<P> The Starving Time at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was a period of starvation during the winter of 1609--1610 . There were about 500 Jamestown residents at the beginning of the winter . However, there were only 60 people still alive when the spring arrived . </P> <P> The colonists, the first group of whom had originally arrived at Jamestown on May 13, 1607, had never planned to grow all of their own food . Their plans depended upon trade with the local Powhatan to supply them with food between the arrivals of periodic supply ships from England . Lack of access to water and a relatively dry rain season crippled the agricultural production of the colonists . Also, the water that the colonists drank was brackish and potable for only half of the year . A fleet from England, damaged by a hurricane, arrived months behind schedule with new colonists, but without expected food supplies . </P> <P> On June 7, 1610, the survivors boarded ships, abandoned the colony site, and sailed towards the Chesapeake Bay, where another supply convoy with new supplies and headed by a newly appointed governor Francis West, intercepted them on the lower James River and returned them to Jamestown . Within a few years, the commercialization of tobacco by John Rolfe secured the settlement's long - term economic prosperity . </P>

Why did many of the early settlers of jamestown starve to death
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