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Visitors get hands-on feel for Stafford's history during Discovery Days at Aquia Landing Park Date published: 8/20/2006
IGHT-YEAR-OLD Zack Debey was so eager to play Colonial soldier yesterday that he went through the drill twice at Discovery Days at Aquia Landing in Stafford County. First he practiced the marching orders of the day: "Turn your bodies to the right hand" and "Face your bodies to the left hand." "That's the primary thing a soldier has to learn, is how to stand," said Edward Wilson, a costumed historical interpreter from Jamestown Settlement. "As long as you can stand in formation, you can win." Then he asked Zack, who lives in Stafford, the question he'd been waiting for. "Are you ready to be a soldier?" At Zack's eager nod, Wilson gave him an armored vest typical of the ones the early Jamestown settlers used. Made for an adult, it came to Zack's knees, but he still grinned happily. "Hmm, something's missing," Wilson said. "A helmet!" shouted several people in the crowd. So Wilson plunked a peaked metal helmet on Zack's head. "That was cool!" said Zack, before darting off to another activity. Discovery Days, which continues today, is a family-friendly event. It was designed to help promote anniversary celebrations for Jamestown, which turns 400 next year, and highlight Stafford's ties to the first successful English settlement in the New World. It also helped show off the history and beauty of Aquia Landing, a county park at the confluence of Aquia Creek and the Potomac River. The primary draw, however, was the new, $2 million replica of the Godspeed, which sailed 160 miles from Jamestown Settlement to anchor in the creek for the event. This is its first appearance since completing a tour of six major East Coast ports to kick off the anniversary events. Eric Speth, the Godspeed's captain, and Robert "Two Eagles" Green, chief of the Patawomeck Indians of Virginia, helped open Discovery Days with a ceremonial exchange of gifts. Green, wearing a turkey-feather mantle made for his role in "The New World," a movie about John Smith and Pocahontas, welcomed Speth in Algonquian and gave him a basket of fresh corn. In exchange, the captain gave Green a copper cup, iron hooks, two sundials and a gold ring, all valuable trade items of the time.
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