammered in at an angle to prevent them from pulling out too easily.

8 year old G and 7 year old L had a lot of fun pretending to fire off the cannons!

My husband preached a sermonette of fire and brimstone. The church was the largest building inside the fort.

Learning about the matchlock gun was really cool. I didn't realize before that it was called a matchlock gun because each shot had to literally be lit with a match. They would keep a lit rope in their left hand which burned down about 6 inches per hour, and accidents were fairly common.

Here is a colonist's bed, with the tick mattress pulled back to show the roping. I was going to lie on the bed to test how comfortable or uncomfortable it was, but every time I moved the tick mattress just a smidgeon, clouds of dust would come out of it and I decided I didn't really need to know what the bed felt like!

This is the armory, the walls were covered with different types of weapons, armor, and ammumition.

Just a short walk from the fort is a dock where replicas of the 3 ships that carried the original Jamestown colonists were tied up. This is the biggest one, the Susan B Constant. Even though it was the biggest of the 3, it was not that big. 73 of the original 104 colonists crammed into this ship. It was amazing to think of them enduring the 5 month voyage in such cramped quarters, with yucky water and bread filled with weavils. And the smell! Can you imagine what it would smell like to have 73 sweaty, hardworking men living in close quarters with no bathing facilities? Ewwwww.

Our daughter G lying on the captain's bunk. It was the largest single living space on the ship, but Captain Newport was either very short or he couldn't stretch out full length on the bed!

G and L waving from the bow of the Discovery. The Discovery was the smallest of the 3 ships, and it looked to me like a glorified rowboat.