rely fishing for sturgeon cannot be worth less
than L1,000 a year, leaving herring and cod as possibilities....

We have a good fishing for mussels which resemble mother-of-pearl,
and if the pearl we have seen in the king's ears and about their
necks come from these shells we know the banks.

The crab "able to suffice four men" could scarcely have been other than
the horseshoe. It has never been considered a delicacy.

It is usually by contraries that the truth is determined. Even in the
midst of the apparent plenty of fish, fishing crews sometimes came home
empty-handed after continued effort. Often storms interfered.

From personal experience John Smith was able to sound the warning about
Chesapeake weather:

Our mast and sail blew overboard and such mighty waves overraked us
in that small barge that with great danger we kept her from sinking
by freeing out the water.

The winds are variable, but the like thunder and lightning to
purify the air I have seldom either seen or heard in Europe.

As if struck by the helplessness of the settlers, a compassionate chief
extended aid to them in 1608. A letter from Francis Perkins tells the
story:

So excessive are the frosts that one night the river froze over
almost from bank to bank in front of our harbour, although it was
there as wide as that of London. There died from the frost some
fish in the river, which when taken out after the frost was over,
were very good and so fat that they could be fried in their own fat
without adding any butter or such thing....

Their own great emperor or the wuarravance, which is the name of
their kings, has sent some of his people that they may teach us how
to sow the grain of this country and to make certain traps with
which they are going to fish.

A letter from the Council in Virginia to the Virginia Company in London
in 1610 shows that such favors were returned:

Whilst we were fishing divers Indians came down from the woods unto
us and ... I gave unto them such fish as we took ... for indeed at
this time of the year [July] they live poor, their corn being but
newly put into the ground and their own store spent. Oysters and
crabs and such fish as they take in their weirs is their best
relief.

Oysters occurred in vast banks and shoals within sight of the Jamestown
fort. During the 1609-10 "starving time" a minimum force was r