canal behind reconstructed Governor's Palace in Williamsburg
Virginia was integrated into the international economy from the very beginning. Early explorers sailed into the Chesapeake looking for the Northwest Passage to China and the spice trade of Indonesia. When Virginia became a destination for European settlers rather than an obstacle for explorers, the colony stayed dependent upon Europe for essential goods - even food - until 1611. Settlers in Jamestown relied upon "resupply" shipments financed by the Virginia Company, until the tobacco trade created an economic foundation for the new colony and strong leaders (some using the powers of martial law) ensured sufficient food was grown to meet local requirements.
Transatlantic shipping was colonial Virginia's primary means of transporting farm products, animal skins, lumber, and other goods. Virginia was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from Europe - but Virginia was never inaccessible. In the mercantile economy of the 1600's and 1700's, the easy transportation of raw products and manufactured goods across the ocean shaped the economy. Few items were manufactured in the colony. Farm tools, glasses, rugs, books, wine, even the cloth used for slave clothing was shipped from overseas. Bulky raw goods (tobacco, cedar shakes, furs) were sent from the colony to Europe, and high-value manufactured goods were shipped to Virginia in return. Almost everything traveled by ship. Plantation wharves (and the docks in "tobacco towns" after 1730) were the economic centers of the colony.
To facilitate shipping, even before colonial settlement extended far past the natural barrier of the Fall Line, there was a proposal for a canal to make Williamsburg a port city. After the colonial capital moved in 1699 from Jamestown to Williamsburg ("Middle Plantation"), the biggest city in the colony was inland on a ridgeline, on the watershed divide separating the James and the York rivers.
The shift to Williamsburg moved the capital away from the threat of Dutch, French, or Spanish attack, and closer to the inland settlements. The new location was also away from swamps and the brackish water of Jamestown, with the diseases that they brought. However, moving away from the swamps meant wagons and horses had to carry goods and people from the riverbank to the town.
The road to Hampton followed the high point of land that drained quickest after a rain, but the "improved" roads around Williamsburg were still dirt roads full of mudholes and ruts. Shifting items from ships into wagons added substantially to the cost of supplying the capital. If only boats could float all the way to Williamsburg...
Lord Dunmore announced in 1771 that a canal would be constructed to connect Williamsburg with both the York and James rivers. It would run from the headwaters of Archer's Hope Creek on the James River (now College Creek) to the headwaters of Queen's Creek on the York River, overcoming 80 feet of topographic relief.1
The canal was not completed. A later proposal in 1818 to build a similar water link, from College Creek to the York County Courthouse, also remained just on paper. The Peninsula was never converted to an island, and no boats reached the back of the Governor's Palace.
