Part 5

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 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 £40 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, 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 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.