In 1606 King James of England granted a charter to Sir Thomas Gates and others authorizing settlements in the New World. In 1609 this charter was revised and enlarged, granting the privileges to a joint-stock company. Among the merchants, knights, and gentlemen holding shares in the company and among those particularly interested in the more southerly areas of North America, including Virginia, were a number of physicians. The instructions given to the first settlers reflect the general concern of the London Company for the health of the colony and perhaps the particular interest of the physicians. One of the physicians, John Woodall, took especial care to urge that cattle be sent to provide the settlers with the milk he considered essential to their health. Not only did the Company wish to lessen the dangers of disease in the New World, but it also urged colonization as a means of reducing the plague in England. In 1609 the Company advised municipal authorities in London to remove the excess population of that great city to Virginia as the surplus was thought to be a cause of the plague. There was little danger of a surplus population during the initial years in Virginia. Before the colonists, or the Company, however, had to be concerned with dangers from disease in Virginia, the colonists had to undertake an extremely difficult and unhealthy voyage across the Atlantic. DISEASE AND THE OCEAN VOYAGE Ships plying the Atlantic at the beginning of the seventeenth century were small and the voyage was lengthy. Four months passed before the _Godspeed_, the _Discovery_, and the _Susan Constant_, carrying the first permanent settlers to Jamestown, sighted the two capes at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in April, 1607. Although these small ships carrying the first permanent settlers had a stopover in the West Indies for rest and replenishment, there had been debilitating months at sea and more than 100 emigrants to provide for in addition to the crews. With limited cargo and passenger space, water and food supplies could hardly satisfy the demand created by a hundred persons at sea for hundreds of days. Several of the emigrants died on the first voyage and the remainder disembarked poorly prepared for the new tests their constitutions would soon endure. The sea voyage of these first settlers probably exacted no heavier a death toll and caused no more suffering because the ships went by way of the Canaries and the West Indies instead of by the more northerly route by-passing the islands. A contemporary described the advantages thought to be had from the stopover in the West Indies (at the island of Nevis): We came to a bath standing in a valley betwixt two hills, where wee bathed ourselves.... Finding this place to be so convenient for our men to avoid diseases which will breed in so long a voyage, wee incamped our selves on this ile sixe dayes, and spent none of our ships victuall.