The Fish That Saved America

The Shad of Valley Forge

by Allen G. Eastby

They called it the, “Starving Time.”

For the officers and men of the Continental Army, it began in the autumn of 1777 as their commander-in-chief, General George Washington, began gathering troops to continue the campaign against the British army that had occupied Philadelphia. From Albany, New York came regiments raised in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York. 

The Connecticut and Rhode Island Lines trooped across New Jersey. When they joined the "Grand Army," as the force under Washington's direct command was called, the Continentals from New England and New York were greeted by men from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Washington's army grew in size, but it became steadily harder to feed. 

Commissaries and quartermasters, it seemed, were either incompetent, or corrupt, or both. The generals, even proven combat veterans of European armies such as Baron De Kalb,

were inexperienced and untrained in the art and science of logistics: the arming, quartering, clothing, and feeding of armies.

With the best intentions in the world, Congress was unable to devise a supply system that worked. And there was no real money anywhere, except in British-held Philadelphia. There, the local farmers flocked to sell produce to the King's men, exchanging meat and flour for gold.

Yet during November and early December, the Continentals were able to continue their efforts to drive the British from Philadelphia. But marches and counter-marches wore out shoes and hungry men fell ill, or deserted, as the nights grew cold.

Recapturing Philadelphia, it seemed, would have to wait until spring.

During the last week in December 1777, the Continental Army trudged through a somber countryside to a place known as the Valley Forge. Here it was they were to establish a "cantonment," a winter camp. 

As the soldiers struggled to build huts and squabbled over rights to springs and wells, their hunger pangs grew. Colonel Henry Beekman Livingston of the Fourth New York slaughtered his own cherished mare and his younger brother's favorite gelding and gave his regiment—290 officers and men—a Christmas "feast" of boiled horsemeat.

One evening, Colonel Walter Steward, of the Thirteenth Pennsylvania, dined on a single roasted potato, which he shared with the regiment's major. 

Some brigades fared better than others, and here and there in the encampment could be found regiments—those blessed with active and enterprising officers—that ate relatively well.

But, overall, the hunger was real, as real as the cold, the "camp fever," and the "itch" (a chronic skin infection that made the rounds in the close camp).

During January, February, and the first weeks of March of 1778, the Continental Army tried desperately to feed itself. 

"Grand forages" were organized in which the troops scoured the countryside seeking anything that could go into the cookpots hanging over the smokey fires at the cantonment. 

Large detachments were sent into New Jersey and Delaware with orders to collect everything and anything that could fill empty bellies. 

Letters flowed from the encampment at Valley Forge. Officers wrote friends, relations, and officials at home, begging, pleading, imploring that food be sent.

Washington and his generals bombarded Congress with requests for money, weapons, clothing, and especially for food. Time and again, the commander-in-chief warned Congress that the army must soon break up unless food reached the cantonment.

The crisis was real, and it threatened the army's survival and the success of the Revolution.

During the first week in March, word of wagon trains of supplies and herds of cattle on the move reached the camp at the valley forge. On March 18, a fine, warm spring day, a detachment from the North Carolina Brigade marched from the cantonment. 

They were to protect a herd of cattle from New England as it crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. 

British patrols and raiders were avoided, and the herd reached the camp safely. The fresh meat was welcome, but 200 "beeves" would not feed 10,000 men for long.

The Starving Time was not over, yet.

Then, hunger vanished because of a humble fish.

The valley forge encampment nestled on the banks of the Schuylkill River. During

the last week in March and the first week in April, as had happened every year since time began, Alosa sapidissima, the American shad, returned to the river.

It is not recorded who first noticed the fish in the Schuylkill, but the news swept through the camp like wind-driven fire in a dry wood. 

A few hook-and-line anglers appeared on the banks, but fishing tackle wasn't carried by many in this army. 

So, shad fishing quickly ceased being a sport and became serious business.

Nets were begged, borrowed, and yes, stolen. They were strung between stout poles set in the shallows along both banks. At first, the shad obligingly swam into the waiting nets. But they soon began avoiding them.

The Continentals, though, officers and men alike, were becoming adept at improvisation. 

They had learned a hard lesson: An army of amateurs fighting for a country that did not yet exist, had to make do, or do without.

So if the shad wouldn't swim into the nets, why, then, they'd be driven into them.

Detachments of the only cavalry regiment at the valley forge camp, Colonel Stephen Moylan's Fourth Continental Light Dragoons (a formation raised in Pennsylvania), were assigned the task of driving the shad. 

Troops of cavalry charged full gallop into the Schuylkill from both banks.

The shad, had other plans, however.

They appear to have congregated in the shallows, according to accounts, and simply escaped straight out into the deeper flows in the middle of the river. The nets were again avoided. 

It was time to improvise yet again.

The next phase of the fishing was entrusted to the soldiers. These were men from the Hudson Valley in New York, the Delaware and Susquehanna valleys in Pennsylvania, and eastern Virginia. 

These men fished for shad every spring most of their lives, and they knew what had to be done. 

This time, the nets were redeployed across the river at the pontoon bridge the army

had built spanning the Schuylkill. The next cavalry charge was directed upstream.

That night, every soldier in "Liberty's Army" ate his fill of fresh shad.

The Starving Time was over. The Continental Army would survive. 

The Revolution was not dead.

The records are spotty and incomplete— Continental Army staff and clerical work always left a lot to be desired—but it appears that initially the soldiers ate shad, and especially shad roe, as soon as the fish were caught.

But shortly after the netting began in earnest, the glut of fish had to be dealt with.

So the army started smoking and salting fish, packing them in barrels for future use.

Once the fish were on the river banks, they were turned over to the “camp followers.”

Although it is seldom brought out in histories of the War of American Independence, the Continental Army was very little different from others through the centuries in one way: It was accompanied everywhere by large numbers of women.

These were wives, sweethearts, sisters, nieces, even a few mothers.

When they are mentioned, the "followers of the drum" are usually characterized as little better than prostitutes....and some no doubt were.

But in a modern military force, most of the “camp followers” would be in uniform and be counted as soldiers. By contrast, these literal followers served as nurses, cooks, housekeepers, stretcher bearers, and seamstresses and they ran the eighteenth century's equivalent of post exchanges.

They received army rations when available, and sometimes pay (especially the nurses). They occasionally found themselves in the midst of a turning battle, and were also subject to the harsh discipline of the Continental Line, if they ran afoul of it—including flogging.

These brave, dogged, and unheralded women, forgotten today, were crucial to the success of the Revolution.

And during April 1778, these followers did the dirty work of cleaning, smoking, and salting the shad..., tens upon thousands of shad.

When the shad run finally petered out during the middle of April, the Continental Army had enough to eat, and then some. 

Under the direction of the Continental Army's new and very competent quartermaster general, Major General Nathaniel Greene, fish were added to the growing "magazines" of supplies that were accumulating for the coming campaign against the British. 

When the regiments of the Continental Line marched from the cantonment, they would have real rations - hundreds of wagons of flour and salt pork, and thousands of cattle had arrived. More were on the way. 

And there were shad, so many shad that everyone, from the commander-in-chief to the new recruits, grew heartily sick and tired of them.

In June 1778, the British evacuated Philadelphia. 

The Continental Army marched from the valley forge cantonment in pursuit of the enemy. On June 28, near the little New Jersey town known as Monmouth Courthouse, rebels and King's men met in battle. 

It was a long and bitter fight that went on until after sunset. In the grim darkness, commissaries distributed rations to the tired Continentals. It is recorded that at least four regiments, the Fourth New York, the Third Maryland, the Third New Hampshire, and Malcolm's Additional Continental Regiment, ate smoked shad.

Others no doubt did, too, but left no record.

Following the Battle of Monmouth, the Continental Army took up positions in

southern New York and northern New Jersey, watching the British in New York

City. The herds of cattle that followed the army—rations on the hoof—couldn't keep pace with the hard-marching Continentals.

Once again, the army found itself eating salted shad.

In September 1778, the Second New York was sent to fight Indian raiders along the upper Delaware. “Chasing Indians was bad enough,” wrote the regimental commander, Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, to his father, the lieutenant governor of New York state. “But can't they find something for my men to eat besides smoked Schuylkill River shad?”

Colonel Van Cortlandt was not the only continental to complain about yet another

issue of shad. But neither he nor any of the other soldiers of "Liberty's Army" would forget the run of bright fish that brought the Starving Time to an end.

No longer do shad run up the Schuylkill, or any of our rivers, in numbers large enough to feed an army for months. 

And we today fish for sport, not for meat. 

But each time we catch a shad, we touch our history. For those silvery fish that bring us so much pleasure, helped ensure our country might exist. 

They fed the Continental Army in its direst time, from which it burst renewed to carry the fight to the enemy.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A Feast of Continental Shad

The officers and men of Washington's army ate shad broiled, fried, and baked. They ate it salted and smoked. They even ate it boiled. The precise details of the preparation, however, are mostly lost.

But, the following are traditional recipes that were in use during the Revolutionary

War and on several occasions were used to prepare fish for the officers of the New York Continentals and militia. These methods were no doubt used by other soldiers as well.

Skillet Shad

Whole shad, split along the backbone (sometimes called "butterfly cut")

Salt pork (bacon and/or Canadian bacon can be substituted)

Freshly ground pepper

The shad and salt pork are simply fried in a cast iron skillet over an open fire. 

The open fire is the essential ingredient.

Colonel Van Cortlandt's Baked Shad

Whole shad

Potatoes, peeled and diced

Salt and pepper

White wine (Hessian "hock" was originally used; hock was an off-dry wine made from the Johannisberg Riesling grape. Try a chenin blanc)

The shad (two or more, depending on the size of the oven), along with the potatoes, swimming in wine, are locked in a cast iron Dutch oven and buried in the coals of a campfire for "as long as it takes" (one to two hours).

Allen G. Eastby is the author of The Tenth Men, a historical novel set during the American Revolution. It is published by Empire State Fiction.