|
The John Smith shallop anchors at sunset off Doug Kennedy's property in Occohannock Creek, near Exmore on Virginia's Eastern Shore, five days after leaving Jamestown.
The first talking buoy on the Captain John Smith Chesapeake Water Trail
The crew of Sultana Projects' John Smith shallop rows up the Rappahannock River after breaking camp |
By CLINT SCHEMMER
As the John Smith shallop glided toward Fredericksburg last week, word of its approach up the Rappahannock River spread like wildfire. Neighbors, friends and family telegraphed the news from house to house, to the effect of "The shallop's coming! The shallop's coming!"
On Burnley Farm near Sealston in King George County, owner Anna Smith got a call from a downstream relative. She jumped in her pickup and sped down the gravel lane from her house to the riverbank just in time to glimpse the odd, bargelike boat as it passed by.
A few miles upriver in Stafford's River Bend subdivision, three friends broke off their morning walk to hurry back home in hopes of spotting the vessel from their backyards on the river.
The same sort of thing, no doubt, is happening as the shallop nears Deltaville for tomorrow's Great Chesapeake Shallop Races at Fishing Bay Yacht Club.
That's just the sort of excitement the creators of America's newest trail--nearing the end of its inauguration this summer by the crew of the shallop--hoped it would generate.
Powered only by sail and oar, the boat's 1,500-mile voyage is bringing attention to a previously little-known piece of American history: Smith's daring explorations of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. And it's blazing the way on the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, the United States' first water trail.
The water route, signed into law in December by President Bush, is part of the National Trails System created by Congress in 1968 to promote outdoor recreation and preserve nationally significant historic resources. The Appalachian Trail is perhaps the best-known of its jewels.
The shallop set off from Jamestown May 12 at the height of the 400th anniversary celebration of the colony's founding. By the time it returns Sept. 8, officials estimate a million people will have seen it and learned about Smith and the trail.
Before this summer, Smith's voyages hadn't gotten much ink, at least in modern times. Detailed histories of Jamestown mentioned only in passing that the cocky Englishman took a little boat to the head of the Chesapeake and its rivers, the first European to explore the region.
Smith tried to make sure history wouldn't forget him. He left a vivid account of his adventures, "The General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles," published in 1624. Twelve years earlier, he had published a map of the bay and its rivers, tracing every nook and cranny.
"It's amazing. He mapped with a stunning level of accuracy," Michael Scott, a geoscientist who analyzed Smith's chart with a team from Maryland's Salisbury University, told LiveScience.com.
"He's out there in this little boat navigating the hazards of uncharted territory, and he was able to capture most major bends of the rivers and everything is pretty close to scale. His map was so accurate that it was used as the prototype of the bay for more than 100 years."
Publication of Smith's map prompted thousands of Europeans to risk crossing the Atlantic to try their luck in the New World.
"It raised the profile of what the whole Chesapeake had to offer . It almost acted like a blueprint for future colonization," said Chris Cerino, vice president of Sultana Projects, the Chestertown, Md., nonprofit that built the John Smith shallop.
SMITH'S EXPLORATIONS
For their moment in history, Smith's 1607-1608 voyages were as epic as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's cross-country expedition nearly 200 years later, said Patrick Noonan, The Conservation Fund's chairman emeritus.
Covering more than 1,700 miles in just over three months, Smith and his men saw a Chesapeake scarcely imaginable today--thoroughly settled by American Indians, its shores "frequented with wolues, Beares, Deere and other wild beasts [sic]."
In prose worthy of Madison Avenue, Smith concluded, "Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation."
Besides its beasts, the bay teemed with fish and shellfish of all kinds. For food, he and his crew speared 8-foot-long sturgeon.
Oysters "lay as thick as stones," Smith wrote. His shallop had to navigate around mounds of them that poked out of the water at low tide. Now, that fishery is nearly dead.
Overall, today's pollution-crippled bay is only about 25 percent as productive as the estuary they explored, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
DREAMS FOR THE TRAIL
The foundation and other organizations supporting the new trail believe it will kindle fresh interest in the environment, history and the Chesapeake's native peoples.
"The shallop, the map, the diaries, and most of all, the adventure all inspire us to learn more about the fragile ecosystem of Jamestown and our Chesapeake Bay," Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, told observers at the shallop's Jamestown launch. "What a great way to bring geography and history to life!"
Already, the water trail has spawned two new books. "Chesapeake: Exploring the Water Trail of Captain John Smith," by naturalist John Page Williams Jr., is a beautifully illustrated primer on the trail's people and places. The other, "John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages, 1607-1609," by Helen C. Rountree, Wayne E. Clark and Kent Mountford, is a thorough, scholarly examination of the bay during Smith's time.
Chickahominy tribal chief Stephen Adkins and other American Indian leaders in Virginia hope the water trail helps focus attention on their heritage. They note that Smith and company could never have faced the perils of their several voyages in 1607 and 1608, without the provisions and passage given by members of the Powhatan confederacy.
The water trail and the Jamestown quadricentennial have helped publicize the new Virginia Indian Heritage Trail, which tells the stories of the eight state-recognized tribes and links 24 places to visit, from reservations to tribal centers.
COMING ALONG, ONLINETraditional trails are marked with signs and maps. The John Smith trail, which is under development, is marked by interactive Web sites, virtual maps, classroom guides and a high-tech buoy network for techies and armchair adventurers.
The John Smith Four Hundred Project's Web site allows people to chart the shallop's progress through regularly updated videos, photos and crew journals.
The National Geographic Society has created a bevy of John Smith, Chesapeake and Jamestown online features, including a family travel guide and a game for children. The Bay Foundation, Conservation Fund and Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network are also devoting cyberspace to the topic.
As the first guideposts along the water trail, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--the U.S. government's oldest supporter of environmental research--has deployed three high-tech buoys that monitor weather and water quality, relate 17th-century history and talk to callers via cell phone and the Internet.
And the trail has its own friends group (complete with Facebook site), which links its supporters and will weigh in as the National Park Service develop a management plan for the trail.
All the parties agree on how important furthering Chesapeake conservation is to the trail's mission. Cerino said Sultana hopes its shallop's trek will "encourage people to consider action that might lessen their impact on this body of water, so that 400 years from now, in 2407, someone can look out and say, 'Wow, I'm so glad we took action to preserve this national treasure.'"
The shallop's captain and crew want their arduous voyage, now in Day 106, to motivate others to enjoy and appreciate what's right at their feet.
"What I want people to take from the trip is the fact that in their front yard, in their waterfront community, passes the newest unit of the country's national parks, a national historic water trail," said crew spokesman Austin Hall.
"With the trail and our trip, I hope people are inspired to get out on the bay and its rivers. For people to appreciate them, they have to get out on the water."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Clint Schemmer: 540/368-5029
| In Deltaville tomorrow, all three replica shallops (or barges) built on the bay--by Sultana Projects, the Reedville Fishermen's Museum and the Deltaville Maritime Museum--will race one another. This evening, their crews will be welcomed at a reception benefiting the three museums. Black Americans highlight their contributions to U.S. society over the past 400 years during the "Virginia Black Expo: A Cultural and Commerce Exposition" in Hampton today and yesterday.
The "World of 1607" is on view at the Jamestown Settlement Museum near Williamsburg until next April. The special exhibition puts America's first permanent English colony in a global context, explaining the bigger race for discovery and commerce of which it was a part. Artifacts from collections around the world include a 15th-century copy of the Magna Carta, a 16th-century African ivory carving and items from the Virginia Company, the enterprise that bankrolled the Jamestown settlers. "Jamestown, Quebec, Santa Fe: Three North American Beginnings," at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, surveys the simultaneous colonization of America north of Mexico by three world powers. Displaying 150 rare European and American Indian artifacts from this early period, it tells the stories of the first permanent English settlement in 1607, the first permanent French settlement in 1608 and the chartering of the first villa in New Mexico in 1609. The show ends Sept. 3. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will welcome leaders and students from dozens of democracies to Williamsburg on Sept. 16-19. Hosted by Colonial Williamsburg and the College of William & Mary, The Forum on the Future of Democracy will culminate a yearlong series of Jamestown conferences. It isn't open to the public. |
|
Deltaville shallop races: fbyc.net
johnsmith400.org nationalgeographic.com/chesapeake friendsofthejohnsmith trail.org baygateways.net/smith cbf.typepad.com/ nps.gov/cajo/ buoybay.net virginia.org/johnsmith trail |
|
Wondering what the waves are like off Jamestown Island or at the mouth of the Potomac? Want to hit the John Smith trail from your La-Z-Boy?
You can do all that and more via new "smart" buoys that are collecting data on the Chesapeake's water and atmospheric conditions and transmitting it wirelessly to cell phones and the Web. The first of three buoys was placed off Jamestown just in time for the May 12 departure of the John Smith shallop. Two more were put in the bay this summer, and the shallop acts as a "fourth buoy," carrying its own sophisticated instrumentation, said Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which created the They aren't just for boaters and fishermen. Landlubbers can get up-to-the-minute information from the buoys--which mark the new water trail and provide historical information about their locations--by calling 877-BUOY-BAY or visiting NOAA's special Web site, buoybay.org. |
|
The John Smith water trail is the newest thing on the national scene, but it has some smaller-scale company here in the commonwealth.
Local activists recently created a water trail along the Rappahannock River to guide paddlers and encourage conservation. The Rappahannock River Water Trail runs from Kelly's Ford near Remington to Fredericksburg's City Dock, and includes part of the Rapidan River from Eley's Ford to the confluence of the Rappahannock and Rapidan. With a $109,000 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network, Friends of the Rappahannock published a water-resistant guide for travelers that notes historical, environmental and natural points Virginia is working with other states and the federal government to develop the John Smith water trail and the land-based Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Trail, both of which transect the Fredericksburg area. In mid-state, the James River Association and the Virginia Paddlers Association are establishing the James River Heritage Water Trail, like the Rappahannock route. The 400-mile trail will extend from the James' headwaters near Hot Springs to Cape Henry. Maps for the middle and lower stretches are available, and headwaters and bay maps should be published next year. Lastly, the state has created Captain John Smith's Trail on the James, a 40-site water route and auto tour for modern explorers. Three loops, each with a map, tell travelers where to hike, camp and launch boats, and describe historic sites and natural features. |
