... while visiting in Virginia. We went over to Jamestown on Tuesday. Rain was predicted, and we got in a little. I don't mind rain, or being in it, but do not like to get my feet wet and have to walk around or spend the rest of the day with wet socks and shoes on. I cannot abide cold clammy feet. Have been around long enough to know that cold feet make me miserable. And also know that warm and dry 'way down there at the far extreme part of my person are an absolute necessity. We kept mostly dry, so it was an interesting day.
Jamestown in a good distance up the James River from the coast, which I did not know. I would have thought they would have been so tired of being crammed together on those little boats the adventurous souls would have been desperate to get off and jumped as soon as they were close to solid land. It seems that their instructions from the king were to establish a permanent colony that would not be so easily seen or attacked. So the three little boats went in to find a good landing spot that would be suitable for building and settling that would not be near the coastline.
The James is a wide murky river, with a auto-ferry that delivers vehicles and pedestrians across near the original site. Several large boats that have ramps on either end for cars to enter and exit, that are, I assume operated by the state D.O.T, as there is no bridge in the area for crossing. There is something, a unique experience, really gratifying when you drive a car on a big boat, to be conveyed across a large body of water, arriving in safety and comfort on the other side. I've been on this ferry several times over the years, and would happily go again: open water, the wind in your face. Neat.
The 'original' settlement is in a state of continual digging. A private non-profit organization has owned about thirty acres since the late 1800's. The National Park Service owns much of the surrounding land, on an island, surrounded by low-lying, marshy areas that flood with the incoming tide. So their is a cooperative administration, with the both providing support and manpower. We had an interesting tour, by a well informed man who was part of the archeology team who has worked there for many years. Peeped into a brick church building that was being excavated, the dirt floor completely dug up to well below the line of outside earth. Several people with small hand tools were down in various holes, under bright flood lights carefully scraping away layers of soil, searching for bits of evidence: metal, buttons, buckles, ceramic sherds, bones, any clue that could be used to put together information about the earliest residents.
We were amazed at the information modern technology can provide with those little bits. Computer analysis can determine what sort of food they ate, what they ate it on, where they came from based on chemical composition of a tooth. Analyze bones for age, gender, whether the individual was upper class or peasant by their nutrition. How long they had been in the 'new world' could be determined: corn based diet or wheat based diet: new vs. old., high protein vs. high vegetable content. You see this sort of stuff in television shows, but it is really real. The insight computers can give are astounding.
Then we went to the place nearby, also on the river, run by the state of VA, where the replicas of the three boats are docked. "Susan Constant" is the largest, then "Godspeed" and "Discovery". Looking much too small to make trans-oceanic voyages safely. It is hard to believe the people who settled survived the trip across the Atlantic on those small boats. It took five months to get to their final destination, going by the Canary Islands, several stops at islands in the Caribbean for fresh water and supplies: twice the distance and time it would take to come straight over from England. But with no GPS or Mapquest - how would they know that?
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