A possible Roman stone and other cobbles brought to Jamestown as ballast

Many thanks to Kelsey Watson for her research into the andesite and limestone cobbles found at James Fort. Thank you also to Christopher Bailey for his ongoing work related to the Jamestown lithics. Oceangoing ships in the early 17th century would contain stone for ship's ballast in their hauls to balance the vessel at sea. Often times upon reaching a destination the crews would empty some of the ballast and reuse it for other purposes. At James Fort cobbles that arrived as ship's ballast were often incorporated into building construction b/c the coastal plain of Virginia does not have an abundance of cobblestones.
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[@garymozingo3383]

Thanks for the video...hard to believe a Roman road stone made it all the way from England and continued to be put to use...amazing!

[@hbic3]

I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't come from England. Or, didn't come from England with the Jamestown settlers.

[@tinmanx2222]

Always great to see another Jamestown video. I appreciate your work.

[@brendalittlefield2203]

Very cool! I love all of the new info.coming out of Jamestown...thnk you so much for your continued work!

[@marymathis9299]

Amazing! Who would ever guess that a rock could reveal such rich secrets! That was amazing to see, love learning about Jamestown from y’all! Many thanks!

[@JohnnyButtons]

So fascinating! #HistoricTown ❤

[@oldglstuf]

This video rocks.

[@clevelandwagtail1073]

Who can I speak to about the remains of Sir William West and Ferdinand Wenman? Sir William is my great grandfather, and Ferdinand is my great uncle. I have been doing my family tree for years, and just recently discovered they are my ancestors. Plus, many more that I think you will find quite fascinating, that may help provide the family links you have been looking for.

[@jsmcguireIII]

The streets of Nantucket are paved with ballast stones from hundreds of whaling ships.

[@olivernash2240]

Wow! Neat info!

[@johnesposito5508]

Stones make the best friends

[@waynemullally6423]

Rocks traveling around the world

[@jbagz7956]

Sweet!

[@fellspoint9364]

Rolling Stones forever!

[@TheYizuman]

Wish this series provides captions for the deaf :(

[@JamestownRediscovery]

Usually you can hit the CC key in the bottom right of the video and then the captions come up, but for some reason KZbin thinks I was speaking Italian (I have no clue how to speak Italian) so it won't translate into CC, I'm trying to change the settings but so far no luck. The other videos on the channel seem to be working with subtitles. Sorry about that, I'll give it a few more tries.

[@TheYizuman]

YT has a very bad software and it's very unreliable. I know it can be tedious to hardcode the captions and upload it to your videos. Time is money, I understand that, but I hope someday you'll find someone dedicated to help upload .SRT files with pre-written and caption ready texts for the deaf community to enjoy your videos. I just made mention and brought to your awareness of a problem that the deaf community often encounters and hope that somehow, someday, captions can be provided to your future videos. If you want to know what a .SRT file looks like, it can be read on a simple notepad program and a simple notepad program is all you need to write the captions while following the video timer. You can download any one of the .SRT file from this website to get an idea what it looks like. www.addic7ed.com/

[@JamestownRediscovery]

Got it, I appreciate your feedback. This would be a great project for an intern, I'll put this on my wish list b/c we might be getting some help soon.

[@JamestownRediscovery]

During the course of the morning I've also noticed that KZbin has a way for one to type in all the captions. Time consuming but yeah totally worth it if YT CC translation is off.

[@pwnyou2295]

If you enable community contribution on your videos, I'd be glad to add English subtitles for you. I'm always looking to contribute to museums/historic areas where I can.

[@Tyler.i.81]

English Flint You Can't Beat it

[@hbic3]

And that makes me wonder why they would use something they needed for starting fires and in their guns, and to make tools, to build with. If English Flint is better than Virgina flint(yes, it is native to Virgina), then why waste it like that?

[@hbic3]

Wait...so they had enough native Virginia rock to make the rest of the cobblestone foundation, but they were short 3 or 4 rocks, so they took the stone ballasts that they NEEDED, off the ships to complete the foundation? Only to have to replace those ballasts with Virginia rocks? Come on! Does that really make sense? Roman cobbles were a dime a dozen in England and were often used as foundation, new floors and fill, so I understand why they would bring it as a ballast and "throw it away" for a cobblestone foundation. I just don't buy they would take it off the ship to use it for that specific reason when they already had an abundance of rock to use. Especially, when removing rock ballasts from the ship as it was anchored offshore, as they offloaded their supplies, the ships would become lighter. They would need the rock ballast to weight the ships in an effort to prevent or reduce the damage to the ships as they got tossed by waves and storms. Either the Virginia colonists were no where near as intelligent, for their time, as we give them credit for or y'all have misunderstood why those are there. It's not like the Jamestown colonists were the first non-native explorers to arrive by ship. How do we know they didn't find those rocks while THEY were diggings foundations, cellars, and wells? Digging for stones to use in this floor? I think we should not assume THEY brought any of those rocks, even the one from the Bahamas. Especially, the ones from the Bahamas. Maybe...there WAS a Roman settlement there and there is more evidence of that, deeper..and maybe, much of the evidence eroded into the water. If there was that much shoreline lost between 1607 and 1901, imagine how much was lost btwn 395 and before and 1607. Sandstone IS native to Virgina, along SHORELINES. Maybe they brought some stones off the ship knowing the natives would often trade goods/foods/use of land(maybe, in their mind, gold) for interesting items, but being ignorant to what the natives would find interesting enough to trade for, so it just didn't work out like they thought it would. It doesn't make sense, to me, that they would carry them off the ship for a floor, when they had no need to. I think, IF the Virgina colonists brought them off their ships, it was NOT for the specific purpose of making the floor, but for other reasons they thought might be useful to them. Then, when making the floor, the stones having no value to them, they used what was easiest because they didn't have to be dug for, first. "Here, Toss these in, too. We won't be using them. No sense in just keeping them around," sort of thing. But, I'm also thinking it's just as possible that THEY found them there whilst digging/gathering stones for the floor. No colonists had been through Burmuda before 1610. Okay, Colonists(that we know of), but other explorers WERE. That's well known fact. The Flint stones, sure, could double as ballasts, but the intended use was probably for fire starting and the Flint lock firing mechanism of their guns. That they would risk running out of it by using the Flint to build with... When they had plenty of local rock to use??? There's definitely more to the story, there. The "more" could be that Flint is also native to Virgina. Maybe the brought it thinking it didn't exist in America, only to find that it did, in their trades with natives and ours is somehow better than theirs. I think archeology in America requires deeper, critical thinking, as there are not the thousands of years of records to refer to to find answers to questions as there is on the other side of the earth. I think you can't limit your thought process to what we know based on those records, because there is sooooo much about the Ancient Americas that we DON'T know and may never know.

[@MatthewChenault]

That all depends on whether the ships were actually seaworthy to return to England or not. If they weren’t, then the wood and ballast would have been repurposed to build up the structures in the fort. Also, before they would leave Jamestown, they would take on more supplies, which would weigh the vessel down again and require for the ships to offload some of their ballast in order to rebalance the ship. On their way back up the coast, the would stop when need be to pick up more ballast or, if they can make the journey in one go, they’d take in ballast back in England. As a result, the colony would have a small stockpile of ballast stones that weren’t necessary to be kept as ballast. So, they’d take the ballast and reuse them as cobblestone foundations.

[@MatthewChenault]

Also, sandstone deposits don’t start cropping up until you get much deeper into the interior of the commonwealth. Where they settled had a lack of sandstone deposits easily accessible. Most of them were 40+ miles inland from where Jamestown is located, which the colonists couldn’t easily access without traveling deeper inland.

[@MatthewChenault]

Finally, the guns they were using were match-lock muskets. They used a burning cord of rope to ignite a powder pan to then propel a musket ball out of the barrel. The flint, to them, was pretty useless and the amount needed would have been relatively small compared to the amount of English flint they brought with them. They were using it as ballast stones, since the stone was pretty commonplace throughout England and most of Northern Europe. There are a number of shipwrecks that have been found with Ballast flint and the English flint is common throughout all of the colonies due to it’s use as ballast.