hn Rolfe
reported in 1621:

At Dale's Gift, being upon the sea near unto Cape Charles, about
thirty miles from Kecoughtan, are seventeen inhabitants under
command of Lieutenant Cradock. All these are fed and maintained by
the Colony. Their labor is to make salt and catch fish....

Secretary Pory soon expressed his disagreement with the project in more
than words and succeeded in effecting the removal of the salt works to
a more convenient location. That this hardly fulfilled expectations is
evidenced by a letter written in 1628 to the King by the Governor and
Council:

Great likeliness of the certainty of bay salt, the benefit that
will thereby accrue to the Colony will be great, and they shall
willingly assist Mr. Capps in making his experiment, which, brought
to perfection, will draw a certain trade to them. And they hope
that the fishing upon their coasts will be very near as good as
Canada.

Mr. Capps, a citizen of Accomack, had proposed that if the Colony would
subsidize him he would undertake to supply it with salt from evaporated
sea water. His offer was accepted and the enterprise set up. After
waiting patiently and seeing little salt the Council took him to task.
His plea was the familiar one of most operations that fail: lack of
capital. He had worked hard, he said; he had all the firewood he needed,
workmen were available, and the sun shone bright. The bottle-neck was
too few evaporating pans. But apparently he had not won the Council's
confidence. The Capps salt company was dissolved.

Another one sprang up about 30 years later under the sponsorship of
Colonel Edmund Scarborough of Northampton County. Such was the public
interest aroused by this influential man, who, among other
distinctions, had been a Burgess between 1642 and 1659, that the
importation of salt into the county was prohibited to encourage him.
Finally, in 1666, this project was abandoned for reasons that remain
obscure. Most probably the quality of the product was inferior.

The salt shortage continued despite other random attempts to alleviate
it. For example, in 1660 one Daniel Dawen of Accomack was exempted from
taxes and granted public funds for his "experiments of salt."

The trouble that attended obtaining salt in needed quantity and of
satisfactory quality accompanied the development of Virginia right up
to George Washington's time.

Despite all attempts to the contrary, reliance on sa