Captain John Smith

"There is but one entrance by sea into this country, and that is at the mouth of a very goodly bay, 18 or 20 miles broad. The cape on the south is called Cape Henry, in honor of our most noble Prince. The land, white hilly sands like unto the Downs, and all along the shores rest plenty of pines and firs ... Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places known, for large and pleasant navigable rivers, heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation..."

- Captain John Smith, 1612

Smith's Journey

The real Captain (a military rather than maritime title) John Smith arrived at the mouth of the Bay in 1607 after a lengthy and rather miserable voyage across the Atlantic. Taken prisoner under mutiny charges during the trip, he discovered that the King of England had designated Smith a member of the newly formed governing council of Jamestown.

The first summer in Jamestown was dreadful, as many men died from disease and malnutrition. To escape the rivalries of the colony, find passage to the western ocean, discover gold and locate the colonists of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, Smith gathered 14 men for a voyage up the Chesapeake. Using only a "two to three tons burden" knock-down boat brought from England, the men set out on June 2, 1608.

Smith's Observations

Throughout this voyage and a second one later the same summer, Smith kept a journal of the incidents which befell his crew, along with detailed descriptions of his surroundings. He charted the land and waterways and later constructed an elaborate and remarkably accurate map of the Chesapeake Bay.

Despite summer thunderstorms, hostile encounters with the Natives and scant equipment to harvest the bounty of the Bay (they tried to use a frying pan to scoop fish from the water), the men managed to work their way north to the present site of the Bay Bridge, near Annapolis. Complaints from his men and strong winds finally forced Smith to turn and travel south along the Bay's western shore. There, they discovered the Potomac River, where they spent several weeks searching for gold and dodging Indian arrows.

Heading south once again, their tiny boat grounded on a shoal near the mouth of the Rappahannock River. There, Smith almost died when he speared a cownose ray with his sword and was stung by its poisonous tail spine; he recovered well enough by evening to dine on the ray. The area is still known as Stingray Point.

Changes since Smith's Time

If John Smith were to retrace his 1608 voyages, he would need more than his original map to follow the route. The Bay is dramatically different now—changed primarily at the hands of humans over the centuries.

Animals

Along with the sprawling development that has transformed the shoreline since the colonial period, the most apparent changes are in the quantity and types of animals that lived in and around the Bay. Back in Smith's days, oysters were so ubiquitous that they "lay as thick as stones." He wrote:

• There were more sturgeon (now rarely seen in the Bay) "than could be devoured by dog or man."
• "Of fish we were best acquainted with sturgeon, grampus, porpoise, seals, stingrays ... brits, mullets, white salmon [rockfish], trouts, soles, perch of three sorts" along with a variety of shellfish.

Although settlers died of starvation, their problem was not usually the lack of food in the Bay but rather their inability to effectively harvest these resources. Often the friendlier Indians had to take the inexperienced settlers in hand, teaching them how to trap the fish with weirs and chase the prey down with spears.

Land

The land surrounding the Bay also harbored a vast array of wildlife: bears, wolves, cougars, falcons, partridges, various waterfowl and a variety of animals named unfamiliarly in the old English language. Although the Indians had cleared small plots of land for agriculture and cleared the forest understory for firewood in some areas, much of the Bay watershed remained undisturbed. Smith remarked about cypress trees that were 18 feet around the base and up to 80 feet tall without a branch. Other trees, used by the Indians for dugout canoes, were so large that a canoe fashioned from a single tree could hold 40 men.

Water

Unlike the murky summertime waters of today's Chesapeake, the water during Smith's time was substantially clearer. Trees formed an almost continuous canopy around the Bay and its tributaries, holding eroding soil in place and dampening the power of torrential storms. Not only did less sediment and fewer nutrients wash into the water, but some scientists have speculated that the Bay was saltier because trees slowed freshwater runoff from the land. Phytoplankton grew, but did not overwhelm the Bay as they do now. The Bay changed with the days and seasons, constantly shifting with the rhythms of nature—a delicate yet dynamic balance.