The three small ships with their one hundred and five men sailed up the James River, until they had reached a point some fifty miles from its mouth, when their interest was drawn to a low peninsula, which put out from the northern shore. It was a bad site for a settlement, because it was half covered with water at high tide. Since those days it has become an island; but it looked so pleasing to the men who had been tossed on the stormy ocean for so many months, that it was taken as their new home. Anchor was dropped, the smaller boats began taking the emigrants and their belongings to shore, and there, on May 13th, 1607, was founded Jamestown, which, as I have already stated, was the first lasting settlement planted by the English in the New World.