Every passing year brought home to the steadily growing Colony the need of improving its fishing practices. Most nets had to be bought in England. Here is a London item from a 1623 List of Subscribers and Subscriptions for Relief of the Colony: "Richard Tatem will adventure [speculate] in cheese and fishing nets the sum of £30 sterling."
Jamestown had by 1624 begun to spawn little Jamestowns throughout the countryside. A census was ordered of all settlements. In January, 1625, there were 1209 white persons, and 23 negroes. This first American census listed, among general provisions, the stocks of salt fish. On hand at thirteen settlements was 58,380 pounds. James City had the largest supply, 24,880 pounds. Elizabeth City was next with 10,550 pounds. A community listed only as "Neck of Land" adjacent to Jamestown, consisting of perhaps ten dwellings and plantations, had 4,050 pounds. The smallest store, 450 pounds, was credited to another "Neck of Land" in Charles City. From the accumulated evidences of disorganized home fishing, coupled with the deficiency of salt, it is to be concluded that most of this supply had come from the Northern fishing grounds.
There were 40 boats of various sizes and uses listed in this census. For example, at Jamestown a "barque of 40 tons, a shallop of 4 tons and one skiff" were among the ten there.
A token of the stress resulting from inadequate fisheries even after 16 years of active colonization is this letter preserved in the records of the Virginia Company. A Virginia citizen named Arundle in 1623 wrote to his friend, Mr. Caning, in London:
The most evident hope from altogether starving is oysters, and for the easier getting of them I have agreed for a canoe which will cost me 6 livres sterling.
Emigrants had been advised not to leave for Virginia without some fishing equipment. In his Travels, John Smith had included the warning: "A particular of such necessaries as either private families or single persons shall have cause to provide to go to Virginia ... nets, hooks and lines must be added."
Records of the Virginia Company in London throw light on the extensiveness of the fish trade. Robert Bennett wrote from Virginia to Edward Bennett in London in 1623:
My last letter I wrote you was in the Adam from Newfoundland, which I hope you shall receive before this. God send her back in safety and this from Canada. I hope the fish will come to a good reckoning for victuals is very scarce in the country. Your Newfoundland fish is worth 30s. per hundred, your dry Canada [fish] £3, 10s. and the wet £5, 10s. per hundred. I do not know nor hear of any that is coming hither with fish but only the Tiger which went in company with the Adam from this place and I know the country will carry away all this forthwith.
And again from the records of the Company, this extract from An Account of Sums Subscribed and Supplies Sent Since April, dated July 23, 1623:
... We have received advice that from Canada there departed this last month a ship called Furtherance with above forty thousand of that fish which is little inferior to ling for the supply of the Colony in Virginia and that fish is worth not less than £600.