The creaking ship is crowded with travelers, and from below the main deck, the rank smell of pigs and goats wafts up through the hold as you grab onto a rope to keep from washing overboard. Each day has been like this, for the past two months, bobbing and swaying on the sometimes angry seas, and you’ve seen only the green, foamy waters of the Atlantic.

As one of the English settlers transiting the Atlantic in 1607, you have left your homeland for an uncertain future, with the lure of excitement and freedom in a new, undiscovered land. You yearn for the opportunity to work hard and to prosper, and to carve a life out of the wilderness.

Two more weeks pass, and as you try to stretch yourself awake in the few inches of space you have to yourself, you hear an excited cry from above, “Land! There’s Land!” You rush to climb the stairs and emerge in a throng of others, peering at the lush, green coastline off to the starboard side of Godspeed.

Four long years ago, this was your first taste of the New World. Now, after surviving blistering summers and harsh winters, disease, Indian attacks and near-starvation at Jamestown, you have traveled with Sir Thomas Dale some 80 miles up the James River, to a promontory that will give the militia a clear view of any Spanish ships that might approach.

Here, nine years before other English settlers will land at Plymouth Rock, you help establish the Citie of Henricus, which will develop the first chartered college, the first hospital, the first private ownership of land and the first successful commercial tobacco crop in this New World. Here, Pocahontas will be courted by her future husband, John Rolfe, before traveling with him to spend the rest of her days in England.

Modern-day visitors can experience daily life in 1611 through historical interpretation and by touring the Henricus sites, which reflect living conditions for the English as well as the Powhatan Indians who lived here long before their arrival.

Henricus Historical Park is open year-round, Tuesday-Sunday, 10-5. For more information, visit www.henricus.org or call 804-748-1613.

Henricus - one of Chesterfield County’s many historic treasures.