About five years ago, I wrote about Captain John Smith and his voyage up the Potomac to the area where D.C. now lies, including a few sentences about the Nacotchtank tribe that inhabited the area.
What I did not know was what type of ship that Smith used for this voyage. It was, in a word, small. The technical term is a ‘shallop’ but it is hardly bigger than a modern rowboat – but would have had a dozen plus men on board. There is currently a modern-built shallop on display in Jamestown. The ship is on loan from Massachusetts while one of the Jamestown ships is being refurbished.
If you want to learn a lot more about Smith’s trips around the Chesapeake Bay, the National Park Services has you covered.