The Bounty of the Chesapeake: Fishing in Colonial VirginiaWharton, James
History
The Bounty of the Chesapeake: Fishing in Colonial Virginia
Wharton, James
Chesapeake Bay (Md. and Va.); Fisheries -- Virginia; Fishing -- Virginia
There is likewise great plenty of other fish all the summer long
and almost in every part of the rivers and brooks there are found
of different kinds. Wherefore I shall not pretend to give a detail
of them, but venture to mention the names only of such as I have
eaten and seen myself and so leave the rest to those that are
better skilled in natural history. However, I may add that besides
all those that I have met with myself, I have heard of a great many
very good sorts, both in the salts and freshes, and such people
too, as have not always spent their time in that country, have
commended them to me, beyond any they had ever eaten before.
Those which I know myself, I remember by the names of herring,
rock, sturgeon, shad, oldwife, sheepshead, black and red drums,
trout, taylor, greenfish, sunfish, bass, chub, plaice, flounder,
whiting, fatback, maid, wife, small turtle, crab, oyster, mussel,
cockle, shrimp, needlefish, bream, carp, pike, jack, mullet, eel,
conger eel, perch, and catfish.
Those which I remember to have seen there of the kinds that are not
eaten are the whale, porpoise, shark, dogfish, gar, stingray,
thornback, sawfish, toadfish, frogfish, land crabs, fiddlers, and
periwinkle.
Francis Makemie, often called the father of American Presbyterianism,
was concerned, in his _A Plain and Friendly Perswasive to the
Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland for Promoting Towns and
Cohabitations_, about the dearth of markets for fishery products. It
was a condition brought about largely by a general lack of money in
circulation. It was easily possible for entire families to subsist the
year around on the fruits of land and water plus unexacting manual
labor. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the more important
planters whose estates were usually self-sufficient and concentrating
on trade with England. The natural bounty of the Tidewater region thus
actually deterred the development of Virginia along the lines of New
England with its urban centers:
Cohabitation would not only employ thousands of people ... others
would be employed in hunting, fishing, and fowling, and the more
diligently if assured of a public market....
So also our fishing would be advanced and improved highly by
encouraging many poor men to follow that calling, and sundry sorts
which are now slighted would be fit for a town market, as sturgeon,
thornback, and catfish. Our vast plenty of oysters would make a
beneficial trade, both with the town and foreign traders, believing
we have the best oysters for pickling and transportation if
carefully and skillfully managed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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