Smith, about Michaelmas (September 29), departed for England or, as all contemporary accounts other than his own state, was sent thither “to answer some misdemeanors.”[237] These were doubtless of a venial character; but the important services of Smith in the sustenance of the colony appear not to have been as highly esteemed by the Company as by Smith himself. He complains that his several petitions for reward were disregarded, and he never returned to Virginia. Modern investigation has discredited many of the so-long-accepted narratives in which he records his own achievements and judges so harshly the motives and conduct of all others of his companions; and the glamour of romance with which he invested his own exploits has been somewhat dissipated. But whatever may have been the fervor of his imagination as a historian, it was more than equalled by his fertility of resource in vital emergencies, and there is ample evidence that his services in the preservation of the infant colony were momentous. After his return to England but little is recorded of him until the year 1614, during which he made a successful voyage to New England, under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, which gained for him the title of Admiral of New England.[238] Whatever may have been the defects of Smith, the greatness of his deeds has impressed him enduringly on the pages of history as one of the most prominent figures of his period. At the time of his departure for England he left at Jamestown three ships, seven boats, a good stock of provisions, nearly five hundred settlers, twenty pieces of cannon, three hundred guns, with fishing-nets, working-tools, horses, cattle, swine, etc.