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THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
Fishing in Colonial Virginia
by
JAMES WHARTON
* * * * *
JAMESTOWN 350TH ANNIVERSARY HISTORICAL BOOKLETS
_Editor_--E. G. SWEM, Librarian Emeritus, College of William and Mary
COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATIONS: JOHN M. JENNINGS, Director of the Virginia
Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia, _Chairman_. FRANCIS L.
BERKELEY, JR., Archivist, Alderman Library, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, Virginia. LYMAN H. BUTTERFIELD, Editor-in-Chief of the
Adams Papers, Boston, Mass. EDWARD M. RILEY, Director of Research,
Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., Williamsburg, Virginia. E. G. SWEM,
Librarian Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg,
Virginia. WILLIAM J. VAN SCHREEVEN, Chief, Division of Archives,
Virginia State Library, Richmond, Virginia.
1. _A Selected Bibliography of Virginia, 1607-1699._ By E. G. Swem,
John M. Jennings and James A. Servies.
2. _A Virginia Chronology, 1585-1783._ By William W. Abbot.
3. _John Smith's Map of Virginia, with a Brief Account of its History._
By Ben C. McCary.
4. _The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London, with Seven
Related Documents; 1606-1621._ Introduction by Samuel M. Bemiss.
5. _The Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624._ By Wesley Frank Craven.
6. _The First Seventeen Years, Virginia, 1607-1624._ By Charles E.
Hatch, Jr.
7. _Virginia under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660._ By Wilcomb E.
Washburn.
8. _Bacon's Rebellion, 1676._ By Thomas J. Wertenbaker.
9. _Struggle Against Tyranny and the Beginning of a New Era, Virginia,
1677-1699._ By Richard L. Morton.
10. _Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ By George
MacLaren Brydon.
11. _Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth Century._ By Henry
Chandlee Forman.
12. _Mother Earth--Land Grants in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By W. Stitt
Robinson, Jr.
13. _The Bounty of the Chesapeake; Fishing in Colonial Virginia._ By
James Wharton.
14. _Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By Lyman Carrier.
15. _Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By Susie
M. Ames.
16. _The Government of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ By Thomas
J. Wertenbaker.
17. _Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century._ By Annie
Lash Jester.
18. _Indians in Seventeenth-Century Virginia._ By Ben C. McCary.
19. _How Justice Grew. Virginia Counties._ By Martha W. Hiden.
20. _Tobacco in Colonial Virginia; "The Sovereign Remedy."_ By Melvin
Herndon.
21. _Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699._ By Thomas P. Hughes.
22. _Some Notes on Shipping and Ship-building in Colonial Virginia._ By
Cerinda W. Evans.
23. _A Pictorial Booklet on Early Jamestown Commodities and
Industries._ By J. Paul Hudson.
Price 50 cents Each
Printed in the United States of America
* * * * *
THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
Fishing in Colonial Virginia
by
JAMES WHARTON
The University Press of Virginia
Charlottesville
Copyright(C) 1957 by
Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration
Corporation, Williamsburg, Virginia
Second printing 1973
Jamestown 350th Anniversary
Historical Booklet Number 13
FOREWORD
Just as a series of personal letters may constitute an autobiography,
so the extracts from Colonial writings that follow tell the unique
story of the fisheries of Virginia's great Tidewater. In them it is
possible to trace the measured growth of a vital industry. The
interspersed comments of the compiler are to be understood as mere
annotations. This is the testimony, then, of those who from the
beginning participated in one of the foremost natural resources of this
country.
I gratefully acknowledge guidance in research to Mr. John C. Pearson of
the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, who masterfully surveyed the field
and first brought the early fishery reports to public notice.
JAMES WHARTON
Weems, Virginia
THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE
The Bounty of The Chesapeake
The voyage to America in 1607 was like a journey to a star. Veteran
rovers though the English were, none of them had any clear idea of what
to expect in the new land of Virginia. Only one thing was certain: they
would have nothing there but what they took with them or wrought from
the raw materials of the country.
What raw materials?
They had reliable information that the climate was mild. Therefore,
crops could be raised. They learned of inexhaustible timber: so ships
and dwellings and industrial works could be built. They hoped for gold
and dreamed of access to uncharted lands of adventure. But putting
first things first, how would they eat in the meantime?
When Sir Walter Raleigh established the first English colony in
"Virginia"--on what is now Roanoke island, North Carolina--two good
reporters, one a writer, the other an illustrator, were commissioned to
describe what they saw. This was twenty-two years before Jamestown and
naturally all the material consisted of Indian life and customs. Thomas
Hariot wrote:
For four months of the year, February, March, April and May, there
are plenty of sturgeon; and also in the same months of herrings,
some of the ordinary bigness as ours in England, but the most part
far greater, of eighteen, twenty inches, and some two feet in
length and better; both these kinds of fish in these months are
most plentiful and in best season which we found to be most
delicate and pleasant meat.
There are also trouts, porpoises, rays, oldwives, mullets, plaice,
and very many other sorts of excellent good fish, which we have
taken and eaten, whose names I know not but in the country language
we have of twelve sorts more the pictures as they were drawn in the
country with their names.
The inhabitants use to take them two manner of ways, the one is by
a kind of weir made of reeds which in that country are very strong.
The other way which is more strange, is with poles made sharp at
one end, by shooting them into the fish after the manner as
Irishmen cast darts; either as they are rowing in their boats or
else as they are wading in the shallows for the purpose.
There are also in many places plenty of these kinds which follow:
Sea crabs, such as we have in England.
Oysters, some very great, and some small; some round and some of a
long shape. They are found both in salt water and brackish, and
those that we had out of salt water are far better than the other
as in our own country.
Also mussels, scallops, periwinkles and crevises.
_Seekanauk_, a kind of crusty shellfish which is good meat about a
foot in breadth, having a crusty tail, many legs like a crab, and
her eyes in her back. They are found in shallows of salty waters;
and sometimes on the shore.
There are many tortoises both of land and sea kind, their backs and
bellies are shelled very thick; their head, feet and tail, which
are in appearance, seem ugly as though they were members of a
serpent or venomous; but notwithstanding they are very good meat,
as also their eggs. Some have been found of a yard in breadth and
better.
In a charming drawing of a group of Indian maidens John White, the
artist associate, commented: "They delight ... in seeing fish taken in
the rivers."
Over and over the first visitors to the Chesapeake bay painted rosy
pictures of its marine life, stressing the abundance, variety and
tastiness of the fish and shellfish. Exploration and communication were
chiefly by water: it was natural that emphasis be laid on water
resources. Though it is proverbial that fish stories partake of
fiction, in the case of John Smith and his successors, it is doubtful
whether they were greatly exaggerated. This was a world where nature,
especially in the waters, was immeasurably prolific.
On the other hand, the conclusions drawn by many of those reading the
reports were probably unjustified. The infinite plenty was one thing.
Making constant and profitable use of it was another.
Thus, although Smith cited an impressive roster of edible fish in the
vicinity of Jamestown, it was not to follow that the settlers were
always able to turn them to advantage. There were several good reasons.
Long before Jamestown the fisheries off the coast of Northern America
and Canada were known to be richly productive, with promise of an
organized and dependable industry. But farther south conditions were
found to be quite different. The fishing in the Chesapeake bay had
frustrating ways. Sometimes there were hordes of fish. Again they
stayed away in large numbers. They were usually present during warm
weather when spoilage was worst. The first colonists had no ice at all
and very little salt. Frequent spells of damp weather made sun-drying
impractical. If more fish were caught than could be eaten at once, the
excess was very likely wasted. Fishing gear was consistently
inadequate. But from the very first, fishing and its development had
been kept in mind by the promoters of the colony.
Fishing rights were defined in 1606 in letters patent to Sir Thomas
Gates, Sir George Somers and others, as recorded in the Charter granted
in 1606:
They shall have all ... fishings ... from the said first seat of
their plantation and habitation by the space of fifty miles of
English statute measure, all along the said coast of Virginia and
America, towards the west and southwest, as the coast lies ... and
also all ... fishings for the space of fifty English miles ... all
along the said coast of Virginia and America, towards the east and
northeast ... and also ... fishings ... from the same, fifty miles
every way on the sea coast, directly into the mainland by the space
of one hundred like English miles.
In the new fishing territory around Jamestown the Indians were the
professionals and their methods were of great interest to the English
novices. A description is furnished by William Strachey, secretary of
state of the colony and author of _The Historie of Travaile into
Virginia Britannia_:
Their fishing is much in boats. These they call quintans, as the
West Indians call their canoas. They make them with one tree, by
burning and scraping away the coals with stones and shells till
they have made them in the form of a trough. Some of them are an
ell deep and forty or fifty foot in length and some will transport
forty men, but the most ordinary are smaller and will ferry ten or
twenty, with some luggage, over their broadest rivers. Instead of
oars, they use paddles and sticks, with which they will row faster
than we in our barges. They have nets for fishing, for the quantity
as formerly braided and meshed as ours and these are made of bark
of certain trees, deer sinews, or a kind of grass, which they call
pemmenaw, of which their women between their hands and thighs, spin
a thread very even and readily, and this thread serves for many
uses, as about their housing, their mantles of feathers and their
[?] and they also with it make lines for angles.
Their angles are long small rods at the end whereof they have a
cleft to which the line is fastened, and at the line they hang a
hook, made either of a bone grated (as they nock their arrows) in
the form of a crooked pin or fishhook, or of the splinter of a
bone, and with a thread of the line they tie on the bait. They use
also long arrows tied on a line, wherewith they shoot at fish in
the rivers. Those of Accowmack use staves, like unto javelins,
headed with bone; with these they dart fish, swimming in the
water....
By their houses they have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised
like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered
with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft
of hurdles they lay forth their corn and fish to dry....
They are inconstant in everything but what fear constrain them to
keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in
their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take
their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed
in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the
water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish
cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by
chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey
to the fishermen the next low water which they fish with a net at
the end of a pole....
The earliest observers reveal how intimately food from the waters was
linked with the colonists' experiences. George Percy wrote in 1607:
We came to a place [Cape Henry] where they [natives] had made a
great fire and had been newly roasting oysters. When they perceived
our coming, they fled away to the mountains and left many of the
oysters in the fire. We ate some of the oysters which were very
large and delicate in taste.
This was April 27 of that year. Oyster roasts have been a Virginia
institution ever since. He continued:
Upon this plot of ground [Lynnhaven Bay] we got good store of
mussels and oysters, which lay on the ground as thick as stones. We
opened some and found in many of them pearls.
The pearls would probably not have been worth mentioning, except as a
novelty, if they had come from oysters alone. The Virginia oyster pearl
lacks luster. But the mussel, particularly the one found in the James
river, yields an iridescent pearl of some little value.
A month later more oysters, in a form unknown in Virginia today, were
obtained from Indians by Captain Christopher Newport in return for
ornaments, according to Gabriel Archer in 1607:
He notwithstanding with two women and another fellow of his own
consort followed us some six miles with baskets full of dried
oysters and met us at a point, where calling to us, we went ashore
and bartered with them for most of their victuals.
A letter from the Council in Virginia to the Council in England in 1607
stated:
We are set down eighty miles within a river, for breadth, sweetness
of water, length navigable up into the country, deep and bold
channel, so stored with sturgeon and other sweet fish as no man's
fortune has ever possessed the like. And, as we think, if more may
be wished in a river it will be found.
After various vicissitudes John Smith confessed:
Though there be fish in the sea, fowls in the air, and beasts in
the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wild, and we so weak
and ignorant, we cannot much trouble them.
George Percy introduced a happier note:
It pleased God, after a while, to send those people which were our
mortal enemies [Indians] to relieve us with victuals, as bread,
corn, fish, and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of
our feeble men, otherwise we had all perished.
John Smith tells about another crisis:
Our victuals being within eighteen days spent and the Indians'
trade decreasing, I was sent to the mouth of the river, to
Kecoughtan [Hampton], an Indian town, to trade for corn and try the
river for fish, but our fishing we could not effect by reason of
the stormy weather.... Only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon
our men would so greedily surfeit, as it cost many their lives.
And still another:
From May to September, those that escaped lived upon sturgeon and
sea crabs.
And this:
So it happened that neither we nor they had anything to eat but
what the country afforded naturally. Yet of eighty who lived upon
oysters in June or July, with a pint of corn a week for a man lying
under trees, and one hundred twenty for the most part living upon
sturgeon, which are dried till we pounded it to powder for meal,
yet in ten weeks but seven died.
For once he paints a brighter picture:
The next night, being lodged at Kecoughtan, six or seven days the
extreme wind, rain, frost, and snow caused us to keep Christmas
among the savages, where we were never more merry, nor fed on more
plenty of good oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowl, and good bread.
He describes further ups and downs:
Now we so quietly followed our business that in three months, we
... provided nets and weirs for fishing.
Sixty or eighty with Ensign Laxon were sent down the river to live
upon oysters, and twenty with Lieutenant Percy to try fishing at
Point Comfort. But in six weeks, they would not agree once to cast
out their net.
We had more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog or man, of which
the industrious by drying and pounding, mingled with caviar,
sorrel, and other wholesome herbs, would make bread and good meat.
Despite the privations much food is available, Smith avers:
In summer no place affords more plenty of sturgeon, nor in winter
more abundance of fowl, especially in time of frost. There was once
taken fifty-two sturgeon at a draught, at another draught
sixty-eight. From the latter end of May till the end of June are
taken few but young sturgeon of two foot or a yard long. From
thence till the midst of September them of two or three yards long
and a few others. And in four or five hours with one net were
ordinarily taken seven or eight; often more, seldom less. In the
small rivers all the year there is a good plenty of small fish, so
that with hooks those that would take pains had sufficient....
Of fish we were best acquainted with sturgeon, grampus, porpoise,
seals, stingrays whose tails are very dangerous, brits, mullets,
white salmon, trouts, soles, plaice, herring, conyfish, rockfish,
eels, lampreys, catfish, shad, perch of three sorts, crabs,
shrimps, crevises, oysters, cockles, and mussels. But the most
strange fish is a small one so like the picture of St. George's
dragon as possibly can be, except his legs and wings; and the
toadfish which will swell till it be like to burst when it comes
into the air.
When Smith spoke of sturgeon he was most probably referring to the
James river, the best waters for sturgeon in Virginia to this day. The
"small rivers" were the fresh-water tributaries of the large salty
ones. The small fish to be found there which would take the hook in
winter were probably the non-migratory species like perch, catfish and
suckers. If some of the names Smith gives seem puzzling today, it
should be remembered that often the same fish name has applied
throughout history to different fish at different times or in different
areas. Contrariwise, different names, in regional usage, may apply to
the same fish. Thus it is virtually impossible to say whether all the
fish named by Colonial reporters are to be found in Virginia waters
today. For example, though no "white salmon" are known in Virginia, it
is possible that Smith referred to a fish that merely resembled a
salmon without belonging to that family. On the other hand, it is
conceivable that Virginia boats caught "white salmon" in the Atlantic
Ocean. "Conyfish" can mean several different fishes, so that it is not
possible to be sure what Smith had in mind; so with "brit." "Crevise"
is an older name for crawfish. Seals still make rare appearances in the
bay. As for the stingrays, he spoke from experience; he was spiked by
one. Almost all of his list are still being caught off Jamestown. The
"St. George's dragon" or sea horse, is among them.
There are many more varieties of fish caught by Virginia fishermen
today than were ever mentioned in Colonial records. This is due to
superior gear and the more intensive use of it.
Captain Christopher Newport was among the earliest observers confirming
Smith. He wrote in 1607:
The main river [James] abounds with sturgeon, very large and
excellent good, having also at the mouth of every brook and in
every creek both store and exceedingly good fish of divers kinds.
In the large sounds near the sea are multitudes of fish, banks of
oysters, and many great crabs rather better, in fact, than ours and
able to suffice four men. And within sight of land into the sea we
expect at time of year to have a good fishing for cod, as both at
our entering we might perceive by palpable conjectures, seeing the
cod follow the ship ... as also out of my own experience not far
off to the northward the fishing I found in my first voyage to
Virginia....
The commodities of the country, what they are in else, is not much
to be regarded, the inhabitants having no concern with any nation,
no respect of profit.... Yet this for the present, by the consent
of all our seamen, merely fishing for sturgeon cannot be worth less
than L1,000 a year, leaving herring and cod as possibilities....
We have a good fishing for mussels which resemble mother-of-pearl,
and if the pearl we have seen in the king's ears and about their
necks come from these shells we know the banks.
The crab "able to suffice four men" could scarcely have been other than
the horseshoe. It has never been considered a delicacy.
It is usually by contraries that the truth is determined. Even in the
midst of the apparent plenty of fish, fishing crews sometimes came home
empty-handed after continued effort. Often storms interfered.
From personal experience John Smith was able to sound the warning about
Chesapeake weather:
Our mast and sail blew overboard and such mighty waves overraked us
in that small barge that with great danger we kept her from sinking
by freeing out the water.
The winds are variable, but the like thunder and lightning to
purify the air I have seldom either seen or heard in Europe.
As if struck by the helplessness of the settlers, a compassionate chief
extended aid to them in 1608. A letter from Francis Perkins tells the
story:
So excessive are the frosts that one night the river froze over
almost from bank to bank in front of our harbour, although it was
there as wide as that of London. There died from the frost some
fish in the river, which when taken out after the frost was over,
were very good and so fat that they could be fried in their own fat
without adding any butter or such thing....
Their own great emperor or the wuarravance, which is the name of
their kings, has sent some of his people that they may teach us how
to sow the grain of this country and to make certain traps with
which they are going to fish.
A letter from the Council in Virginia to the Virginia Company in London
in 1610 shows that such favors were returned:
Whilst we were fishing divers Indians came down from the woods unto
us and ... I gave unto them such fish as we took ... for indeed at
this time of the year [July] they live poor, their corn being but
newly put into the ground and their own store spent. Oysters and
crabs and such fish as they take in their weirs is their best
relief.
Oysters occurred in vast banks and shoals within sight of the Jamestown
fort. During the 1609-10 "starving time" a minimum force was retained
at the settlement while everyone else was turned out to forage as best
he could. Most sought the oyster grounds where they ate oysters nine
weeks, a diet varied only by a pitifully negligible allowance of corn
meal. In the words of one of the foragers, "this kind of feeding caused
all our skin to peel off from head to foot as if we had been dead." The
arrival of supplies ended the ordeal. But soon hunger descended again
and the oyster beds would have been the natural recourse if it had not
been winter and the water too cold to wade in. So the oysters were no
help.
That conscientious reporter, William Strachey, wrote in 1610:
In this desolation and misery our Governor found the condition and
state of the Colony. Nor was there at the fort, as they whom we
found related unto us, any means to take fish; neither sufficient
seine, nor other convenient net, and yet of their need, there was
not one eye of sturgeon yet come into the river.
The river which was wont before this time of the year to be
plentiful of sturgeon had not now a fish to be seen in it, and
albeit we laboured and hauled our net twenty times day and night,
yet we took not so much as would content half the fishermen. Our
Governor therefore, sent away his long boat to coast the river
downward as far as Point Comfort, and from thence to Cape Henry and
Cape Charles, and all within the bay, which after a seven nights
trial and travail, returned without any fruits of their labours,
scarce getting so much fish as served their own company.
And, likewise, because at the Lord Governor and Captain General's
first coming, there was found in our own river no store of fish
after many trials, the Lord Governor and Captain General dispatched
in the _Virginia_, with instructions, the seventeenth of June,
1610, Robert Tyndall, master of the _De la Warre_, to fish unto,
all along, and between Cape Henry and Cape Charles within the
bay.... Nor was the Lord Governor and Captain General in the
meanwhile idle at the fort, but every day and night he caused the
nets to be hauled, sometimes a dozen times one after another. But
it pleased not God so to bless our labours that we did at any time
take one quarter so much as would give unto our people one pound at
a meal apiece, by which we might have better husbanded our peas and
oatmeal, notwithstanding the great store we now saw daily in our
river. But let the blame of this lie where it is, both upon our
nets and the unskilfulness of our men to lay them.
The matter of sturgeon was of prime importance not only for subsistence
but for export, particularly of the roe. Caviar was in great demand in
England. But with uncertainty as to when the sturgeon would appear in
the river, plus hot weather, plus feeble facilities, the growth of the
industry was impeded. When tobacco, first commercially grown by John
Rolfe, appeared on the scene in 1612 and proved to be a sure money
maker, the export of sturgeon products came to a standstill. It was
having hard going anyway. Complaints from England regarding quality
were familiar enough. According to Lord De La Warr in 1610, on the
subject, "Virginia Commodities":
Sturgeon which was last sent came ill-conditioned, not being well
boiled. If it were cut in small pieces and powdered, put up in
cask, the heads pickled by themselves, and sent here, it would do
far better.
Roes of the said sturgeon make caviar according to instructions
formerly given. Sounds of the said sturgeon will make isinglass
according to the same instructions. Isinglass is worth here 13s.
4d. per 100 pounds, and caviar well conditioned is worth L40 per
100.
Other instances stressed the undependable fishing. Lord De La Warr
wrote to the Earl of Salisbury in England in 1610: "I sent fishermen
out to provide fish for our men, to save other provision, but they had
ill success."
Captain Samuel Argall was specially commissioned by the authorities in
England to deep-sea fish for the benefit of the Colony. After ranging
over a wide area between Bermuda and Canada, he reported in 1610:
... The weather continuing very foggy, thick, and rainy, about five
of the clock it began to cease and then we began to fish and so
continued until seven of the clock in between thirty and forty
fathoms, and then we could fish no longer. So having gotten between
twenty and thirty cods we left for that night, and at five of the
clock, the 26th, in the morning we began to fish again and so
continued until ten of the clock, and then it would fish no longer,
in which time we had taken near one hundred cods and a couple of
halibuts....
Then I tried whether there were any fish there or not [off Maine
coast], and I found reasonable good store there. So I stayed there
fishing till the 12th of August, [1610] and then finding that the
fishing did fail, I thought good to return to the island
[Jamestown]....
Captain Argall also offered his opinion of the usefulness of the
islands off Virginia's seacoast peninsula, later known as the Eastern
Shore:
Salt might easily be made there, if there were any ponds digged,
for that I found salt kernel where the water had overflowed in
certain places. Here also is great store of fish, both shellfish
and others.
The root of the trouble, so far as local fishing conditions were
concerned, was the lack of adequate equipment together with ignorance
of its proper use. Perhaps the ease with which fish were caught at
certain times had spoiled the hardy settlers.
A low opinion of their attitude in this vital pursuit came from Sir
Thomas Gates in 1610:
A colony is therefore denominated because they should be coloni,
the tillers of the earth and stewards of fertility. Our mutinous
loiterers would not sow with providence and therefore they reaped
the fruits of far too dear bought repentance. An incredible example
of their idleness is the report of Sir Thomas Gates who affirms
that after his first coming thither he had seen some of them eat
their fish raw rather than they would go a stone's cast to fetch
wood and dress it.
Joined unto these another evil: There is great store of fish in the
river, especially of sturgeon, but our men provided no more of them
than present necessity, not barreling up any store against the
season [when] the sturgeon returned to the sea. And not to
dissemble their folly, they suffered fourteen nets, which was all
they had, to rot and spoil, which by orderly drying and mending
might have been preserved but being lost, all help of fishing
perished.
Very few of them had come equipped for fishing. Their seines were as
old-fashioned as those used by the Apostles in the New Testament, the
simple kind you lowered from a boat and dragged ashore. The Indians had
taught them how to spear large fish and erect weirs out of stakes and
brushwood to entrap migrating schools. Such methods worked well enough
during the season. But in cold weather, when provisions ran low,
scarcely any fish were present in the bay proper.
It was different in New England and Canada. There the fishing was good
the year round. The sea bottom was dragged by efficient trawl-nets, and
fished with gang-lines of baited hooks, as it still is today. The cool
temperatures over many months of the year made the catches much less
perishable. Conditions favored an organized fish-salting industry.
Though the Jamestown people had easy access to some 3,000 square miles
of inland tidal water and were only a little way from the open sea,
they never developed their marine riches. One good reason was that
their original aims were in other directions. When the first intentions
to colonize New England came to the King's notice, he asked the leaders
what drew them there. The one-word answer: "Fishing." If the Virginians
had been similarly queried they would have given various replies, but
certainly not that one.
In describing the fisheries of New England, John Smith had enthused:
Let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will
afford us good gold as the mines of Guiana or Tumbata, with less
hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility.
The need for fishermen in Virginia was officially recognized to only a
slight degree. A 1610 memorandum from the Virginia Council to the
authorities in London asked that an effort be made to include among the
next immigrants 20 fishermen and 6 net makers. Select them with care
was the word sent out in England by means of a broadside issued by the
Council of Virginia, December, 1610:
Whereas the good ship called the _Hercules_ is now preparing and
almost in a readiness with necessary provisions to make a supply to
the Lord Governor and the Colony in Virginia, it is thought meet,
for the avoiding of such vagrant and unnecessary persons as do
commonly proffer themselves being altogether unserviceable, that
none but honest sufficient artificers, as carpenters, smiths,
coopers, fishermen, brickmen, and such like, shall be entertained
into this voyage. Of whom so many as will in due time repair to the
house of Sir Thomas Smith in Philpot Lane, with sufficient
testimony to their skill and good behavior, they shall receive
entertainment accordingly.
It was only a question of time before the Virginia colonists would,
though surrounded all the while by their own huge marine resources,
subsist on salt fish from the North. Sir Thomas Dale, governor from
1611 to 1616, perceived the trend. One of his first moves was to ask
the President of the Virginia Company to provide men trained enough to
build a coastal trade in furs, corn and fish:
Let me intreat that we may have both an admiral and hired mariners,
to be all times resident here. The benefit will quickly make good
the charge as well by a trade of furs to be obtained with the
savages in the northern rivers to be returned home as also to
furnish us here with corn and fish. The waste of such men all this
time whom we might trust with our pinnaces leaves us destitute this
season of so great a quantity of fish as not far from our own bay
would sufficiently satisfy the whole Colony for a whole year.
There were no boats available even for simple oystering. During the
term of the stringent Governor Dale some disaffected colonists tried to
escape in a shallop and a barge, which were "all the boats that were
then in the Colony."
Ironically punctuating the sagas of hardship were the marveling
descriptions publicized in England. Corroborating the mouth-watering
tales of Smith, William Strachey wrote in 1612:
To the natural commodities which the country has of fruit, beasts,
and fowl, we may also add the no mean commodity of fish, of which,
in March and April, are great shoals of herrings, sturgeon, great
store commonly in May if the year be forward. I have been at the
taking of some before Algernoone fort and in Southampton river in
the middle of March, and they remain with us June, July, and August
and in that plenty as before expressed.
Shad, great store, of a yard long and for sweetness and fatness a
reasonable food fish; he is only full of small bones, like our
barbels in England. There is the garfish, some of which are a yard
long, small and round like an eel and as big as a mare's leg,
having a long snout full of sharp teeth.
Oysters there be in whole banks and beds, and those of the best. I
have seen some thirteen inches long. The savages use to boil
oysters and mussels together and with the broth they make a good
spoon meat, thickened with the flour of their wheat and it is a
great thrift and husbandry with them to hang the oysters upon
strings ... and dried in the smoke, thereby to preserve them all
the year.
There be two sorts of sea crabs. One our people call a king crab
and they are taken in shoal waters from off the shore a dozen at a
time hanging one upon another's tail; they are of a foot in length
and half a foot in breadth, having legs and a long tail. The
Indians seldom eat of this kind. There is a shellfish of the
proportion of a cockle but far greater [conch]. It has a smooth
shell, not ragged as our cockles; 'tis good meat though somewhat
tough.
And, according to Alexander Whitaker in 1613:
The rivers abound with fish both small and great. The sea-fish come
into our rivers in March and continue the end of September. Great
schools of herrings come in first; shads of a great bigness and the
rockfish follow them. Trout, bass, flounders, and other dainty fish
come in before the others be gone. Then come multitudes of great
sturgeons, whereof we catch many and should do more, but that we
want good nets answerable to the breadth and depth of our rivers.
Besides our channels are so foul in the bottom with great logs and
trees that we often break our nets upon them. I cannot reckon nor
give proper names to the divers kinds of fresh fish in our rivers.
I have caught with mine angle, carp, pike, eel, perches of six
several kinds, crayfish and the torope or little turtle, besides
many small kinds.
When Whitaker penned the word "torope," he was giving the
English-speaking world a new term, new because the animal it defined
was unknown in Europe. Later spelled "terrapin," it meant the
diamond-back, the esoteric little creature that spread the fame of the
Chesapeake bay around the world and became an indispensable course on
menus designed for the entertainment of royalty and the discriminating
elect. The colonists probably ate it prepared Indian fashion, that is,
roasted whole in live coals and opened at table where the savory meat
was extracted by appreciative fingers. Over generations of
terrapin-fanciers it evolved into one of the stars of the gastronomic
firmament. It is a wholly American dish and it was born at Jamestown.
Contemporary Historian Ralph Hamor added his testimony in 1614:
For fish, the rivers are plentifully stored with sturgeon, porpoise,
bass, rockfish, carp, shad, herring, eel, catfish, perch, flat-fish,
trout, sheepshead, drummers, jewfish, crevises, crabs, oysters, and
divers other kinds. Of all which myself has seen great quantity
taken, especially the last summer at Smith's Island at one haul a
frigate's lading of sturgeon, bass, and other great fish in Captain
Argall's seine, and even at the very place which is not above
fifteen miles from Point Comfort. If we had been furnished with
salt to have saved it, we might have taken as much fish as would
have served us that whole year.
The mention of carp will interest those who believe carp to have been
introduced into Virginia much later. The jewfish is common in more
southern waters but there may well have been some strays in the
Chesapeake. Although croakers, one of the bay's most abundant fish in
modern times, are not mentioned, it would not be unreasonable to assume
that they were included under "drummers." So with spot, a member of the
drum family bearing a superficial resemblance to a bass or perch. The
term "spot," as applied to a Virginia fish does not seem to have become
current till the late 19th century.
An event of special interest to statisticians occurred in 1612. The
first attempt made in the New World to require certain fish catches to
be reported was among the regulations propounded by Governor Thomas
Dale. The penalty for violation would shock today's delinquent record
keepers:
All fishermen, dressers of sturgeon, or such like appointed to fish
or to cure the said sturgeon for the use of the Colony, shall give
a just and true account of all such fish as they shall take by day
or night, of whatsoever kind, the same to bring unto the Governor.
As also all such kegs of sturgeon or caviar as they shall prepare
and cure upon peril for the first time offending herein of losing
his ears, and for the second time to be condemned a year to the
galleys, and for the third time offending to be condemned to the
galleys for three years.
The years of trial and error fishing had brought their return in
increased knowledge, according to John Rolfe in 1616:
About two years since, Sir Thomas Dale ... found out two seasons in
the year to catch fish, namely, the spring and the fall. He himself
took no small pains in the trial and at one haul with a seine
caught five thousand three hundred of them, as big as cod. The
least of the residue or kind of salmon trout, two foot long, yet he
durst not adventure on the main school for breaking his net.
Likewise, two men with axes and such like weapons have taken and
killed near the shore and brought home forty [fish] as great as cod
in two or three hours space....
There was a hint that the Virginia Company was interfering with free
ocean fishing by claiming all the land to Newfoundland,--not that it
was getting much out of it. One complaint as published in London
sometime before February 22, 1615, in the anonymous tract, _The Trades
Increase_, read:
The Virginia Company pretend almost all that main twixt it and
Newfoundland to be their fee-simple, whereby many honest and able
minds, disposed to adventure, are hindered and stopped from
repairing to those places that they either know or would discover,
even for fishing.
As a matter of fact, there was continuous wrangling in London over the
fishing rights off the entire coast administered by the Virginia
Company. The proposed settlers of the Northern Colony in New England
had fishing uppermost in their minds and would have been glad to
exclude fishermen coming from the Southern Colony. Minutes of meetings
of the Company reveal how earnest was the struggle:
December 1, 1619. The last great general court being read, Mr.
Treasurer acquainted them that Mr. John Delbridge, purposing to
settle a particular colony in Virginia, desired of the Company that
for defraying some part of his charge he might be admitted to fish
at Cape Cod. Which request was opposed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
alleging that he always favored Mr. Delbridge but in this he
thought himself something touched that he should sue to this
Company and not rather to him as the matter properly belonged to
the Northern Colony to give liberty for fishing in that place, it
lying within their latitude. This was answered by Mr. Treasurer
that the Companies of the South and North Plantations are free of
one another and that the patent is clear that each may fish within
the territory of the other, the sea being free for both. If the
Northern Company abridged them of this, they would take away their
means and encouragement for sending out men. To which Sir
Ferdinando Gorges replied that if he was not mistaken both the
Companies were limited by the patents unto which he would submit.
For the deciding whereof it is referred to the Council, who are of
both Companies, to examine the patents tomorrow afternoon at the
Lord Southampton's and accordingly to determine the dispute.
Two weeks later the Council gave its decision: Either Colony could fish
within the bounds of the other. But this was by no means an end to the
matter. The Northern Colony requested a new patent to resolve the
disputes. With suggestions and counter-suggestions, the debate dragged
on through the spring, summer and fall. About the time the Northern
Colony had arranged to exclude the Southern Colony from free fishing,
the King stepped in, declaring that "if anything were passed in the New
England patent that might be prejudicial to the Southern Colony it was
done without his knowledge and that he has been abused thereby by those
that pretended otherwise to him." Finally, after a year-and-a-half of
cross-purposes, agreement was reached:
June 18, 1621. There was a petition exhibited unto His Majesty in
the name of the patentees and adventurers in the plantation of New
England concerning some difference between the Southern and
Northern Colonies, the said petition was by His Majesty referred to
the consideration of the Lords. Their Lordships, upon the hearing
and debating of the matter at large and by the consent of both
Colonies, did establish and confirm two former orders, the one
bearing date of the 16th of March 1620, agreed upon by the Duke of
Lenox and the Earl of Arundell; the other of the 21st of July 1620
ordered by the Board whereby it was thought fit that the said
colonies should fish at sea within the limits and bounds of each
other reciprocally, with this limitation that it be only for the
sustentation of the people of the Colonies there and for the
transportation of people into either Colony. Further it was ordered
at this time by their Lordships that they should have freedom of
the shore for drying of their nets and taking and saving of their
fish and to have wood for their necessary uses, by the assignment
of the Governors at reasonable rates. Lastly the patent of the
Northern Colony shall be renewed according to the premises, and
those of the Southern plantation to have a sight thereof before it
be engrossed and the former patent to be delivered into the hand of
the patentees.
In an effort to encourage Virginians to salt their own fish, an order
from London recommended the reopening of the old sea-water-evaporators
on Smith's island, off Cape Charles, where salt had been produced in
the first days. The Virginia Company advised the Governor and Council
in 1620:
The last commodity, but not of least importance for health, is
SALT: the works whereof having been lately suffered to decay; we
now intending to restore in so great plenty, as not only to serve
the Colony for the present, but as is hoped, in short time, the
great fishings on those coasts, a matter of inestimable advancement
to the Colony, do upon mature deliberation ordain as followeth:
First, that you the Governor and Council, do chose out of the
tenants for the Company, 20 fit persons to be employed in salt
works, which are to be renewed in Smith's Island, where they were
before; as also in taking of fish there, for the use of the Colony,
as in former times was also done. These 20 shall be furnished out
at the first, at the charges of the Company, with all implements
and instruments necessary for those works. They shall have also
assigned to each of them for their occupation or use, 50 acres of
land within the island, to be land of the Company. The one moiety
of salt, fish, and profits of the land shall be for the tenants,
the other for us the Company, to be delivered into our store: and
this contract shall be continued for five years.
The reply of Secretary of the Colony, John Pory, was something less
than complacent:
The last commodity spoken of in your charter is salt; the works
whereof, we do much marvel, you would have restored to their former
use; whereas I will undertake in one day to make as much salt by
the heat of the sun, after the manner used in France, Spain, and
Italy, as can be made in a year by that toilsome and erroneous way
of boiling sea water into salt in kettles as our people at Smith's
Island hitherto accustomed. And therefore when you enter into this
work, you must send men skillful in salt ponds, such as you may
easily procure from Rochell, and if you can have none there, yet
some will be found in Lymington, and in many other places in
England. And this indeed in a short time might prove a real work of
great sustenance to the Colony at home, as of gain abroad, here
being such schools of excellent fish, as ought rather to be admired
of such as have not seen the same, than credited. Whereas the
Company do give their tenants fifty acres upon Smith's Island some
there are that smile at it here, saying there is no ground in all
the whole island worth the manuring.
Following this exchange, attempts at salt making, especially on the
Eastern Shore where the waters were saltiest, were renewed. John Rolfe
reported in 1621:
At Dale's Gift, being upon the sea near unto Cape Charles, about
thirty miles from Kecoughtan, are seventeen inhabitants under
command of Lieutenant Cradock. All these are fed and maintained by
the Colony. Their labor is to make salt and catch fish....
Secretary Pory soon expressed his disagreement with the project in more
than words and succeeded in effecting the removal of the salt works to
a more convenient location. That this hardly fulfilled expectations is
evidenced by a letter written in 1628 to the King by the Governor and
Council:
Great likeliness of the certainty of bay salt, the benefit that
will thereby accrue to the Colony will be great, and they shall
willingly assist Mr. Capps in making his experiment, which, brought
to perfection, will draw a certain trade to them. And they hope
that the fishing upon their coasts will be very near as good as
Canada.
Mr. Capps, a citizen of Accomack, had proposed that if the Colony would
subsidize him he would undertake to supply it with salt from evaporated
sea water. His offer was accepted and the enterprise set up. After
waiting patiently and seeing little salt the Council took him to task.
His plea was the familiar one of most operations that fail: lack of
capital. He had worked hard, he said; he had all the firewood he needed,
workmen were available, and the sun shone bright. The bottle-neck was
too few evaporating pans. But apparently he had not won the Council's
confidence. The Capps salt company was dissolved.
Another one sprang up about 30 years later under the sponsorship of
Colonel Edmund Scarborough of Northampton County. Such was the public
interest aroused by this influential man, who, among other
distinctions, had been a Burgess between 1642 and 1659, that the
importation of salt into the county was prohibited to encourage him.
Finally, in 1666, this project was abandoned for reasons that remain
obscure. Most probably the quality of the product was inferior.
The salt shortage continued despite other random attempts to alleviate
it. For example, in 1660 one Daniel Dawen of Accomack was exempted from
taxes and granted public funds for his "experiments of salt."