This is who "Little St. James" Island was named after -- a lesser known, "in the shadows," and unsung disciple.

https://www.learnreligions.com/james-the-less-obscure-apostle-701076

Jamestown was named after James I.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Jamestown-Colony

A lot of these initial colonies struggled to survive. I wonder if that was because they were made up of elites who knew nothing of how to survive the day-to-day challenges of the common man. They seem to have made a lot of "rookie" mistakes:

After a period of searching for a settlement site, the colonists moored the ships off a peninsula (now an island) in the James River on the night of May 13 and began to unload them on May 14. The site’s marshy setting and humidity would prove to be unhealthful, but the site had several apparent advantages at the time the colony’s leaders chose it: ships could pull up close to it in deep water for easy loading and unloading, it was unoccupied, and it was joined to the mainland only by a narrow neck of land, making it simpler to defend.

The colonists had not carried out the work in the springtime needed for the long haul, such as building up the food stores and digging a freshwater well. The first mass casualties of the colony took place in August 1607, when a combination of bad water from the river, disease-bearing mosquitoes, and limited food rations created a wave of dysentery, severe fevers, and other serious health problems. Numerous colonists died, and at times as few as five able-bodied settlers were left to bury the dead.

It seems the colonists were more interested in money-making ventures than they were with day-to-day survival. They had no concept of surviving in a remote, foreign environment -- not surprising if they were of the pampered elite.