Virginia had that year 350 people. The Bermuda subscribers had been separately incorporated as the Somers Island Company with its own royal charter in 1615. Indeed, ever since 1612, when the Bermuda adventurers helped to relieve the financial embarrassment of the Virginia Company by paying L2,000 for its newly acquired title to Bermuda, the Somers Island adventurers seem to have functioned increasingly as a separate corporation. But the membership of the two companies was much the same. It had been the more active and interested of the Virginia adventurers who subscribed to the Bermuda joint-stock in 1612, and for twelve years thereafter the active membership of the Virginia Company came so close to duplicating the membership of the Bermuda Company that the two bodies often met virtually as one. Until 1619 Sir Thomas Smith served as governor of both companies. The growing interest of the London adventurers after 1612 in the colonization of Bermuda did not mean that Virginia was wholly neglected. Funds secured from the lottery and from suits against delinquent subscribers were enough to keep the project alive. In 1612 the adventurers even sent out a stock of silkworms for a test of silk production. Needless to say, returning ships brought back no silk; nor did they bring sugar or wine. Lumber, including the valuable black walnut, seems to have provided the chief cargo for return voyages. A shipment of tobacco, Virginia's first, in 1614 gave some ground for arguing that the agricultural experimentation to which the colonists had been committed for several years now would pay off eventually. So argued Sir Thomas Gates on his return home this same year after three years of service in the colony, but the fact that he had come back from Virginia apparently made more of an impression than did his argument. Others also came home, their contracted term of service ended, and rarely did they bring any news from Virginia which added good to its name. Instead, they talked of the severe discipline under which they had been forced to live, and made sport of the too hopeful propaganda which had first persuaded them to become adventurers in Virginia. The discipline, chiefly associated with Dale's office as marshal, made his loyal decision to remain in the colony for another two years as lieutenant governor a further contribution to the ill repute of Virginia's name.