America began as a capitalist venture, with the first permanent English settlement funded not by the English government but by the private Virginia Company, a stock holding company in which a share cost 12 pounds and 10 shillings, more than six months wages for a common working man. Seeking profit, the company summed up its purpose for colonizing Virginia as God, Glory, and Gold. Its adventurers left London on December 20, 1606, arrived at Cape Henry on April 26, 1607, and spent 144 days traveling more than 6,000 miles across the Atlantic. The first voyage carried 104 settlers to found Jamestown, which became the first permanent English settlement in North America. The settlers did not remain at Cape Henry because the company's orders required a site upriver from the mouth of the bay, on a point of land where a three sided fort could be built with two sides along the water to create a defendable position, and where the water near the fort was deep enough to moor the ships safely.
