Not having sufficient stores set aside, not able to deal with the natives, and without the use of the resources of the countryside, there is small wonder that conditions became serious, even desperate, for the settlers. Those few men fortified on Hampton Roads under Capt. James Davis (after Captain West, perhaps under threat from the crew, left Virginia for England in the colony’s best ship) fared far better than did those at Jamestown. Even the coming of spring failed to restore full hope and vitality to the survivors, yet certainly it must have been good to know that winter was over. VIRGINIA ALMOST ABANDONED. In May 1610, the hearts of the weary settlers were gladdened when Sir Thomas Gates, their new governor, sailed into the James. For about a year he and the survivors of the wreck of the _Sea Venture_ had labored in Bermuda to make possible the continuation of their voyage to Virginia. The last part of the journey was made in two boats built by them in Bermuda—the _Patience_ and the _Deliverance_, names suggestive of their thankfulness for survival. It was not a pleasant sight that greeted them at Jamestown. Ruin and desolation were everywhere. Gates, with his Council, on July 7, 1610, wrote that Jamestown seemed raither as the ruins of some auntient [for]tification, then that any people living might now inhabit it: the pallisadoes he found tourne downe, the portes open, the gates from the hinges, the church ruined and unfrequented, empty howses (whose owners untimely death had taken newly from them) rent up and burnt, the living not hable, as they pretended, to step into the woodes to gather other fire-wood; and, it is true, the _Indian as fast killing without as the famine and pestilence within_. Gates promptly distributed provisions, such as he had, and introduced a code of martial law, the code that was strengthened later by Delaware and made famous by its strict enforcement under the governorship of Sir Thomas Dale. After surveying the condition of the settlement and realizing that the supplies he had brought would not last 3 weeks, Gates took council with the leaders. They decided to abandon the settlement. On June 7, 1610, the settlers, except some of the Poles and Dutchmen who were with Powhatan, boarded the ship, left Jamestown, and started down the James. The next morning, while still in the river, advance word reached Gates that Lord Delaware had arrived at Point Comfort on the way to Jamestown and was bringing 150 settlers and a generous supply. The bad news carried to England by the returning ships of the third supply, late in 1609, had caused considerable stir in Virginia Company circles and had resulted in Delaware’s decision to go to Virginia. Learning of the new supply, Gates hastened back to Jamestown. The new settlement had been saved in a manner that was recognized at that time as an act of “Providence.” LORD DELAWARE REACHES JAMESTOWN.