Trials and errors in search of mineral wealth: metallurgical experiments in early colonial Jamestown

There is little doubt that the main motivation that launched British explorers to the conquest and colonization of North America was the hope of finding and exploiting plentiful natural resources, together with the discovery of a water route to the East. Having witnessed the success of the 16th-century Spanish enterprise in the New World, British entrepreneurs could only hope that their American adventure would turn out to be just as profitable. In 1607, with their confidence boosted by previous descriptions of a fertile land, and a royal charter in hand, over one hundred men arrived at the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, where they founded Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in the New World.