His policy in Virginia seemed to have been the advancement of the company's profit at the expense of the settlers, whom he pretended to regard as so abandoned that they needed the extreme of martial law.

In 1611 he restored the settlements at forts Charles and Henry; in 1613 he founded Bermuda Hundred and Bermuda City (otherwise called Charles Hundred and Charles City, now City Point), and in 1614 he established a salt factory at Smith Island near Cape Charles.[34] In laboring at these works the men were treated like galley-slaves and given a diet "that hogs refused to eat." As a consequence some of them ran away, and Dale set the Indians to catch them, and when they were brought back he burned several of them at the stake.

Some attempted to go to England in a barge, and for their temerity were shot to death, hanged, or broken on the wheel.

Although for the most part the men in the colony at this time were old soldiers, mechanics, and workmen, accustomed to labor, we are told that among those who perished through Dale's cruelty were many young men "of Auncyent Houses and born to estates of L1000 by the year,"[35] persons doubtless attracted to Virginia by the mere love of adventure, but included by Dale in the common slavery.

Even the strenuous Captain John Smith testified concerning Jeffrey Abbott, a veteran of the wars in Ireland and the Netherlands, but put to death by Dale for mutiny, that "he never saw in Virginia a more sufficient soldier, (one) less turbulent, a better wit, (one) more hardy or industrious, nor any more forward to cut them off that sought to abandon the country or wrong the colony."[36] To better purpose Dale's strong hand was felt among the Indians along the James and York rivers, whom he visited with heavy punishments.