Friday, November 11, 2016

Learning about Menhaden

Current Position: 37° 51' 45" N  76° 17' 30" W

Another catch up blogpost from a few weeks ago.

Have you figured out where we were yet?  Still waiting for OUR boat so we decided to take a short trip down the Virginia coast.  We were on what is called the "Northern Neck" of Virginia in a tiny town called Reedville.  We spent the day exploring some civil war battlefields in and around Fredericksburg, and then wine tasting (note the LARGE corkscrew. there were two of these at the entrance to the winery because the city wouldn't let them have a sign larger than small - LOL!) with Mike and Shannon Finnegan - friends we hadn't seen for twenty + years!  They graciously hosted us in their marvelous home that night, took us to church with them in the morning and fed us again before sending us on our way.  We visited the Reedville Fishermen's museum (www.rfmuseum.org) and learned so much about the area and a type of fishing we had never heard of before.  Reedville was and still is home to the fishing industry for Atlantic menhaden, a very small oily fish found in the coastal waters here. They have no teeth! They travel in HUGE schools making it very easy to catch as long as you work fast before the schools break apart. They process it for the fish oil and the remainder of the fish becomes additives for many animal foods due to it's high protein content.  Reedville is a tiny town with beautiful old homes along Cockrell Creek on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

We also learned how Soy Beans grow!  We kept seeing huge fields of some plant that had never been harvested.  Shannon told us it was soy beans.  I learned that they use the beans to feed the livestock so they are harvested dry like the corn that is used for feed.  Never too old to learn.  Love it!!

It was a lovely get away weekend.  

Meanwhile - our future boat (where-ever you are) will be named "The Good Life".  Dana Blanchard is the winner.  For those who don't know the show - check out "Good Neighbors" with Felicity Kendall.  A favorite show from the BBC AND a great name for our boat :)  Thanks Dana for wonderful memories.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

The Beginning of the USA

Current Position: 42° 5' 48" N  79° 14' 8" W

We are taking a few side adventures as we search for "Our Boat" hence forth to be referred to as "The Good Life".  Credit goes to Dana Blanchard for the name.  Thanks, Dana, for the fond memories that name brings.  As I am writing this we are traveling the east coast looking for her.  

We stopped here for a wonderful day of exploration:




We were amazed to discover the wonderful opportunities to learn about Jamestown and the first settlement in America.  There are actually two sites to explore.  The first one we toured is near the original site and is a living history site with the docents dressed in period costumes.  They are all very knowledgeable on many different aspects of colonial life.  Before we entered the "living history" area we spent nearing 2 hours in the museum area watching videos, reading plaque after plaque and walking through mock ups of buildings. It was all very interesting but was a little overwhelming. 

Outside we toured a partial Powhatan Indian village.  These indians were the tribe that both helped and fought the new colonists.  Their homes were quite permanent - not like the "Teepee's" of the plains Indians. These pictures are the homes of families.  There is evidence of larger structures that had halls and rooms for the their "government". The women built the homes, farmed, and cooked.  The men hunted, fished, and fought.





This young man was greeting all the visitors.  He had just killed and skinned a rattlesnake and was preparing to cook it!


Next we toured one of the boats the first settlers came over in.  This was the route they took.


On this tiny ship - and this was the biggest of the three!!

 This is style of dress of the sailors!
This is the tiller and cannons below deck where part of the crew slept as well as the passengers.  This ship sailed before the Dutch invented the wheel to steer ships by.  The tiller was controlled by a sailor below decks and an officer on the quarter deck shouting instructions down to him. The sailor steering couldn't see outside!


I think I would have liked to be on deck with this view rather than stuffed below.  How it must have STUNK down there! In the single main room about the size of a large living room, 54 passengers slept and lived with their livestock!!

Here are the specifics about the boat - can you imagine what life was like?

Lastly we toured the re-creation of the fort.

The buildings were mostly thatched roofs.  There were no women at first.  One of the docents said to imagine a fire department where the best cook is nominated to cook.  Sounds like they ate a lot of stew.
 What a soldier looked like - he fired his gun for us twice.  Not the quickest thing in the world to fire!




This gentleman was in the weapons storage.  He is wearing a bandolier.  It is comprised of single shot canisters of gunpowder.  In the pouch at his waist was the firing powder and the "slow match".  A length of rope chemically treated to slow it's burning rate.  It lasts about an hour and is used to light the firing powder. Needless to say this young man is a walking powder keg and when the paper cartridge was invented the bandolier was thankfully retired. 


Lastly we went to the actual site of Jamestown.  It has been long believed that the settlement land had been reclaimed by the James River.  Due to the diligence of one man who didn't believe that, the last 23 years have been spent recovering the artifacts that have been buried for the last 400 years.
 This is the barracks where they lived.  The section in the middle was the fireplace.
 Our guide was one of the archeologists on the "dig".  This is a section being excavated currently and she explained how slowly and carefully this 10x10 ft site is explored with just a small trowel and a brush so as not to destroy any artifact.
This is a picture of the excavation where the soil colors show where wood deteriorated.  The wood is gone but the changes in color tell the story.  The large uneven dark area is a cellar that was filled with trash after the cellar was no longer used for its original purpose.  To the left you can see a trench that had been dug to build the walls of the fort.  Within these trenches were found the square shape of each post of the wall.

 Fish was a staple of the indians and settlers diets.  Specifically Sturgeon.  The bottom scale is from a modern day Sturgeon but the top on is the size found in the "garbage cellars" of the dig.  They calculate the fish averaged 600 pounds and were 16 ft long!  During the drought ("the starving time") that nearly killed the entire settlement the Sturgeon couldn't survive in the river due to the high salt content and the settlers didn't have nets small enough to catch the smaller fish! Jamestown nearly didn't survive this drought and had literally packed up and were headed back to England when a supply ship arrived and turned them back to the settlement.
 This is the original shape of the fort.  It was later enlarged to a pentagon shape - the first pentagon :)

Pocahontas has been romanticized a lot but she was a key piece in the development of our country.  After her marriage to John Rolf, a peaceful time developed between the settlers and indians as she was the daughter of the chief.  

More and more is being discovered - some tragic with the discovery that cannibalism existed during the starving time - but most uncovering the true story of our country's beginning in the struggles and successes of our countrymen.