Bumpers are prime locations to display your opinion du jour, and the Chesapeake has its own twist on this proud American tradition. Somewhere between rolling billboards and a protest placard, local bumper stickers
can provide a flicker of insight into the regional politics,
grievances, and causes. Whether pro oysters or clams, open to
environmental restoration or closed to outside influence, a lively debate is aired in
public every time the rubber hits the road. They might not always be politically correct, and some are downright unfriendly, but a few little inches of adhesive can communicate volumes about the issues and causes that touch lives and inflame tempers in the Chesapeake’s working communities.
Two boys from the Easton, Maryland area display their trophy, a tundra swan hunted in the years before they were federally protected. Image courtesy of C. John Sullivan, ca. 1910.
For thousands of years, two native swan species— tundra and
trumpeter— have migrated from the Arctic to the protected coves of the
Chesapeake Bay. Flying south in white
wedges, their arrival signified sustenance for the Bay’s native tribes and
later, for the colonists who scratched out a living along the Bay’s
tributaries. In the 19th
century, equipped with accurate, inexpensive firearms, hunters harvested more
swans than ever before, shipping birds to Baltimore for fancy suppers. The
snowy white feathers were in high demand in New York and London, where they
were used to decorate women’s hats and made into powder puffs and foamy
slippers. To entice the birds within range, carvers throughout the Chesapeake
crafted huge swan decoys, from crude to elaborate, that mimicked swans feeding,
swimming and preening.
The high demand for swans and ever-more-efficient hunting
techniques took a dramatic toll. The population of the trumpeter and then the
tundra swan began to plummet, and their distinctive calls, once booming in
concert, began to be a rare sound on the Chesapeake’s frozen waterways. It
would take the collaborative effort of Canada and the US to protect them, as
the two countries created legislation that would protect the region’s native
swans in 1918 as part of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. That conservation law,
which also protected bald eagles and barn owls, transformed the trumpeter and
swan population overnight from comestibles to conserved species. Swan was
dropped from restaurant menus, and swan trophy photos, like the one above, became rarities as swans were “shot” with cameras, rather than guns.
Southern Miss is one of the last working boats docked in St Michaels, Maryland, come winter. Her very slip used to be a cold-weather berth for log canoes that left the harbor in the 19th century to tong for oysters. Now St Michaels is a refuge for recreational boaters, and in winter, very little activity takes place on the harbor at all. So, Southern Miss is a rare exception indeed— a raw-knuckle St Michaels workboat still braving the frozen Bay during Maryland’s oystering season.
Her gear is also pretty remarkable— oyster tongs— the simplest, oldest form of catching oysters. Tongs were popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, but they’re not a common sight around the Bay into day’s era of power dredging and patent tongs. Often called “widow sticks,” tongs have been known to unbalance watermen in rough winter weather. Once overboard, the watermen’s bibs and boots would fill with water, dragging the oyster tonger down in the frigid Chesapeake.
They’re backbreaking to use, and require strength and skill to employ correctly— especially the longer ones, which are so long they can actually start to flexibly bow. The fact that the Southern Miss still carries them is a perfect example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” pragmatism still favored by a few old timers.
A flat calm Chesapeake rimed with ice reflects the changing light above, in a view looking east across the mouth of the Sassafras River to Aberdeen. In this time of year, sound adds another layer to the beauty of the landscape. When this photo was taken, eagles fought on mid-river ice floes for fish and swans in a nearby cove whistled in almost-unison. Otherwise, the river was still as a looking glass.
To get to Barren Island Oysters, you wind your way along the sliver of highway snaking through Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Water and land blur together seamlessly, eagles plunge from aeries in pinwheeling fish surveillance. These intertidal edges, so prevalent at Blackwater, abound with life. Where the salinity rises closer to the Bay’s main stem, they also abound with oysters. Historically, the oyster populations here were wild. Now, to augment a struggling baseline of wild oysters, Maryland oyster harvesters are trying a new technique- growing the oysters they want to sell. Some of the people entering this new oyster farming industry fit the profile of the “traditional” watermen. Others, like Tim Devine, owner of Barren Island Oysters, are decidedly non-traditional.
Oyster farming is wet, dirty work. Bibs are an essential tool, especially in the winter, when wet clothes can be more than just uncomfortable- they can be dangerous. Photo by author.
Tim, a former New York photographer, grew up in nearby Easton, Maryland. He returned to his hometown when things in New York went south, looking to reconnect with his roots and find purpose in a new occupation that might help the Bay he’d fossil-hunted on as a kid. Oyster farming had just been green-lighted by the State of Maryland and Devine was ready to dive in. It hardly mattered, he thought, that he didn’t really like to eat oysters. Enough other people did, at places in New York and Washington, DC. Devine knew the market was there.
Buoys and Barren Island Oyster’s holding floats, with Barren Island in the distance. Photo by author.
Devine’s business is located on Hooper’s Island, but his oyster cages aren’t. Located in the protected bottom around Barren Island, just across Tar Bay, Devine’s choice of location was environmentally advantageous. It was also politically savvy. As his proposed oyster farm was in water already off limits to most other fishing, he wouldn’t be encroaching on bottom and therefore the traditional livelihood of watermen living on Hooper’s Island.
Devine is admittedly a bit of character. Outspoken and opinionated, he’s self-deprecating about pretty much everything other than his oysters. These, he’s proud to show, are beautifully formed, with deep cups and evenly tumbled edges. Their sweet, buttery taste has a creaminess that slides elegantly into a briny finish. Eating one, you tip the shell to get the last silky liquor inside. It’s no surprise when Devine starts ticking off the list of restaurants that are carrying the “BIO” brand. His oysters even won the 2014 Mermaid Kiss Oyster Festival’s “Best Oyster” award.
Oysters are sorted from cages to ready for packing and shipping. Image by author.
Inside the concrete-block building that functions as Barren Island Oyster headquarters, a few guys sort through the finished oysters, preparing to package them for shipping off to numerous Superbowl parties around the state. They’re Eastern Shore guys, friends of Tim’s or locals, who spend their days doing what their grandfathers used to do- oystering- just using some newfangled techniques. Once opened and savored, the basics are the same. Oysters, a delicate balance of tide, sunlight, current, and salt, are the essence of their environment. Grown on the leeward side of a Chesapeake island, Barren Island Oysters reflect the Bay’s ability to persevere, an ecological engine that keeps humming along, generation after generation.
Oysters headed down the conveyor belt for boxing. These are Devine’s “BIO” brand. He also sells a non-tumbled oyster under the “Ugly Oyster” label, whose tagline boasts Devine’s own brand of humor: “They’ve Got Great Personalities.” Image by author.
Oysters, boxed and ready for shipping. Image by author.
One of Barren Island Oyster’s shucked shellfish. Image by author.
Dorchester County is one of Maryland’s largest producers of aquaculture oysters. Three oyster farms, Hooper’s Island Oyster Aquaculture Company, Choptank Oyster Company, and Barren Island Oysters, are all within a 45 minute drive of each other down one of the Chesapeake’s quintessential marsh landscapes. To find out more, or try Barren Island oysters for yourself, check out Dorchester County’s tourism page: http://bit.ly/1xtHwVW
Baltimore harbor as seen from the Baltimore Museum of Industry, with the iconic Domino Sugar building in the distance. Dockside is the S.S. Baltimore, the oldest operating steam-powered, coal-fired tugboat in the country. Built in 1906 by the Skinner Shipbuilding Company in Baltimore, Maryland, Baltimore was primarily a municipal tug, but in winter weather (like the kind we’re experiencing now), she worked as an ice breaker, creating navigable channels in the otherwise locked in harbor.
Two views, looking south and north from Betterton Beach, over a frozen Chesapeake Bay. Several weeks of freezing temperatures have created significant ice coverage along many of the Bay’s tributaries. A warm weekend dislodged large sheets of several-inches-thick floes, which slowly made their way out with the tide. In motion, the ice makes a constant roaring noise, as shattered pieces grind and scrape inexorably towards the ocean. Stacks of the broken ice sheet over local beaches, creating an alien landscape and for some younger folks, a temporary playground fit for a penguin.
J. Roberts Bateman at sunset accompanied by a waterfowl flotilla, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, photograph by author.
Not all wooden boats in the Chesapeake were born here. Especially oyster boats, which have past lives in other shellfish-rich ports. Dockside at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum over the winter is the J. Roberts Bateman, an converted-schooner oystering boat built in 1928 in Greenwich, New Jersey. Once owned by the Bivalve Packing Company in Bivalve, New Jersey, the J. Roberts Bateman was one of the few survivors of the MSX blight, followed by Dermo, that devastated the once-booming New Jersey oyster industry. Today, she occasionally participates in the fluctuating Chesapeake oyster harvest, and the rest of the time provides a visual reminder that the Chesapeake’s woes have also been suffered by other once-robust East Coast fisheries.
Trailboards, Robert H. Burgess collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
“You got to remember that this is something extra.” -Captain Wade Murphy, on the extravagance of gold-leaf trailboards.
The tradition of placing decorative carvings on commercial vessels has all but disappeared in North America. There are a few survivors on the Chesapeake Bay, but as vessels were abandoned, collector and former curator at the Mariner’s Museum Robert H. Burgess rescued hundreds of their carvings. He proudly noted that “the vessels from which they originated have long disappeared but their names will live on.”
These simple pieces of wood and paint express pride, individualism, and competitive spirit. The last vestiges of a time when boats were made of skin and the sea was a god one sought to please, they persist as beautiful ornaments and icons of Chesapeake craftsmanship.
One of the carvings above is the starboard trailboard, from the schooner Anna & Helen. Built in 1911 in Dorchester, New Jersey, she sank in Crisfield harbor in 1957. In 1960, Robert Burgess paid Well W. Evans, Jr., her last owner, $15 for permission to salvage her trailboards from the hulk.
Above is the trailboard of skipjack Annie W. (ex. Mary Sue) built 1906 in Deep Creek, Virginia. The carving is in the distinctive style of Dewey Webster of Deals Island, who worked as a watermen but made carvings for at least a dozen oyster dredging boats from the 1930s through the 1960s. Although this trailboard adorned her bow by 1936, her name was never changed in official records, and remained Mary Sue until she was dismantled in 1972. Burgess acquired this item from a waterman on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, who had this and its mate in a shed. Burgess repainted them in original colors from traces of paint he found on the boards.
Trailboard and nameboard carvings on display, Robert H. Burgess collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
Storm clouds hang over workboats rigged for oystering at a marina in Chance, Maryland. One of the traditional fishing communities of Somerset County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, watermen here have been working through economic depressions, environmental challenges, and radical changes in regulation. Though considerably smaller than in year’s past, the fleet still leaves in the morning to harvest whatever is seasonally available, up to the chance of tide, wind, and timing.
Last light illuminates the roots of a flooded tree along the southern mouth of the Chester River, north on the Chesapeake Bay. This view once held one of the most fertile and hotly disputed oyster beds in Maryland.
Audaciously productive, its huge oyster shoals were the site of several 19th century gunfights between oystermen and the beleaguered state “Oyster Navy.” One particularly violent example even made national news, covered in 1888 by the New York Times with the headline “Maryland’s Oyster War: A Desperate Fight With Illegal Oyster Dredgers” http://nyti.ms/1zq2oP4. One Oyster Navy man caught a bullet in the fray and cried out, “I’m done for!” Fortunately, he was not seriously hurt, but it did make for juicy copy.
Today, it is the location of new oyster wars, this time between would-be oyster leasers and local watermen. Although this stretch of the river hasn’t been a powerhouse of oyster production in 50 years or more, some new oyster farmers would like to change that. Their leases, and the oyster cages they use, have sparked protests from watermen who are concerned about the impact such tools might have on other fisheries, like trotlining.
For such a peaceful view, it is a place that has produced conflicts as prodigiously as it once grew oysters.
A winter solstice sunrise over Morgan Creek, a branch off the Chester River. With first light appearing so late in the morning this time of year, it’s a perfect chance for lay-abeds to enjoy a few gorgeous, saturated sunrises.
This image of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s iconic Hooper Strait Lighthouse graced the cover of the Christmas edition of the New Yorker magazine on December 3, 1984.
Painted by illustrator Susan Davis, who had a home on nearby Tilghman Island, this holiday scene has changed little in the last 20 years since it was painted. As a comparison between then and now shows, traditions run deep at our maritime museum. The lighthouse is always decorated for the holidays, and each year we run a lighted tree up the mast of our skipjack, Rosie Parks. We like to honor the past, at Christmastime, and every day. It’s the Chesapeake way.
Swan decoy, James T. Holly (1855-1935), Havre de Grace, Maryland, or Samuel T. Barnes (1857-1926), Havre de Grace, Maryland. Collection of Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
The maker of this swan decoy, which was produced as a “confidence bird” meant to add realistic variety to a gunner’s rig, has been disputed for years. Attributed to a Havre de Grace carver, Samuel T Barnes, some experts have argued it far more strongly resembles the work of Barnes’ contemporary, James T. Holly. Regardless of the maker, its voluptuous form, sinuous neck, and graceful proportions create a decoy that beautifully marries art, craft, and the Chesapeake environment. The persistent mystery of its maker is just another part of its appeal.
Newsprint transfer on swan decoy’s paint.
Up close, the excellence of the decoy’s carving is evident. What is also evident is some blueish typeface- the remnant of a hasty wrapping job in newspaper.S ince the original finish or patina of a decoy is part of its value, removing the imprint would risk ruining the swan’s paint. But the transferred ink is not just a mar on a perfect finish. Rather, it is an interesting piece of the swan’s long provenance. And for years, this ink stain has been another part of the Barners/ Holly swan’s mystery. Since it is illegible- the copy transferred in a mirror image- our curator at CBMM has never been able to reading the text in the ink imprint.
The swan ink imprint, reversed.
Thanks to the miracle of Photoshop, the image is able to be reversed to make it legible. There are references to war, but the headline refers to a “Speaker Bankhead”. A quick google search shows that this is House of Representatives Speaker Bankhead, who held the office from 1936 until 1940. Bankhead, the father of famous actress Tallulah Bankhead, was in Washington during the tumultuous years of the New Deal, just before the US entered World War II.
Speaker Bankhead (right) in 1937 smoking a pipe with a Minnesotan representative. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
The ghost left behind the newsprint helps put our swan decoy into context on a world stage. In a country crawling from the economic pit of the Great Depression, riddled with anxieties about war, a luminous swan decoy was wrapped in newsprint for protection somewhere in the Chesapeake. Imprinted forever, this moment in time would become part of the swan’s permanent history to carry forward. But with the help of modern technology, its unlocked code and the story behind it can be shared with the visitors who linger over the swan’s elegant form. Behind glass, its neck is a question mark, finally answered.
CBMM Director of Education Kate Livie and the decoded Barnes/ Holly swan.
A drowned meadow during an unusually high tide at Assateague Island is a poignant reminder of a constantly changing, shifting Chesapeake. As the land subsides and the tides encroach, great changes may await the Bay and the people that call the watershed home in the next generations.
Shipwrights from Coastal Heritage Alliance hard at work restoring the skipjack Kathryn. Never built to last, wooden skipjacks require regular upkeep to stay above the waterline. Only a few places throughout the Chesapeake still maintain the traditional woodworking and boat building techniques needed to care for these hard working vessels. This boat yard, in Chance, Maryland, is one of a handful where the art of wooden boat building lives on in the calloused hands of a few dedicated shipwrights.
Arrowhead hunting along the Sassafras River, on the Chesapeake Bay. Native Americans had several major communities in this area when John Smith explored here in 1609. After storms, arrowheads, axe heads, and pottery will often wash up along the shorelines, reminders of the many different versions of the Chesapeake that have existed in the past.
