efficient trawl-nets, and
fished with gang-lines of baited hooks, as it still is today. The cool
temperatures over many months of the year made the catches much less
perishable. Conditions favored an organized fish-salting industry.

Though the Jamestown people had easy access to some 3,000 square miles
of inland tidal water and were only a little way from the open sea,
they never developed their marine riches. One good reason was that
their original aims were in other directions. When the first intentions
to colonize New England came to the King's notice, he asked the leaders
what drew them there. The one-word answer: "Fishing." If the Virginians
had been similarly queried they would have given various replies, but
certainly not that one.

In describing the fisheries of New England, John Smith had enthused:

Let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will
afford us good gold as the mines of Guiana or Tumbata, with less
hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility.

The need for fishermen in Virginia was officially recognized to only a
slight degree. A 1610 memorandum from the Virginia Council to the
authorities in London asked that an effort be made to include among the
next immigrants 20 fishermen and 6 net makers. Select them with care
was the word sent out in England by means of a broadside issued by the
Council of Virginia, December, 1610:

Whereas the good ship called the _Hercules_ is now preparing and
almost in a readiness with necessary provisions to make a supply to
the Lord Governor and the Colony in Virginia, it is thought meet,
for the avoiding of such vagrant and unnecessary persons as do
commonly proffer themselves being altogether unserviceable, that
none but honest sufficient artificers, as carpenters, smiths,
coopers, fishermen, brickmen, and such like, shall be entertained
into this voyage. Of whom so many as will in due time repair to the
house of Sir Thomas Smith in Philpot Lane, with sufficient
testimony to their skill and good behavior, they shall receive
entertainment accordingly.

It was only a question of time before the Virginia colonists would,
though surrounded all the while by their own huge marine resources,
subsist on salt fish from the North. Sir Thomas Dale, governor from
1611 to 1616, perceived the trend. One of his first moves was to ask
the President of the Virginia Company to provide men trained enou