On June 6, 1608, the heavens let loose on a small boat traveling up the Chesapeake Bay. Lightning flashed. Rain pounded. Gale-force winds tore off the mast and sail, and waves started to swamp the boat. It was a tense moment for the men on board: English explorer John Smith and a crew of settlers from the young Jamestown colony of Virginia. They had begun a marathon expedition to explore the bay and its tributaries in search of gold and silver. But now their plans, if not their lives, could be lost.
The 15 pairs of hands on board bailed furiously. Finally, they managed to paddle their way to an uninhabited island, where they repaired the sail using material from their own shirts, while the weather continued to rage. The storm did not deter Smith and his crew. On the afternoon of June 8, they resumed their journey, but not before naming the spot Limbo, “for the extremitie of gusts, thunder, raine, stormes, and ill wether.”
Today, we call this place Bloodsworth Island, and it is one stop along the new Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail. The route traces the more than 3,000 miles of waterways that Smith traveled between 1607 and 1609, as he explored the greater Chesapeake in an open wooden barge, or shallop. It is the first all-water route among the 25 national scenic and historic trails.
The trail can take you from Jamestown National Historic Site—where Smith and his fellow settlers established the first permanent English colony in America—up to the Susquehanna Flats at the head of the bay, where Massawomeck Indians presented Smith with gifts of venison and bear meat, and where kayakers now flock for smoother waters. Or you can follow the trail to the Potomac, Rappahannock, Susquehanna, and other rivers throughout the region.
Along the way, you might not experience the high-pitched drama Smith described in his journals: the storms, Indians who were “not sparing of their arrows,” food stores reduced to rotting bread, a near-fatal encounter with a stingray. Instead, you’ll probably come upon the quiet sanctuary of the tidal marshes along the lower Eastern Shore, where Smith and his crew found themselves “searching every inlet and Bay fit for harbours and habitations.” Here, quiet creeks meander through golden fields of saltmeadow hay, as the tangy smell of mud fills the air and osprey circle lazily far overhead. Only the occasional cry of a bird or surfacing of a fish breaks the silence.
The creators of the trail hope that the opportunity to connect with nature will invite people to learn more about one of American history’s most significant chapters, and, in turn, encourage more people to embrace the idea of environmental stewardship. “The trail gives us an incredible opportunity for people to experience the bay, understand why it’s so important, and learn how it’s changed,” says Trail Superintendent John Maounis.
And for a “hook” that will pull people into the history and onto the bay, you couldn’t find a more intriguing character than Captain John Smith. If you’re like most Americans, the name John Smith is indelibly connected with that of Pocahontas. As told in textbooks, movies, and in Smith’s own writing, the young daughter of an Algonquian chief rescued the captain after he was captured by Indians. Historians now doubt many details of this story and scoff at the Disney portrayal; some even believe Smith may have embellished his own account. Nevertheless, they agree that Smith played a seminal role in the nation’s history.
Born to a farming family in Lincolnshire, England, around 1580, Smith led a life of adventure before even stepping foot in the New World. He joined the military at 16 as a soldier of fortune. He saw battle throughout Europe, spent time as a pirate, was captured and enslaved by Turks, and traveled through North Africa. “He was tough as nails,” says John Page Williams, a naturalist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and author of Chesapeake: Exploring the Water Trail of Captain John Smith. “But Smith was eloquent, and he was bright.” He once spent months alone in the woods near Lincolnshire, reading the complete works of Roman emperor and political philosopher Marcus Aurelius. The budding explorer was also a quick study in languages and cultures, a talent that would serve him well in his travels among the diverse American Indian tribes he would meet throughout the Chesapeake Bay.
In 1606, Smith joined investors in a venture called the Virginia Company of London. They hoped to explore the bay region and profit from its resources, especially the gold and silver they hoped it contained. They also aimed to identify a water route from the bay to the Orient. With 143 other men and boys, Smith sailed from England and eventually settled along the James River on the bay’s Western Shore, at a place they called Jamestown, after England’s leader at the time, King James I.
In their first year, almost half the Jamestown settlers succumbed to disease, malnutrition, or Indian attacks. Smith, a member of the colony’s governing council and later its president, understood that to survive, the colonists would have to rely upon the Indians. He established a trade relationship with their chief, Powhatan—Pocahontas’ father. He also began to explore the region’s waters, starting with nearby rivers. Then, in the summer of 1608, he undertook two longer voyages on the bay.
First, Smith and a crew of 14 traversed the marshy lower Eastern Shore, journeyed up the bay near present-day Baltimore, and sailed up the Potomac River past what is now Washington, D.C. Later that summer, Smith and a dozen men set out again, sailing to the top of the bay to explore its headwaters and navigate its western rivers. Throughout, Smith gathered information about the area from his own careful observations and conversations with American Indians. Although the explorers found none of the gold or silver they desired, nor, of course, a Northwest Passage, Smith concluded that the region harbored great wealth of another sort—namely its forests, wildlife, and other natural resources.
After Smith returned to England in 1609, he published a detailed map of the Chesapeake region, along with an exhaustive account of all he had seen. He described the area’s forests, soil, animals, and climate. He wrote about the Indian tribes, noting the customs and languages that distinguished each. No detail was too small for the author, from the procedure Indians used to light a fire to the number of kernels found on an ear of corn (“betwixt 200 and 500 graines”).
Despite the perils Smith had faced, he had clearly fallen in love with this “goodly bay,” writing that “heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation.”
“All of his writings and map played into the designs and desire of the Virginia Company,” says Frederick Fausz, a professor of history at the University of Missouri and co-editor of The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. Readers could envision a land where anybody—not just the wealthy and noble—could “make it”; many historians credit Smith with laying the foundation for the American Dream. The English flocked to the area, starting the development of the mid-Atlantic region that continues to this day. (Smith’s legacy is not without blemish. In forming alliances with American Indian tribes, he sometimes employed deceit and brute force to ensure that bargains favored the English, practices that continued long after Smith’s time.)
It was a copy of Smith’s map that first kindled the notion of a John Smith Trail in the mind of Patrick Noonan, chairman emeritus of The Conservation Fund and one of the trail’s key champions. While studying the document several years ago, Noonan began to picture it as a “framework” for a national trail. He shared his idea with Gilbert Grosvenor, chairman of the board of the National Geographic Society, and the two began advancing a proposal for a new historic trail.
The research and legislative steps involved in creating a park unit can drag on for many years, but the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Water Trail came through in record time. In April 2006, Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), now retired, and Sen. John Warner (R-VA) introduced legislation to establish the trail. That December, President George W. Bush signed it into law. The bill had widespread bipartisan support and the backing of many agencies and organizations, including the National Park Service.
The next step is to hammer out a comprehensive management plan, a process that generally takes two years. The Park Service will manage the trail with the help of other federal agencies, state and local governments, and nonprofit organizations, but planners must now work out the details, such as the location of official access points and interpretive exhibits. For now, visitors can get to the trail through various sites along its length including public and private marinas, wildlife refuges, and state parks (some of which are included in the Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network; see www.baygateways.net for more information). Don’t have a boat? The Park Service may work with concessioners to offer boat trips and canoe rentals at points along the trail, but those discussions aren’t yet under way.
One thing that’s certain is that the heritage of American Indians will be a key component of the interpretation. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration already has plans to install three high-tech interpretive buoys equipped with wireless technology. The buoys will deliver historical information, real-time weather reports, and water-quality data to anyone who calls from a cell phone or logs on from a computer; the first buoy will be anchored near Jamestown.
Although the trail is in its planning stages, visitors needn’t wait to hop into a boat and follow in the wake of John Smith. John Page Williams hopes that visitors will borrow from Smith’s adventuring spirit and venture farther upriver than most boaters have in the past, far up the Rappahannock River, for example. Warriors from the Rappahannock tribe ambushed the explorers here around a place called Fones Cliffs, and Williams believes he knows the precise spot. A few fortunate travelers might even glimpse something else Smith witnessed himself: a sky full of eagles.
True, some things have changed on this river since Smith’s day, an inevitable consequence of a population in the watershed ballooning from 100,000 to more than 16 million. The trees along the shore are smaller, for one thing. More sediment clouds the river, as it does the overall bay. And developers are pushing to build houses in the area where Williams believes the ambush occurred. But the river and shore still retain much of their original beauty. By visiting such places, says Williams, boaters may get a sense of the “goodly bay” that enchanted Smith, and perhaps feel the urge to help return the sites to their past splendor. As he says, “You can’t go up the Rappahannock, see these eagles in the air or these fish in the water, and come away without saying, ‘Yes, this river wants to live.’”
