Landfall along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith

Landfall along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith by Schmidt, Susan. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780801882968.

In 2002, Susan Schmidt retraced John Smiths 1608 voyage on the Chesapeake Bay. In Landfall along the Chesapeake, a cruising guide for Chesapeake boaters and a field log for naturalists, Schmidt compares the beauty of ancestral legacy and childhood memory to her observations on a 100-day voyage in a 22-foot boat. As she circles the Bay counterclockwise from Jamestown, she explores Smiths encounters with Native Americans and the Bays ecological changes over the past four hundred years. On each river and creek, she quotes Smiths journals on matching wits with Powhatan, meeting Pocahontas, surviving thunderstorms, ambush, and a stingrays barb. Anchored on wild creeks, Schmidt observes swans and dragonflies, lightning and sunsets; in port she interviews colorful characters and working watermen about blue crabs and oysters. Scientists explain the Bays nitrogen overload, water-level rise, anoxia, Pfiesteria, Kepone, and the Ghost Fleet. Native American chiefs discuss their heritage then and now. Ashore, Schmidt walks on her ancestors farm, now a military chemical dump, and climbs her grandfathers lighthouse. Despite her despair at bad air quality and diminished fisheries, and her dread of high wind and rough seas, Schmidt expresses gratitude for small-town hospitality and the navigation skills her father taught her.