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The Virginia colonists were in straits through lack of food, and Somers returned to Bermuda for provisions for the colony, having found hogs and fish plentiful on the islands. He died there in 1611, and his followers returned to England soon after.

The glowing and exaggerated accounts of the richness of the islands brought back by these colonists excited the cupidity of the organizers of the Virginia Company, who enlarged their original charter to include Bermuda and established a Colony there under Governor Moore in 1612. The shipment home of ambergris by Moore seemed to confirm the reported wealth of the islands, so that, following a method not unknown to more modern exploiters, members of the Virginia Company soon formed a new sub-company which took over the title to Bermuda as a separate proprietary colony, under the name of "The Governor and Company of the City of London, for the Plantation of the Somers Islands."

In 1616, Daniel Tucker was sent out by this company as the first Governor under the new charter. He caused the islands to be surveyed, dividing them into eight tribes, and public lands. These tribes, or proportional parts, assigned to each charter member, were for the most part what are the present-day parishes, being Sandys, to Sir Edwin Sandys; Southampton, to the Earl of Southampton; Paget, to William, Lord Paget; Smith's, to Sir Thomas Smith; Pembroke, to the Earl of Pembroke; Bedford, now Hamilton Parish, to the Countess of Bedford; Cavendish, now Devonshire, to Lord William Cavendish; Mansils', now Warwick, to Sir Robert Mansil. St. George's, St. David's and adjacent small islands were public lands. The tribes were subdivided into fifty shares of twenty-five acres each. Norwood's second map showing these tribes and shares is the basis of land titles in Bermuda today.