Captain Barwick and his men settled in Jamestown. At first they were employed in building houses for themselves and afterward began to build shallops, the most convenient and satisfactory vessels, for transporting tobacco to the large ships. Soon several of the men were ill, from malaria it was thought, and by the end of the year many of them had died. A letter from George Sandys, in March, to Deputy Treasurer Ferrar, sent by the ship _Hopewell_, told the discouraging news. He deplored the failure of the shipbuilding project caused by the death of Captain Barwick and many of his shipbuilders, "wherein if you blame us, you must blame the hand of God." He attributed the pestilent fever that raged in the colony to the infected people that came over in the _Abigail_, "who were poisened with stinking beer, all falling sick and many dying, everywhere dispersing the contagion." Not only the shipbuilders, but almost all the passengers of the _Abigail_, died immediately, upon their landing. The contagion even spread to the cattle and other domestic animals, it was said. On March 31, 1626, Thomas Munn (?) came before the Council and the General Court of Virginia and swore that he was at the making of a small shallop, by direction of Captain Barwick, and that afterward this boat was sold to Captain William Eppes, for two hundred pounds of tobacco, and "as yet the debt is not satisfied unto any man." Upon the death of Captain Barwick, Munn had delivered to George Sandys, Treasurer, a list of debts owing, and this debt had never been paid. Adam Dixon, who came over in the _Margaret and John_, was sent by the Company as a master calker of ships and boats. He was living at Pashbehays, near Jamestown, in 1624. As the years went by, a number of shipwrights came to the colony from time to time, and were engaged in private shipyards on plantations, or set up shipyards of their own. Orphan boys were sometimes apprenticed to these shipbuilders until they reached the age of twenty-one. They were expected to be taught to read, write and cipher in addition to learning the trade of ship-carpenter. Many of the shipwrights who came to Virginia in the seventeenth century, became land owners, some of them owning large tracts of land, as shown by county records, especially in the Tidewater area. In Lancaster on the Rappahannock River, John Meredith, a shipwright, obtained, by patent, a tract of fifty acres. His sale of 600 acres is recorded, also a contract to build a sloop and a small boat, in payment of a debt of 47,300 pounds of tobacco. In Rappahannock County records, we find shipwright Simon Miller, a noted shipbuilder, who owned a tract of 125 acres; and John Griffin, a shipwright, who, in 1684, recorded a deed to Colonel Cadwalader Jones for a bark of fifty odd tons, for the consideration of fifty pounds sterling.