At the time he wrote Virginians were beginning to compete with Canadians and New Englanders in exporting salt fish, particularly to the West Indies, where a large proportion of them were exchanged for the rum so freely used on the plantations as slave rations.
There were no dams barring access to the highest reaches of the rivers and no cities and factories to discharge pollution, so that the river-herring and shad made their way far inland even to the Blue Ridge mountains. There the pioneers awaited them eagerly each spring and salted down a supply to tide them over till the next run. Small wonder, then, that the love of salt herring—always with corn bread—became ingrained in so many Old Virginians!
They had an illustrious exemplar. Once, in 1782, when George Washington was due to visit Robert Howe the honored host wrote to a friend: "General Washington dines with me tomorrow. He is exceedingly fond of salt fish."
Despite obstacles a healthy experimentation in the various phases of fishing was now and then manifest. For example, in 1710 one adventurous fisherman wished to extend the home fisheries to whaling and applied to the Virginia Council for a license. Whales, though not common in Chesapeake bay or the ocean area near it, had been noted from time to time ever since the birth of the Colony. Most often they were washed ashore dead. John Custis, of Northampton County, succeeded in making 30 barrels of oil from one such in 1747. The year before that a live one was spotted in the James river by some Scottish sailors who were able to comer it in shallow water. After killing it, they found it to measure 54 feet! The Virginia Gazette, published in Williamsburg, carried this item in 1751:
Some principal gentlemen of the Colony, having by voluntary subscription agreed to fit out vessels to be employed in the whale fishery on our coast, a small sloop called the Experiment was some time ago sent on a cruise, and we have the pleasure to acquaint the public that she is now returned with a valuable whale. Though she is the first vessel sent from Virginia in this employ, yet her success, we hope, will give encouragement to the further prosecution of the design which, we doubt not, will tend very much to the advantage of the Colony as well as excite us to other profitable undertakings hitherto too much neglected.
Commented John Blair in his Diary on the incident: "Heard our first whale brought in and three more struck but lost." The Experiment continued its whaling career successfully for three years. When it retired, no similar enterprise replaced it. Yet in a list of exports from Virginia for the year ending September 30, 1791, 1263 gallons of whale oil appears. Even today whales are occasionally represented in Virginia fishery products, as when one is washed up on a beach and removed by the Coast Guard to a processing plant to be turned into meal and oil.
The overall value of Virginia's fisheries as an industrial resource was glacially slow in reaching public consciousness. Here and there, like dim lights along an uncertain voyage, bits of legislation or isolated conservation procedures appeared. In due course it became evident that natural fishways—to choose one example—were being obstructed to the disadvantage of both the fish and navigation. Hening records the law enacted to keep the rivers open:
1745. And whereas the making and raising of mill dams, and stone-stops, or hedges for catching of fish, is a great obstruction to the navigation of the said rivers [James and Appomattox]: Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all mill dams, stone-stops, and hedges, already made across either of the said rivers, where they are navigable, shall be thrown down and destroyed by the person or persons who made the same....
Like most hastily framed and passed laws this one proved unsatisfactory and a second one, with more detailed provisions was passed. Hening records it:
1762. Whereas the act of assembly made in the first year of his present Majesty's reign [1761], entitled, an act to oblige the owners of mills, hedges, or stone-stops, on sundry rivers therein mentioned, to make openings or slopes therein for the passage of fish, has been found defective, and not to answer the purposes for which it was intended, and it is therefore necessary that the same should be amended: Be it therefore enacted by the Lieutenant Governor, Council and Burgesses, of this present General Assembly, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That the owner or proprietor of all and every mill, hedge, or stone-stop, on either of the rivers Nottoway and Meherrin, shall in the space of nine months from and after the passing of this act, make an opening or slope in their respective mill-dams, hedges, or stops, in that part of the same where there shall happen to be the deepest water, which shall be in width at least ten feet in the clear, in length at least three times the height of the dam, and that the bottoms and sides thereof shall be planked, and that the sides shall be at least fourteen inches deep, so as to admit a current of water through the same twelve inches deep, which shall be kept open from the tenth day of February to the last day of May in every year.... And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any such owner or proprietor shall neglect or refuse so to do, within the time aforesaid, the person so offending shall forfeit and pay the sum of five pounds of tobacco for every day he or they shall so neglect or refuse....