In the beginning, all America was Virginia, wrote William Byrd II in 1728. And all Virginia, in the beginning, was but a mosquito-infested splotch of wetland encircled by the capricious James River. Here on this 600-hectare islet, 105 men and boys came ashore in 1607 at the behest of King James I’s Virginia Company – named for the “virgin queen”, Elizabeth I – and established the country’s first successful English colony.

For centuries, their fort’s remnants lay buried beneath silt washed in on the floods. Then, in 1994, on-site archaeologists realised they were digging up the country’s past. The unearthed relics – foundations, artefacts, human skeletons – are preserved in the Historic Jamestowne museum.