Oysters, Skipjacks and Buyboats

My friend Keith White lives near the Sassafras River in Galena, MD.  He has messed around and on boats for decades.  Keith loves the history and culture of the Chesapeake Bay.  Recently he shared this glimpse into history of Skipjacks and Buy Boats.  I thought my boating friends might enjoy might enjoy a step into the past.

By Keith White

When the first Europeans showed up in America, the oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay were widespread and almost countless. Many nearly dried out at low tide. There were so many beds that they constituted, if not a hazard, a navigation consideration. Oysters could be harvested by simple means. The Eastern oyster proved an unlimited, boundless resource any who wanted them.

Skipjack under sail on Chesapeake Bay. Photo by Marion E. Warren (Marion E. Warren Collection, MSA SC1890-BP7506, Maryland State Archives). 

Oysters feed by drawing in water and extracting the nutrients they need, thus filtering the water as an additional benefit. Marine naturalists have estimated that in those pre-colonial times there were sufficient oysters in the bay to filter all of the water in the bay once a week.  By the 1980s it would take about 350 days to filter it once.

In those colonial days things looked good and oyster supplies seemed limitless. Around 1700 oyster “tongers” began to harvest oysters. By1800 oystermen from New England arrived with dredges, looking for new fishing grounds, having exhausted their own oyster beds by rapacious dredging without thought to any form of conservation.

Time passed. Half-hearted legislation was put in place. Dredging was prohibited then restored, but only under sail.  Competition was stiff and oyster wars were fought between newcomers and those who lived in the area.  Maryland watermen fought Virginia watermen.   The Oyster Navy was established after the civil war to bring conflict under control.

 By 1880 the watermen of the Chesapeake would harvest 15 million bushels annually.  Most came from the approximately 2,000 skipjacks working the bay.

Nellie Crocket circa 1926

Time spent dredging oysters was time spent making money. Time sailing back to shore to deliver oysters for sale was not time that produced income.  Thus the buy boat concept was born. These boats went out to the oyster beds and brought the catch to shore, leaving the skipjacks to dredge uninterrupted.

Buy boats were built for the job, or were converted vessels. Purpose built boats varied from 40 to 100 feet in length, although most were in the 45 to 60 foot range. The mast and cargo boom were used to transfer the sorted oysters from the deck of the skipjack to the deck of the buy boat.

Buy boats, or run boats, were worked hard throughout the years. The boats that lasted were the were well built and had owners and captains who took pride in the condition of their boats and kept them up.

When oystering was fast declining many of the oyster boats were used for different careers.  New owners sometimes did not maintain the boats and many were threatened by time and neglect.  Some of the received better care and survived to grace the waterways of today.

Nellie Crocket today

Two of these survivors live on our river, the Sassafras. The Nellie Crocket lives on the Cecil County bank, just above the Route 213 bascule bridge in Georgetown, you can see her as you drive north towards Elkton.

The Nellie Crocket was launched in 1925, built by Charles A. Dana of Crisfield for Andrew A. “Shad” Crocket of Tangier. She was named for one of Crocket’s daughters. She was operated by Crocket until 1942, carrying oysters in season and produce and lumber in the off-season.

In 1942 she was purchased by the US Government and operated as a fire boat in ports around the Chesapeake. In1945 Shad Crocket bought her back and continued to operate her as a buy boat. She then had a series of owners until, at the end of her working career,in 1990, she was bought by Theodore “Teddy” Parish of Georgetown.

Now the Nellie Crocket enjoys Grand Old Lady status on the Chesapeake among her peers in the Chesapeake Bay Buy Boat association.

The Muriel Eileen, the second buy boat on the Sassafras, lives on the Kent County side of the river almost opposite the Nellie Crocket.

Muriel Eileen

The Great Slug Hunt

My least favorite garden pest of all time has to be the slug.  There is nothing worse than reaching down to pull a weed and grabbing the body of a slimy, sticky, and slippery slug.

Before taking off to sea, the summer challenge was the eradication of the slug.  In the past I have used slug bait to kill them.  Looking for an equally lethal, but more environmentally friendly way to get the job done, I switched to bowls of beer.  At night the grayish gastropods would slither into the beer and drown.  A good sprinkle of salt would also take care of them, one at a time. 

Who would have predicted that this summer I would accompany grandson, Sam, age six, on a great slug hunt around the neighborhood.  The purpose of this search, which eventually covered two states, wasn’t for the elimination of the species.

Quite the opposite, Sam wanted one for a pet.  For some reason Sam loves slugs.  He noticed one crossing the parking lot of a local store and wanted to take it home. His mother, dear girl, told Sam that Mom Mom knew how to find slugs and would help him on his quest.  Thank you daughter. The hunt was on.

First Sam and I identified the most prominent local slug. The Leopard Slug is an invasive species that was first discovered in dirt floor cellars of Philadelphia in 1867.  It only took a few years before it turned up in Rhode Island and New York.  By 1896 the slimy beast had also made its home in California.  It can now be found in more than half of the United States.

To hunt a slug, we learned about our prey.  The Internet and online images made it easy identify and learn about where we might find Sam’s future pet.

We learned from the Institute for Invasive Species that Leopard Slugs probably came to the United States on ships hidden in foliage and potted plants.  The stowaways originally arrived from Western and Southern Europe as well as North Africa.  

Slugs grow to four inches. They are usually grayish with black spots or bands. Often they are wrinkly, and of course, slimy. The garden variety Leopard Slug has four tentacles on its head, two long ones and two short ones. These gastropods live in fields, woods, and gardens. They prefer damp, shady places. You can find them under rocks, logs, and leaves. Slugs are mostly nocturnal, but sometimes come out on rainy days.  A sure sign that one has been moving through the garden is the slivery trail left behind.

Leopard Slugs are voracious.  They eat rotting plants, leaves, flowers, and fruits of plants. Mushrooms, dead animals, and even fellow slugs are part of their diet.  Creatures that enjoy slug snacks include toads, turtles, beetles, birds, flies and even humans.  For the brave, slugs can be a delicacy.  Eating the creatures raw or undercooked can infect humans with a meningitis causing nematode.  Oh yuk!

The slug can live for up to three years.  They are hermaphroditic, meaning they can be either male or female.  Even so, two slugs are required for mating.  They inch their way to an overhanging wall or branch and create a slime thread.  They hang and twist around each other, doing their slug thing.  After mating the Leopard Slug will lay up to 200 large clear eggs.  Newly hatched slugs are tiny and white.  Stripes appear after about a week.

On a beautiful summer Saturday, Sam and I, along with his sister Lexi and brother Max began the search.  Our tools included an old spoon and a plastic container with lid.  We lifted bricks, rocks and even garbage cans, but found no trace of a slug in Mom Mom’s yard.  Silently, I’m thinking, yeah!  

Soon we head to a wooded area at the back of a nearby housing development.  Sam lifts rotted branches and we kick leaves.  No slugs!  Yeah!   A neighbor is finishing yard work.  We stop and ask her if she had come across any slugs.  “Ewwwwwwwww!” she says as she curls her lip and looks horrified.   “It’s going to be my pet,” Sam explains.  After a couple of hours it’s time for the grandchildren to go home. We change tactics.  “Sam, I know there will be slugs near Grandpa Sparks’ garden,” I say with a feigned enthusiasm.

A week later we set a slug trap at the back of the Sharptown garden.   We put down a small plastic sheet and weigh it down with rocks.  The plan was to come back in two days and find Sam’s pet.

With container in hand, Sam lifts the sheet.  No slugs.  He slumps and looks so sad. Once again the elusive slug has not appeared.   Mentally, I do a happy dance.  As we leave the garden, I lift an old diving board that Dad uses to keep plastic containers off the ground along the side of the pool.  

“A slug, a slug,” Sam yells.  Mom Mom we found one.   Actually we found two.  With a piece of plastic strapping I scoop two small slugs into the container along with a bit of soil and some leaves.  Sam grins.   Max now wants a slug pet too. 

As I finish this column there are two slugs in a plastic container with some blackberries for sustenance.  I convinced Sam that they must sleep outside.  Tomorrow begins with hunt number two.  A slug hunt for Max is in the works.   Sometimes I’m amazed at the things that I do for the grandchildren. Who would have thunk it?   Perhaps Sam will one day become a biologist?  Right now he is the proud owner of pet slugs.

He Can Hear Me Now!

The birds twitter a conversation from a tree two houses down.  Soft breezes brush nearby foliage with a swishing sound.   Simultaneously hundreds of raindrops begin to pelt the aluminum siding with a familiar tap, tap, tap.  These are sounds I take for granted.

Sidekick and husband, Ed, now hears these sounds too. I listen to him outside laughing in delight. For the first time in many years he hears the birds and long forgotten sounds.

Technology for hearing loss has come a long way since man first sought a way to amplify hearing.  Long before the hearing trumpet, medieval author Giovanni Battista Porta wrote about carved hearing aids shaped of the ears belonging to animals with superior hearing. Obviously, that fad didn’t last.

By the early 1700’s the hearing trumpet was carved from wood, animal horns, shells and later fashioned with metals.  Wide at the receiving end and narrow at the other to fit near the ear, the hearing device directly amplified the sound to the ear.   Ludwig Van Beethoven was said to have used such a device.

It was during this time that bone conduction; the act of transmitting sound waves through the skull to the brain was discovered. Fanlike devices were placed behind the ear to capture the sound waves and transmit them to the brain for processing.  

If you haven’t already guessed, I’ve spent a lot of time reading literature at the audiologist’s office while sidekick was tested.   I’ve learned a lot about hearing loss.  Ed is like many who experience a slow decline in hearing.  

At first he missed a few words of a conversation.  It was harder and harder for him to distinguish vowels and soft sounds.  Over time background noise made hearing an even bigger challenge.  It was this winter that I noticed that my gregarious, outgoing sidekick was hanging closer and closer to the boat.   He didn’t want to attend beach functions because he hard a hard time understanding conversation in groups of people.  One on one and face to face was manageable, but he still might ask one to repeat something. 

Several times I walked up behind him and watched him jump as I startled him.  All I said was, “You need to see the ear doctor when we get back to the States.”  After originally agreeing to do that four years ago, Ed was finally ready.

I didn’t have to remind him or even find a doctor.   He did that himself.   He was extremely disappointed with the discourteous fast food service approach of the first practice and refused to go back after the audiologist stopped several times to take personal cell phone calls during the testing procedure.

He made a formal complaint to the practice, the referring physician, and the insurance company before finding a second audiologist nearby.  From there it was easy, all the way.  Stacy the audiologist was patient.  She explained what was happening and why Ed couldn’t hear in specific situations. 

It was after she fitted what looked like a neck crook with a round box that rested under Ed’s beard and placed small hearing aids in his ears that he fell in love.  The joy on his face as he conversed with full hearing made me grin.

It was when he turned his head to the ping of a new email message on her computer that brought a tear to my eye.  Ed could now hear sounds that he had been missing.  He heard the creak of the chair as Stacy moved backward.   

Do I get to wear this all the time he asked in earnest?   He really thought he would get the neck crook medallion.   Laughing ,Stacy explained that he would not need a device that large.  “You will receive a small hearing aid in a week,” she said.

We are fortunate that our insurance company pays once every three years for one hearing aid.  That meant we would have to pay the balance for a second one.  The devices are expensive and fragile.  Ed decided that he would go with both.

The hearing aides come with a three-year warranty against loss or breakage.  You can lose or break each one once in a period of three years.   They also come with a year’s supply of batteries that last up to 10 days. 

Hearing aids do need adjusting from time to time and must be kept clean.  Ed’s new devices are barely visible.  You have to look hard under all that hair to find them.  They are small and fit behind the top of his ear with a small wire connected to an ear bud that fits snugly inside.

Today’s hearing aids are a marvel of technology. Ed’s aids can adapt o changing sounds as he moves through the day.  It accounts for the wind blowing while driving with the windows open. It adjusts to reduce noise levels and can even act as a Bluetooth device.

It is amazing that something so small can make such a huge difference.  Hearing that I took for granted I now share with my husband.  On Imagine, he will hear the rain on the cabin top and the waves splashing the hull. 

This summer in Delaware he still won’t hear the neighbors dogs that wake me, or the train that whistles through Newark in the wee hours of the morning.  That’s because he takes them out at night.

I’ve been warned to watch what I say when his back is turned, he can hear me now…  at least when he wants to.   The other day I was helping him with some information I thought he needed to know.   He didn’t agree.  Grinning, he clicked the little volume button behind his ear and said, “Look Sharron, I can turn you off.”  Thanks Ed!

Strawberry Remembering

It’s funny how an unexpected experience quickly unlocks childhood memories that had been filed away gathering cobwebs in the recesses of the brain.   A patch of strawberries, surrounded by small tomato and pepper plants took me for a walk down memory lane.

Purple martins chirped nosily, flying in and out of the birdhouses centered in the garden.  Below, I searched beneath the deep green saw-toothed clusters of three leaves where the best berries hide.  Dad picked berries on the opposite side of the row.

Nearly 40 years have passed since I last picked strawberries with my dad in his Sharptown garden.  An avalanche of memories tumble forth making me laugh and also wonder when childhood had slipped away. 

As I step back in time, I’m no longer alone with Dad in the garden.  My sisters and brothers are there as well.  We pick opposite of one another, arguing, encouraging and reminding each other to “pick it clean.”  I won’t mention names, but there was a sibling who only wanted to pick the big berries.

After the rows of berries were picked clean the Sparks kids and cousins admired the dozens of neatly packed red berries in the brown woodchip quart boxes.  We carefully carried the fragile berries across the freshly tilled soil towards the house.  Often we sported red fingers. Sometimes stains ran down our chins where the juicy berries overflowed.

Often the berries were sold in front of the house.  Other times dad loaded the back of his old beat-up GMC truck and we went door to door selling the fresh picked fruit.  That’s not something one could do today without a license. 

Almost five decades ago, when I was 10, the berries sold for $.75 to $1.00 a quart.  One could pick a quart at different farms for $.25.  The Sparks family used the strawberry proceeds for vacation.

We didn’t just sell the berries.  There was still canning and freezing ahead. Berries were capped, sliced and stored in the freezer for wintertime treats.  More berries were  again capped, sliced and mashed to make strawberry jam. 

Because I was quick, and because I was the oldest, I usually was the de-capper. I’d insert the knife blade just under the star like cap and pop up, over and over, thousands and thousands of times, until the berries floating in the cleansing water disappeared.

Capped berries went into the bowl where the slicer began to work.  Usually my cousin (aunt) Judy Price would be slicing the berries next to me.  After she filled a bowl with quartered and sliced berries, the bag filler began the task of filling  quart bags with the aromatic bright red fruit.

The best part about strawberry season was the strawberry shortcake.  Dad would slightly mush the berries and add some sugar while Mom baked up large pans of golden brown shortcake.  Our grandfather, John Sparks, lived with us.  He loved his strawberries.  That meant that Mom was making shortcake for twelve.

This week I picked 20 quarts of strawberries from Dad’s garden while he was away.  Husband, Ed, who does better with boating things, picked the first berries of his lifetime.  No, he didn’t pick them clean.  He went for the big berries, just like a sibling of mine.

I went behind him cleaning up the row. 

I washed, capped, sliced and froze the berries later that afternoon. The kitchen smelled heavenly.  I reminisced about the good times I had with the family during those childhood years. 

Judy is on my mind and in my thoughts as she watches her husband’s declining health. While I am far away, hospice workers offer support and comfort.  I wonder if she might smell the strawberries? I think of her and imagine that she does.

Dad is getting a little more stooped and a little grayer each year.  Mom’s challenges have taken away her ability to drive, or cook, and sometimes to remember the names of her children and grandchildren. 

Heck, I’m getting grayer each year. I’m guessing that I must have been more limber (imagine that) in my youth.  I don’t remember the hamstrings talking to me the following day.  Oh yeah, muscles and ligaments can be quite loud.

While the hamstrings bark, I search through recipes for strawberry jalapeño jam.  Last year I made blackberry jalapeño jam that was a hit with fellow boaters.   Small half pint jars make a nice gift for someone who has done something nice.  It also makes a great appetizer when spread over a block of cream cheese and served with crackers.

Next winter while we cruise, I will enjoy strawberry memories as we share drinks and companionship with fellow boaters.  Strawberry memories have sweetened the strawberries even more this season. 

In my opinion, the only berries as good as the ones in Dad’s garden are the ones farm grown on Quaker Neck Road.  Many years ago, the Battiato boy’s began selling strawberries as a way to earn extra cash.  Frank has strawberry memories of his own that maybe one day he will share with his children, my grandchildren.

Dr. William Butler a 17^th century English writer once wrote about the strawberry, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”  I’ll bet he had strawberry memories too.

 Native American Indians were already eating strawberries when the colonists appeared on their shores.  They crushed the berries and mixed it into cornmeal.  Colonists came up with their own versions, which were probably the origins of strawberry shortcake.

Not only does the strawberry convey memories, it is a very special fruit.  It is a member of the rose family.  It is also the only fruit with the seeds on the outside.  If you don’t have some strawberry memories of your own, maybe it is time to start.  Those memories will last the rest of your life.