In further pursuit of its determination to set up an iron industry in Virginia, the London Company advertised for blacksmiths, bellows makers, edgetool makers, cutlers, armorers, gunsmiths, iron miners, iron refiners, iron founders, hammermen, millwrights for iron mills, and colliers for charcoal making. Before the _Mayflower_ left old Plymouth with its cargo of religious refugees, more than one hundred workmen having the required skills had sailed to Virginia, some of them to set up a full-scale ironworks at Falling Creek, about sixty miles up the James River from Jamestown. How much iron was actually produced at the Falling Creek furnace and forge, whether largely pig iron, sow iron, or wrought iron, and whether consumed in the colony, shipped to England, or some of both, must remain matters of conjecture. A series of troubles plagued the project, but by 1619 the blast furnace, finery, forge, and chafery were reported to be “in some good forwardnesse, and a proofe is sent of _Iron_ made there.” Two years later a new manager was sent over, and he promised “to finish the Works & have plentiful provision of Iron ... by next Easter.” The forecast was fateful. Easter in 1622 fell on March 24. But on the morning of Good Friday, March 22, the Indians of Virginia fell on every English settlement along the James River, massacring more than 350 colonists, including 27 at Falling Creek. The redskins not only slaughtered the entire adult complement of ironworkers, but destroyed the buildings and supposedly heaved some of the machinery into the river nearby. The exact details are understandably a little vague, but the result was conclusive: the iron industry in Virginia was ended for nearly one hundred years. _EARLY IRONMASTERS_ Except for bloomeries, which could have existed in every colony, the first successful ironworks in British America began production about 1645 at Saugus, Massachusetts. (In a bloomery operation a lump of iron ore—usually bog iron—is heated until it is semimolten, and then is hammered on the anvil until most impurities have been forced out; with much labor in this manner, small quantities of excellent wrought iron can be produced.) The Saugus works have been reconstructed after careful archaeological and historical research; a sort of family resemblance is to be presumed between them and the ironworks built in Virginia early in the eighteenth century. [Illustration: _The Hammersmith ironworks on the Saugus River in Massachusetts as they are believed to have looked in 1650. Along with documentary records, extensive remains found below ground at the site—and some above—have permitted a careful rebuilding of the entire complex. Redrawn after an architectural rendering in the Saugus Museum._]