Landfall along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith [Hardcover]

Susan Schmidt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 8, 2006

In 2002, Susan Schmidt retraced John Smith's 1608 voyage on the Chesapeake Bay. In Landfall along the Chesapeake, a cruising guide for Chesapeake boaters and a field log for naturalists, Schmidt compares the beauty of ancestral legacy and childhood memory to her observations on a 100-day voyage in a 22-foot boat.

As she circles the Bay counterclockwise from Jamestown, she explores Smith's encounters with Native Americans and the Bay's ecological changes over the past four hundred years. On each river and creek, she quotes Smith's journals on matching wits with Powhatan, meeting Pocahontas, surviving thunderstorms, ambush, and a stingray's barb. Anchored on wild creeks, Schmidt observes swans and dragonflies, lightning and sunsets; in port she interviews colorful characters and working watermen about blue crabs and oysters.

Scientists explain the Bay's nitrogen overload, water-level rise, anoxia, Pfiesteria, Kepone, and the Ghost Fleet. Native American chiefs discuss their heritage then and now. Ashore, Schmidt walks on her ancestor's farm, now a military chemical dump, and climbs her grandfather's lighthouse. Despite her despair at bad air quality and diminished fisheries, and her dread of high wind and rough seas, Schmidt expresses gratitude for small-town hospitality and the navigation skills her father taught her.

(2006)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this heartfelt celebration of Schmidt's childhood home on the Chesapeake Bay, the author invokes John Smith's 1607 exploration as she sails his original path, hoping that "storying" the land will help conserve it. Schmidt's effort, however, to compare her journey to Smith's is not entirely successful: she starts the journey after sticking her finger with a rusty fishhook, and her fears of getting skin cancer and being delayed by a broken boat are less than convincing parallels to the hardships of Smith's exploration. Schmidt presents a comprehensive look at Smith and his voyage of the Chesapeake Bay, though the tale of her own voyage does not measure up to her historic inspiration.
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Review

A delightful read. Quotations from John Smith's voyage of 1608 are coordinated with events, locations, and the contemporary ecological problems of the Chesapeake in an engaging fashion.

(Bryan MacKay, author of Hiking, Cycling, and Canoeing in Maryland and Baltimore Trails 2006)

A stirring chronicle... recommended for sailors, boaters, and anyone wanting to study the mastery of artful nonfiction.

(Delmarva Quarterly )

Weaving history, environmental concerns, and personal memoir, Landfall along the Chesapeake should find a welcome place on many bookshelves.

(William Bland Whitley Virginia Libraries )

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (February 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801882966
• ISBN-13: 978-0801882968
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,601,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A interesting first-person trip back and forth in time.., August 2, 2011

By 

Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Landfall along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith (Hardcover)

I got my copy of this book, autographed, from the gift shop at Jamestown. I had seen it a couple of times before and decided to pick it up. The author, Susan Schmidt, decides to follow the same pathway around the Chesapeake that John Smith did in the 17th Century. What she ends up doing is, really, giving us a history of the Bay, from when it was discovered by the English, to the present day. The history is mostly about the environment and the damage to the ecological system that is made up of rivers, ponds, birds, fish, and the bay itself. She shows us that climate change started well before the 20th Century and was noticed by people are far back as 1672. That isn't too strange, as Romans strip mining in Spain for copper left traces in the polar ice caps. We are a messy animal.

As my knowledge of John Smith, outside his actions at Jamestown, was slim the facts of his exploration of the Bay and his interaction with Native Americans not sitting right next to Jamestown was new and interesting. It gave me a fuller picture of the man as a leader of men and a human being too. Her visit to many of the towns and landings was also wonderful There is even a few towns, like Havre de Grace, whose websites I have visited - I may wish to visit them!

Sad to say, with all her information about Indians she in fact meets very few of them in the modern age - so many tribes do not exist anymore or were forced to withdraw deep into North America.

Also, I was somewhat surprised by her lack of knowledge - being she was a teacher and naturalist. For example, to my understanding the horseshoe crabs, their line, are as old as 445 million years. However, the Atlantic horseshoe crab itself has no fossil record at all, and the genus Limulus ranges back only some 20 million years, not 600 million. Of course, she could have meant horseshoe crabs in general. To cover some of the subjects I feel she kind of skimmed over I would suggest The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail, also the easy to get The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History and of course Jamestown Rediscovery 1994-2004. May I also suggest The Deadly Politics of Giving: Exchange and Violence at Ajacan, Roanoke, and Jamestown and a book she herself talked about Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay.