Part 2

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¢ Each

Printed in the United States of America

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THE BOUNTY OF THE CHESAPEAKE

Fishing in Colonial Virginia

JAMES WHARTON

The University Press of Virginia Charlottesville

Copyright© 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: