Navigable water — salty, fresh and brackish — played an outsized role in Virginia’s Colonial history well after Algonquin-speaking natives made this their homeland.
Water brought the English settlers to the Virginia shores. Navigable rivers provided transportation and trade. And irrigated soil developed agriculture to feed new settlers and power exports.
Water made today’s Hampton Roads — seven low-lying cities hugging the Atlantic Ocean, Chesapeake Bay and the James and Elizabeth rivers — a center of international shipping…