The settlements of the Plymouth Company were unsuccessful. The London Company had six hundred fifty-nine members, many of whom were knights, aristocrats and gentlemen of learning as well as the usual merchant and middle class citizens. In general, there were two groups of stockholders: the adventurers who purchased the stock but remained in England, and the planters who personally established the colony and then lived in it. Although the company was primarily organized for profit making, it was also expected to help the mother country, England, by supplying her with products which she herself could not produce. Some of the colonists sincerely desired to acquaint and convert the Indians to Christianity. The leader of the London Company organization was Bartholomew Gosnold and his chief associates were Edward Maria Wingfield, a rich merchant, Robert Hunt, a clergyman, George Percy, a poet and scholar, and John Smith, a versatile individual. On December 6, 1606, the London Company dispatched three ships from Blackwell, London, England: the Sarah Constant (or Susan Constant), captained by Sir Christopher Newport, the Admiral of the fleet; the Goodspeed (or Godspeed), captained by Bartholomew Gosnold; and the Discovery (or Discoverer), captained by John Ratcliffe. These ships carried one hundred twenty passengers, men and boys, only sixteen of whom died on the long journey to Virginia. This is a very small number lost when one considers the size and type of ships used, the extremely long voyage which lasted approximately four months, over the Atlantic Ocean at its greatest width, the lack of proper food and drinking water and the severe storm which the fleet encountered off the Florida coast. This storm blew them off their intended course to two capes which appeared guarding a huge bay. The settlers sighted these capes on Sunday, May 6, 1607 and named them Cape Henry for Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I, and Cape Charles for Charles, the Duke of York, another son of James I. The bay was Chesapeake Bay, so-named by the Indians. They sailed up a river tributary, called Powhatan by the Indians, to the bay and then to a peninsula located about fifty miles above its mouth. This site is believed to have been chosen because the water was deep enough to allow the ships to dock close to the shore and because a peninsula could be comparatively easily defended against Indian attacks. Here the settlers landed on May 24, 1607 and established the first permanent English settlement in America. They called the settlement Jamestown in honor of their King, James I, and called the river on which they had traveled the James River. There, the minister, Parson Robert Hunt, standing under a ship's canvas sail stretched between four trees, led a thanksgiving service to God on behalf of all the passengers for their safe arrival in America. He also had the privilege of celebrating the first Holy Communion in America. Thus,