On the twenty-third day of May, 1610, the party which had been wrecked on the Bermudas sailed into the James in two vessels which they had constructed with infinite labor. Sixty emaciated creatures, little more than skeletons and hardly better than idiots, crawled out to greet the arrivals, whose coming was barely in time to save the lives of this pitiful remnant of the colony which Smith had left at Jamestown. That place was reduced to ruins. Many of the buildings had been torn to pieces and great gaps yawned in the palisades. So dismal was the picture and so fearful the stories of the ragged wretches who represented the prosperous colonists the newcomers had expected to meet, that Somers and Gates determined to return to England and abandon the settlement. The sixty starving and half demented men were taken on board the ships, which set sail down the river. The exultant savages who stood upon the banks congratulated themselves that once more the white intruder was forced to leave their land. But a strange incident suddenly turned the tide of affairs. The departing ships no sooner cleared the mouth of the river than they perceived three vessels approaching and flying the flag of England. They proved to be reinforcements under Lord Delaware who had come out as Governor of Virginia. Somers and Gates of course put about and returned to Jamestown. The conditions of affairs quickly changed. Lord Delaware, though not a man of equal force of character and resource with Captain Smith, was nevertheless one of sound judgment and considerable energy. He had an ample supply to tide over a year and, together with Somers’s men, who had thrived on the food and climate of the Bermudas, several hundred strong and healthy colonists. He set them to work repairing the fortifications and buildings, tilling the fields, and performing other useful labors. Rule and order were established and strictly maintained. Smith’s policy of firm but just dealing with the Indians was resumed and they ceased to give trouble. Thus, when sickness compelled Lord Delaware to return to England in the following March, he left Jamestown thoroughly resuscitated and on the highroad to prosperity. On the way home, the retiring governor passed Sir Thomas Dale coming to the colony with three ships and a full year’s supplies. If he did not make much progress, Dale at least preserved the advance which had been effected by Delaware until, at the beginning of August, Gates’s return as Governor marked the inception of a new era for Virginia.