NPS image
Jamestown settlers build boats in this sketch by NPS artist Sydney King.
English valued the colony’s plentiful supply of raw materials. As one 17th-century colonist reported, “Virginia yielding no known place in the known world for timbers of all sorts, commodious for strength, pleasant for sweetness, specious for colors, spacious for largeness, useful for land and sea, for housing and shipping.” England, timber-poor, was delighted by this boost to her all-important naval stores.