Whereas the good ship called the Hercules is now preparing and almost in a readiness with necessary provisions to make a supply to the Lord Governor and the Colony in Virginia, it is thought meet, for the avoiding of such vagrant and unnecessary persons as do commonly proffer themselves being altogether unserviceable, that none but honest sufficient artificers, as carpenters, smiths, coopers, fishermen, brickmen, and such like, shall be entertained into this voyage. Of whom so many as will in due time repair to the house of Sir Thomas Smith in Philpot Lane, with sufficient testimony to their skill and good behavior, they shall receive entertainment accordingly.
It was only a question of time before the Virginia colonists would, though surrounded all the while by their own huge marine resources, subsist on salt fish from the North. Sir Thomas Dale, governor from 1611 to 1616, perceived the trend. One of his first moves was to ask the President of the Virginia Company to provide men trained enough to build a coastal trade in furs, corn and fish:
Let me intreat that we may have both an admiral and hired mariners, to be all times resident here. The benefit will quickly make good the charge as well by a trade of furs to be obtained with the savages in the northern rivers to be returned home as also to furnish us here with corn and fish. The waste of such men all this time whom we might trust with our pinnaces leaves us destitute this season of so great a quantity of fish as not far from our own bay would sufficiently satisfy the whole Colony for a whole year.
There were no boats available even for simple oystering. During the term of the stringent Governor Dale some disaffected colonists tried to escape in a shallop and a barge, which were "all the boats that were then in the Colony."
Ironically punctuating the sagas of hardship were the marveling descriptions publicized in England. Corroborating the mouth-watering tales of Smith, William Strachey wrote in 1612:
To the natural commodities which the country has of fruit, beasts, and fowl, we may also add the no mean commodity of fish, of which, in March and April, are great shoals of herrings, sturgeon, great store commonly in May if the year be forward. I have been at the taking of some before Algernoone fort and in Southampton river in the middle of March, and they remain with us June, July, and August and in that plenty as before expressed.
Shad, great store, of a yard long and for sweetness and fatness a reasonable food fish; he is only full of small bones, like our barbels in England. There is the garfish, some of which are a yard long, small and round like an eel and as big as a mare's leg, having a long snout full of sharp teeth.
Oysters there be in whole banks and beds, and those of the best. I have seen some thirteen inches long. The savages use to boil oysters and mussels together and with the broth they make a good spoon meat, thickened with the flour of their wheat and it is a great thrift and husbandry with them to hang the oysters upon strings ... and dried in the smoke, thereby to preserve them all the year.
There be two sorts of sea crabs. One our people call a king crab and they are taken in shoal waters from off the shore a dozen at a time hanging one upon another's tail; they are of a foot in length and half a foot in breadth, having legs and a long tail. The Indians seldom eat of this kind. There is a shellfish of the proportion of a cockle but far greater [conch]. It has a smooth shell, not ragged as our cockles; 'tis good meat though somewhat tough.
And, according to Alexander Whitaker in 1613: