Three ships unfurled their sails and launched across the Atlantic toward the New World. The three ships were the Discovery, the Godspeed, and the Susan Constant. Sailing from England, it took them approximately four months to reach the shores of Virginia. The three vessels belonged to the Virginia Company of London, which had received a royal charter from King James I “to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America.” Disembarking on May 13, 1607, the Jamestown Colony became “the first permanent English settlement in North America.”
Over the next five years, King James I provided two more charters to the Virginia Company of London. The Third Charter of Virginia of 1612 allowed the Virginia colony to expand its borders to include the Somers Islands (modern-day Bermuda), as well as democratize control of the company among the investors.
