Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
213 N. Talbot Street
St. Michaels, MD 21663

I look at Chesapeake Bay maritime history as the story of a once-mighty seafood industry whose rise and fall can be attributed to one and the same factor: Technological progress. The bay was once known for its great seafood production, especially blue crabs, clams and oysters. Today, the body of water is less productive than it used to be, due to runoff from urban areas and farms, over harvesting, and invasion of foreign species. That said, the bay still yields more fish and shellfish than any other estuary in the United States. This statistic needs to be understood in context: Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States.

Much of the bay is quite shallow, a circumstance which led oyster harvesters to develop a series of sailboats indigenous to the Chesapeake Bay region. One of their earlier inventions was the Log Canoe, a type of sailboat based on the dugout canoe. At one time sawed lumber was hard to find, and large trees were readily available, so boat builders used logs instead. Until 1865 these small vessels were sufficient for watermen, as the use of dredges was prohibited by the state of Maryland.

Also prohibited was the use of steam power, a ban which remained in force even after dredging was legalized. The need for greater pulling power for dredging was met by development of the Bugeye, a larger sailing ship whose hull continued to be assembled from logs. The Bugeye’s low bulwarks facilitated the raising and lowering of oyster dredges, and its relatively simple construction and rigging minimized building costs and crew size. This design was later replaced by the Skipjack, whose fore-and-aft rigging delivered even greater pulling-power, and whose improved hull further economized on construction costs.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s sprawling campus contains an extensive collection of indigenous water craft, and features a working boat yard that lets you try your hand as an apprentice. Exhibits cover the range of Chesapeake Bay maritime history and culture, including Native-American life, Anglo-American settlement, seventeenth and eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic trade, naval history, the Bay’s unique watercraft and boat building traditions, navigation, waterfowling, boating, seafood harvesting, and recreation.

You can easily spend the better part of a day there, and I did so. Following is a small sample from the photographs that I took there; if you’re into this kind of thing then making the visit yourself is highly recommended.

This screw-pile lighthouse originally marked the location of a hidden sandbar in Hooper Strait, which is about forty miles south of the museum. A large screw was attached like a horseshoe to the bottom of each of the seven pilings (legs) – allowing the piling to be screwed down into the bay bottom. Screw-pile lighthouses proliferated in the Chesapeake Bay, due to the estuary’s soft bottom. The screws also helped to keep the lighthouse secure in the winter, when the bay surface froze over. When the tide rose beneath the ice, it tried to lift the pilings with it.

Out in the middle of Hooper Strait – almost five miles distant from the nearest landing – the light keeper lived with his wife. A steam sidewheel tender would arrive about once a month, delivering supplies such as coal and pine wood, along with tools needed for lighthouse maintenance.

One of the keeper’s most important responsibilities was to ascend the tower at dawn and pull down opaque shades, covering the windows surrounding the Fresnel lens. This prevented the magnifying powers of the lens from starting a fire and burning the wooden structure. The shades were raised at dusk, and then the oil lamp inside the lens was lit.