400 years ago, 104 men and boys crowded onto three ships and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a new world. They founded the Jamestown colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Jamestown almost didn't make it. History tells the tale of a colony that met with disaster after disaster because its colonists were so inept.

But what if history got it wrong?

"Secrets of Jamestown" tells the story of a team of archeologists on a quest to unearth the secrets of the Jamestown colony. They're unearthing new evidence that is changing long-held beliefs. In this episode of Save Our History, host Steve Thomas climbs down a 400-year-old well, wades into a swamp filled with thousand year-old trees, and journeys into a state of the art forensics lab to help piece together the real story.

The Jamestown fort was long thought to be lost to history until one man with a shovel, archeologist Bill Kelso, set out to find it. The result has been a treasure trove of artifacts, more than half a million, that are telling a new and different story of a hardworking colony surviving under incredibly difficult circumstances.

Filling in the details of that story is a team effort. Archeologists take core samples from ancient trees to piece together evidence of a devastating drought that met the colonists upon their arrival. Forensic scientists examine the remains of Jamestown residents to learn how they lived as well as how they died. And a forensic sculptor uses all her skills to recreate the face of one of Jamestown's first residents.

Four hundred years after the colony's founding, Secrets of Jamestown offers fascinating new insights into the settlement that truly was the birthplace of America.