Part 4

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 £1,000 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.