Following a Long-Ago Shallop

An old shallop, which can be moved by oars or sail. A vessel like this is ideal for creeks and other shallow waters.

Smith went mostly by water in a craft resembling the fat, double-ended Navy lifeboats of recent memory. He called it both a shallop and a barge. It was thirty feet long, crewed by a dozen or so, moved by six oars with one stout fellow on each oar, thus working in two shifts. When the wind was fair they hoisted a sail. When the sun was too hot or the rain too hard, they rigged a tarp. Nearly all, including the captain himself, learned everything they knew about boats, oars, and sails, there and then.  

  The immediate upshot of my survey was that 3 of the 27 mapped crosses had to be eliminated, namely a pair on the divide between Raleigh’s extinct Roanoke colony and the new and stumbling but ultimately successful Jamestown colony. The two look very close to what today is the Virginia-North Carolina state line, an area Smith never personally visited. Ditto another cross mapped below Cape Henry, not too far south of Rudee Inlet. It must have represented a sight boundary, perhaps the first land a ship saw approaching the Virginia capes on the customary sailing ship course in from the West Indies. With 3 gone, it left 24.

  The second thing to emerge, that seemed hopeful, was that so many sites were in public parks. The Friends markers would amount to one more layer in the historical themes of various county, state, and federal lands that welcomed the public. As for the rest—private land, commercial land, military reservations—in the years to come, none of the parties involved gave a flat refusal and most were welcoming. Nowhere was Capt. Smith anything but popular. The 400th celebration was having its effect.