The Jamestown Adventure

You can tell that most of these pictures were taken by the kids. We got to Jamestown Settlement at about 9:30 am or so. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States. This year celebrates it's 400th anniversary.

Inside this building are all kinds of exhibits which we were not allowed to take pictures of. There were set ups of life in England, Africa, and America. The idea was to show how the cultures from these three very different places merged into what became Virginia. There were examples of art and clothing and language. There was also a movie that told about the settlers voyage from England to Virginia.

Outside, there was a replica of a Powahtan village set up. This picture is of Julie learning how to twist rope made from long grass. There were people dressed as Native Americans demonstrating things like cooking, tanning, games, and chopping wood.

There were huts made out of what looked like woven grass mats. Inside were bench-like beds spread with animal hides. This picture is Josh and Kailey inside one of the huts.

We got to talk to this sailor for quite a while about life onboard a ship and about being a volunteer with the reinactment programs. Josh was told he would have to start out as a cabin boy... whose main job is cleaning slop jars. (A slop jar is basically a pot used as a toilet.) I was told I'd be scraping barnacles off the bottom of the ship. Kailey and Julie weren't at all interested in being sailors.

This is Kailey standing in what would serve as a bed in the cargo hold of the largest of the three ships. This ship held 71 people. Each person was allotted a 4x6 foot mat to sleep on, sometimes contained in a box, sometimes just tossed wherever they could find a dry place to sleep.

This is one of the officer's bunks onboard the smaller of the three ships. It was only about four feet long and about two and a half wide. Living conditions could not have been all that great spending some hundred and fourteen days at sea.


After exploring the ships, we continued down the path to where they were demonstrating how the Powahtan Indians made dug-out canoes. These were not so much dug-out as burned-out. Hot coals were placed on the top of the logs and allowed to burn through until it was hollowed out. We got one of the people there to take this picture of all of us in a finished canoe.

Inside the fort was this big cannon and the opportunity to try on the armor that soldiers would have worn while guarding the fort. I think Joshua and Julie have theirs on backwards.

We also got to watch the blacksmith make nails. He told us that blacksmiths were usually more like repair-men than actual producers. Kinda like the difference between a car manufacturer and a mechanic. Unfortunately, by this point we had run out of film in our cameras. On the wall in the blacksmith's shop were written silly latin phrases, one of which was, "If you can read this, you've had too much education." We watched one of the carpenters working on a lock for a chest of medical supplies. We also got to catch the tail end of a musket demonstration. In all, it was a pretty interesting adventure.