In the early days, the highways of the Cavalier Colonies were the broad waters of bay and sound; their by-ways, the innumerable rivers and creeks; and their toll-gates, the ports of entry. Road-making was tedious and costly, and the settlers saw no reason for wasting time and energy in the undertaking, when nature had spread her pathways at their feet, and they needed only to step into a canoe, or a skiff manned by black oarsmen, to glide from one plantation to another; or to hoist sail in a pinnace for distant settlements. Many animals travel, but man is the only one who packs a trunk, and, except a few like the nautilus and the squirrel, the only one who sails a boat. There is a sentiment connected with a ship, which no other conveyance can ever have. The very names of those old colonial vessels are redolent of “amber-greece,” “pearle,” and treasure, of East India spices and seaweed
“From Bermuda’s reefs, and edges
Of sunken ledges
In some far-off bright Azore.”
The history of the colonies might be written in the story of their ships. There were The Good Speed, The Discovery, and The Susan Constant, which preceded the world-famous Half Moon and Mayflower to the new world. There were The Ark and The Dove that brought over Lord Baltimore and his colonists; The Sea-Venture which went to wreck on the Somer Isles; and The Patience, and The Deliverance which brought her crew safe to Virginia. These were the pioneers, followed by a long line of staunch craft, large and small, from the Golden Lyon to The Peggy Stewart, which discharged her cargo of taxed tea into Chesapeake Bay.
Many ships in those days were named, as we name chrysanthemums, in honor of some prominent man or fair dame. These good folk must have followed the coming and going of their namesakes with curious interest. The sight of a sail on the horizon never lost its excitement, for every ship brought some wild tale of adventure. The story of shipwreck “on the still vexed Bermoothes,” and the wonderful escape of Gates and Somers, with their crew, has been made famous forever by the tradition that it suggested to Shakespeare the plot of The Tempest; but every “frygat” that touched at Jamestown or Annapolis brought accounts almost as thrilling, of storm and stress, of fighting tempests with a crew reduced by scurvy to three or four active seamen, of running for days from a Spanish caravel or a French pickaroune.
The Margaret and John set sail for America early in the seventeenth century, carrying eighty passengers, besides sailors, and armed with “eight Iron peeces and a Falcon.” When she reached the “Ile of Domenica,” the captain entered a harbor, that the men might stretch their limbs on dry land, “having been eleven weeks pestered in this vnwholesome ship.” Here, to their misfortune, they found two large ships flying Hollander colors, but proving to be Spaniards. These enemies sent a volley of shot which split the oars and made holes in the boats, yet failed to strike a man on the Margaret and John.
“Perceiving what they were,” writes one of the English crew, “we fitted ourselves the best we could to prevent a mischief: seeing them warp themselves to windward, we thought it not good to be boarded on both sides at an anchor; we intended to set saile, but the Vice-Admiral battered so hard at our starboard side, that we fell to our businesse, and answered their vnkindnesse with such faire shot from a demiculvering, that shot her betweene wind and water, whereby she was glad to leave us and her Admirall together.” The Admiral then bespoke them, and demanded a surrender; to which the sturdy English replied that they had no quarrel with the King of Spain, and asked only to go their way unmolested, but as they would do no wrong, assuredly they would take none. The Spaniards answered these bold words with another volley of shot, returned with energy by the English guns.
“The fight continued halfe an houre, as if we had been invironed with fire and smoke, untill they discovered the waste of our ship naked, where they bravely boorded us, loofe for loofe, hasting with pikes and swords to enter; but it pleased God so to direct our Captaine and encourage our men with valour, that our pikes being formerly placed under our halfe deck, and certaine shot lying close for that purpose under the port holes, encountered them so rudely, that their fury was not onely rebated, but their hastinesse intercepted, and their whole company beaten backe; many of our men were hurt, but I am sure they had two for one.” Thus, all day and all night, the unequal battle continued, till at length the doughty little British vessel fairly fought off her two enemies, and they fell sullenly back and ran near shore to mend their leaks, while the Margaret and John stood on her course.
It is hard, in these days, when the high seas are as safe as city streets, to realize the condition of terror to which merchantmen were reduced, two hundred years ago, by the rumor of a black flag seen in the offing, or of some “pyrat” lying in wait outside the harbor. In Governor Spotswood’s time, Williamsburg was thrown into a state of great excitement by the report that the dreaded buccaneer John Theach, known by the name of Blackbeard, had been seen cruising along the coasts of Virginia and Carolina. The Governor rose to the occasion, however. He sent out Lieutenant Maynard with two ships, to look for Blackbeard. Maynard found him and boarded his vessel in Pamlico Sound. The pirate was no coward. He ordered one of his men to stand beside the powder-magazine with a lighted match, ready, at a signal from him, to blow up friends and foes together. The signal never came, for a lucky shot killed Blackbeard on the spot and his crew surrendered. They might as well have died with their leader, for thirteen of them were hanged at Williamsburg. Blackbeard’s skull was rimmed with silver and made into a ghastly drinking-cup, and we hear no more of pirates in those waters.
The protection of vessels was not the only reason for policing the waterways. Smuggling was much more common than piracy, and the laws against it were the harder to enforce, because the entire community was secretly in sympathy with the offenders. In the earliest Maryland records is Lord Baltimore’s commission, giving his lieutenant authority to “appoint fit places for public ports for lading, shipping, unlading and discharging all goods and merchandizes to be imported or exported into or out of our said province, and to prohibit the shipping or discharging of any goods or merchandizes whatsoever in all other places.” Any one violating the shipping law was subject to heavy fines and imprisonment.
In Virginia the statutes compelled ships to stop at Jamestown, or other designated ports, before breaking bulk at the private landings along the river. Who can picture the excitement in those lonely plantations when the frigate tied up at the wharf, and began to unload from its hold, its cargo of tools for the farm, furniture for the house, and, best of all, the square white letters with big round seals, containing news of the friends distant a three months’ journey! Sometimes the new comer would prove no ocean voyager, but a nearer neighbor, some stout, round-sterned packet, from New Netherland or New England, laden with grain and rum, or hides and rum, to be exchanged for the tobacco of the Old Dominion.