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The Wolfe Trapp By Dan Gill When
man first came to the land that is now Virginia, there was no Chesapeake Bay,
only a wide forested valley with raging freshwater rivers. The valley was an
ancient floodplain, the remnant of former bays. So much water was stored in glaciers and ice caps that sea
levels were about two hundred feet lower than today. The Susquehanna
dominated this valley and cut a deep trench the entire length of the present
bay, past the capes and on one hundred miles or so across the exposed
continental shelf to the ocean. The continental shelf was then flat and
forested, as was most of the valley. The Potomac, Rappahannock and York
rivers also cut deep channels through their respective valleys to join the
Susquehanna on its way to the sea. The independent James made its own way
seaward. The
first inhabitants, small extended family groups of hunter-gatherers, camped
along the numerous streams and hunted now extinct animals in forests of
hemlock and spruce, all now under water. Most of the archeological evidence
of the earliest human inhabitants is also under water. While clamming the
shelves and shoals off Northumberland, Middlesex and Mathews counties, the
late ÒDinkÓ Miller of Deltaville collected many artifacts, including axes and
adzes for shaping log canoes as well as knives, hide scrapers and spear and
arrow points. As the climate warmed and ice melted, the sea steadily
advanced toward the valley. By ten thousand years ago it had reached the
present capes. By three thousand years ago it had completely flooded the
valley all of the way to the present fall lines of the main bay and its
tributaries. Thus our bay and its tributaries are wide and relatively
shallow, except for deep channels, or deep-water connections, which deliver
salty seawater all of the way from the ocean to the fall lines and account
for the remarkable productivity of our estuarine system. Off Mathews County,
between the mouths of the Rappahannock and York Rivers, shoal waters, former
hunting grounds, extend far into the bay, ready to strand any unwary captain
and destroy his ship. One
animal that the earliest inhabitants, and later European settlers, had to
deal with was the wolf. Indians co-existed with this alpha-predator, but
European settlers put a bounty on wolves and eventually eradicated them.
Indians were recruited to help kill wolves and were also eligible to receive
the bounty. Native inhabitants were not supposed to have guns so they trapped
wolves by digging pits, covering them lightly with brush and baiting them
with meat. References to this practice can be found in place names throughout
the state, including Wolf Trap Farm in Vienna. In
Chesapeake Bay Country, the most familiar wolf trap is located about two miles
from shore, where no four-legged wolf has roamed for thousands of years. In
1691, England was (again) at war with France. French naval vessels and
Corsairs, or privateers, disrupted shipping in the Bay and Ocean. Pirates
lurked off of the Capes and entered the Bay at will, capturing vessels for
private gain. Shore defenses were abysmally ineffective and even settlements
and plantations were raided. The British Admiralty hired a number of private,
armed vessels and sent them to the Chesapeake to escort and protect merchant
ships. Among these ships was the Wolfe out of Liverpool, captained by George
Purvis. The Wolfe cleared the Capes and was heading for the Rappahannock
under full sail when she fetched up hard on the shoals. Trying to pull her
off was futile, so Captain Purvis sent word to Middlesex and Gloucester
counties for assistance (the land that is now Mathews was then part of
Gloucester). Many sloops, boats and men responded with the reasonable
expectation that they would be paid for their efforts. It
took weeks to remove her guns, ammunition and provisions in order to lighten
her and eventually get her off. Purvis then refused to pay the men and boat
owners, though he admitted that the Wolfe would surely have been lost without
their assistance. In spite of orders from Lt. Gov. Francis Nicholson and the
Council, Purvis sailed without settling his accounts. The circumstances were
then relayed to the Admiralty in England and it was decided to pay the
sailors but not to pay the ship owners for the use of the Wolfe until the
Virginia matter was resolved. The men in Middlesex and Gloucester were
eventually paid and the shoal waters have since been known as the Wolfe
Trapp, though now modernized to ÒWolf TrapÓ.
(c)
Dan Gill 5-08 Published
in Pleasant Living magazine Summer Solstice 2008 Previous: Barbecue 101 Part IV-B: Seasoning Methods
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