Customer Reviews

Landfall along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith

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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.