After a brutal winter that killed roughly 80 percent of Jamestown's settlers through starvation, disease, and conflict with the Powhatan, the surviving colonists decided the settlement was unsustainable. They boarded ships on May 26 and set off downriver intending to abandon Virginia entirely, only to encounter an incoming supply fleet led by Lord De La Warr that convinced them to return and try again.
The winter of 1609-1610 became known simply as the 'Starving Time.' Of roughly 500 colonists at Jamestown in autumn 1609, only about 60 remained alive by spring. Survivors resorted to eating horses, dogs, cats, rats, and, according to later accounts, even exhumed corpses. Archaeological evidence uncovered in 2012 confirmed cannibalism at the site, including the butchered remains of a teenage girl.
By May, the settlement's leaders concluded Jamestown was finished. On May 24, Sir Thomas Gates arrived with survivors from a wrecked relief ship that had washed up in Bermuda, but even the addition of these men and supplies couldn't sustain the colony. On May 26 the decision was made final: everyone would abandon Jamestown and sail for Newfoundland, hoping to catch fishing boats back to England.
The colonists set fire to some buildings, boarded four ships, and drifted downriver on the tide. Before they reached open water, however, they spotted the sails of a new relief fleet under Lord De La Warr, carrying fresh supplies, food, and settlers. Persuaded to turn back, the colonists returned to Jamestown that same day, a reversal so narrow that historians consider it the moment the entire English colonial project in Virginia nearly ended before truly beginning.