Having a hot summer?
Think
of the English at Jamestown, summer 1607:
There was
back-breaking, hand-blistering labor to do as soon as they had picked a
place—marshy and unhealthy, as it turned out--to settle. Sailing more than
thirty miles up the wide river that they named the James after King James I,
they chose a small, wooded peninsula about two miles long and a mile to a mile
and a half wide. It was actually an island, separated from the mainland by a
shallow creek, but the James River was six fathoms [36 feet], deep enough to moor
their ships a stone’s throw from the shore.
By June 15, seven weeks after they
arrived, 104 men and boys (one man had died on the voyage) had finished an
enormous task: They had built a fort at the site they called Jamestown. Working
and sweating in the hot Virginia sun, they dug over 1,600 feet of trenches
nearly three feet deep to form a huge triangle by the river’s edge. They
chopped down hundreds of pine and oak and elm trees. They dragged heavy logs of
up to one foot in diameter, one by one, to set vertically in the trenches to
make a palisade with walls eleven to fifteen feet high. When it was finished,
the fort by the river covered about an acre and a half, or roughly the area of
two football fields. It was 140 yards long on the side facing the river, and
100 yards on each of the other two sides. With guns mounted at each angle and
only one entrance, a massive log gate on the side facing the river, this
palisaded fort would be a comforting defense against invaders—either Indian or
Spanish.
Invaders would be the least of their worries.
