Landfall Along the Chesapeake

In the Wake of Captain John Smith
Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8296-8
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 149 mm x 223 mm, Gewicht: 449 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schmidt, Susan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Indigene Völker
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Ökologie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Sachbuch, Reise

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Waking up John Smith
The James River
Jamestown
Chickahominy River
Downriver to Hampton Roads
Heading Out: The Eastern Shore
Cape Henry
Cherrystone Creek
The Lower Shore
Tangier
Crisfield
Nanticoke River
Bishops Head
Hooper Island Passage
Choptank River
The Tred Avon
Oxford to St. Michaels
Wye Island
Kent Narrows
Chester River
Chester River to Bohemia River
Havre de Grace
Turning South: The Western Shore
Gunpowder Peninsula and Pooles Island
Baltimore
Annapolis
Deale to Patuxent River
Solomons
Washington
Potomac River
Reedville
Road Trip
Dividing Creek
Fleets Bay
Indian Creek
Rappahannock River
Carters Creek
Piankatank River
Mobjack Bay
York River
Mattaponi River
Aylett
Walkerton and Werowocomoco
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggested Further Reading
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Schmidt, Susan
Susan Schmidt, a Virginia native, rows, gardens, and plays music in North Carolina near Cape Lookout and Asheville. A naturalist and poet, she has worked as an English teacher, editor, and policy scientist. A licensed captain, she grew up sailing the Chesapeake Bay, where her family has lived for almost four hundred years.