11 Facts About Thomas Dale

Thomas Dale is credited with the establishment of Bermuda Hundred, Bermuda Cittie, and the Cittie of Henricus.

From about 1588 to 1609, Thomas Dale was in the service of the Low Countries with the English army originally under Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

Five years later, the Virginia Company of London sent Sir Thomas Dale to act as deputy-governor or as "Marshall of Virginia" for the Virginia Colony under the authority of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr.

Thomas Dale found the conditions unhealthy and greatly in need of improvement.

Thomas Dale immediately called for a meeting of the Jamestown Council and established crews to rebuild Jamestown.

Thomas Dale exhibited a certain stern efficiency which was perhaps the best support and medicine that could have been devised.

In 1613, without stockholder consent, Thomas Dale abandoned the communal agriculture which had proved unsatisfactory, and he assigned 3-acre plots to its ancient planters and smaller plots to the settlement's later arrivals.

Thomas Dale was apparently impressed with the possibilities of the general area where the Appomattox River joins the James River, and there are published references to the name "New Bermuda" although it apparently was never formalised.

Thomas Dale began the excavation work at Dutch Gap, using methods he had learned while serving in Holland.

In 1614, Governor Thomas Dale sent 20 men, under Lieutenant William Craddock, to the area across the Chesapeake Bay from mainland Virginia now known as the Eastern Shore to establish a salt works and to catch fish for the colonists.

Governor Thomas Dale sailed back to England in the spring of 1616 aboard the Treasurer.