Books & DVDs » Books |
John Smith in the Chesapeake |
  |
||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
The first European explorer of our Chesapeake Bay was the irascible 17th-century rascal, John Smith---the guy who supposedly took up with Pocahontas (or maybe not). Escaping the wretched conditions of the Jamestown colony in 1608, Smith took a small crew in an open boat and explored the Bay from top to bottom. John C. Harris wrote about Smith's adventure and the replica of his boat in the November 2007 issue of WoodenBoat Magazine....and he wishes this excellent book had been available as a resource at the time. Now the hope is to use PocketShip and a copy of this book to retrace some of Smith's 1608 voyage. "My sole aim," writes author Edward Wright Haile in preface to John Smith in the Chesapeake, "has been to determine the where, when, how, and the why of the route of the great American explorer and colonial leader in the Chesapeake Bay. I have culled an original text, reconstructed an itinerary around it, and supplied a narrative and commentary to give it form and method." Where the record permits, the result is a day to day itinerary of Smith's travels--by water and by land, for trade and for discovery, complete with projected tides, weather implications, narrative, and a thorough historical and critical commentary for each chapter. The book is spiral bound on waterproof stock for use in smallcraft while exploring the Bay. All of Smith's twenty trips are discussed chronologically in 91 pages of text, including 32 hand-drawn maps. Commendations for John Smith in the Chesapeake: "With quotations from Captain Smith's works and the works of his contemporaries, along with modern maps and judicious annotations, Haile's book allows us to understand exactly where Smith went and what he observed. We can learn side by side with the author and with the great captain himself—day by day, mile by mile—what the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries looked like and felt like 400 years ago. This is a volume for the present as much as it is a record of that distant time." John Maounis "As a paddler and boater with a love for the Chesapeake Bay, I applaud the valuable resource Haile provides modern day explorers in this work chronicling Captain John Smith's historic voyages of discovery." Rob Wittman "Haile's original manuscript and research on John Smith's voyages gave us the knowledge and information required to create the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail - America's first National Historic Water Trail. John Smith in the Chesapeake is his most refined and perfected historical interpretive guide made available to those modern day adventurers following in the wake of Captain Smith. This is an important guide for anyone that wants to experience the John Smith Trail." Patrick F. Noonan "Author, historian and mapmaker Haile makes another important contribution to the story of Captain John Smith's Chesapeake journeys. His analysis of Captain Smith's map and journals, tidal conditions, and other source materials provides compelling explanations for the trail that Smith blazed and marked in the Chesapeake Bay and that modern-day explorers can now follow through the new Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail." |
|||||||||||
