The first Africans arrived in the Chesapeake Bay area on a Dutch ship at Old Point Comfort in 1619; they and their descendants have had roles in the history and economy of the Chesapeake Bay ever since. The enslaved Africans had engaged in oystering, crabbing, fishing, sailing, boat building and net making in their homeland, and many of them took up the same occupations in the Chesapeake Bay. In the following centuries, their descendants helped build the communities and the culture that formed around the Bay, and their labor contributed greatly to the development of the region's economically dominant marine industries and naval presence. The Bay's waterways provided transportation for the slave trade that fed the plantation system, but also provided the means for them to escape to freedom.