Peter F. Guerrero

Saving the remaining fleet of Chesapeake Skipjacks within the context of a living, working oyster fishery presents challenges beyond those typically encountered in preserving individual wooden boats. For example, the restoration of these working skipjacks also requires efforts to ensure a healthy environment, which, in turn, ensures the continued survival of the Chesapeake "watermen" who for generations have made their livelihood by dredging for oysters each winter. Without a healthy environment, the oyster can't thrive; if the oyster doesn't thrive, the waterman can't either and the skipjack becomes just another historic maritime artifact.

Understanding these complex relationships is especially urgent today. Maritime resources are being depleted worldwide, traditional fishing communities are losing population, and the relentless pace of urbanization, the influence of mass culture, and rapid improvements in global telecommunications are all rapidly erasing the unique qualities and way of life that thrived in these once "out of the way" places.

It is within this context that I explored Maryland's current efforts to save the Chesapeake Skipjack, both an historic vessel in its own right and also an important indicator of the environmental health of the Chesapeake Bay and its traditional way of life.

Environmental Influences on the Preservation of Maritime Craft and Culture

The Chesapeake Oyster

To understand the issues and challenges associated with preserving the Chesapeake Skipjack, one has to also understand the historic role of the oyster. Legend has it that Captain John Smith, upon first seeing the Chesapeake Bay, described it as being so rich in marine life that all a crewmember had to do was to put a skillet overboard to catch the evening's dinner. Among the marine riches of the Bay was the American or Atlantic oyster. As recently as 100 years ago oyster reefs were so massive that they posed a hazard to ships. In fact, a Swiss writer by the name of Michel wrote in 1701:

The abundance of oysters is incredible. There are whole banks of them so that the ships must avoid them. A sloop, which was to land us at Kingscreek, struck an oyster bed, where it had to wait about two hours for the tide. They surpass those in England by far in size, indeed they are four times as large. I often cut them in two before I could put them in my mouth.

Today, the Chesapeake is thought to support only one percent of its historic oyster population and oyster harvests are less than four percent of the harvest highs recorded as recently as the 1950s. A recent Washington Post article reported that "preliminary results of a state survey show what Maryland oystermen have suspected...the oyster harvest this season is likely to be the state's worst ever." This precipitous drop in the Bay's oyster population is due to a number of factors:

• Over-harvesting: The Bay's oyster reefs are a common resource, not owned by any one person. Chesapeake oystermen are in competition with one another to harvest as many oysters as they can. This leads to improvements in technology that make it possible for oystermen to achieve ever larger catches. The Chesapeake Skipjack was one such notable improvement in technology, making its debut in the late 19th Century. While the Skipjack allowed for larger harvests and increasingly unsustainable catches, their dredges also did irreparable harm to the oyster reefs. Where dredges have plowed through, these reefs are reduced in size so they no longer have a critical mass of oysters, larvae, and shell for new oysters to take hold. • Pollution: The construction boom of the last half-century has resulted in development of much of the Chesapeake's watershed. New buildings, roads, and parking lots increase the impermeability of the Bay's watershed and runoff now carries greater loads of sediment and pollution to the Bay faster after each storm event. This runoff contains metals and toxics that are lethal to juvenile oysters, nutrients that promote algal blooms and accompanying severe oxygen depletion, and siltation that smothers oyster reefs and prevents them from feeding and reproducing. • Disease: Not surprisingly, an oyster population seriously depleted from over-harvesting and pollution has become especially susceptible to disease. Two parasites--MSX and Dermo--responsible for killing oysters over the last four decades have had a particularly devastating effect on the remaining small populations in recent years.

In the last decade, efforts have been underway to rebuild the Chesapeake's devastated oyster reefs. Hatcheries run by the University of Maryland's Horn Point Laboratory and the State Department of Natural Resources have produced disease-free oyster spat that volunteers have planted in back creeks and then harvested to place on depleted oyster bars. But the results have been frustrating: While oyster bars, properly replanted, can create habitat for all kinds of marine life, most oysters on high-salinity bars are still being killed off by disease by their third year. This has lead to demands to undertake a risky ecological project: the introduction of fast-growing, disease-resistant Asian oysters into the Chesapeake in an effort to speed along the restoration of the oyster bars.

The Effect of the Oyster's Decline on the Skipjack and the Waterman

The decline in the oyster population has had a devastating effect on both the waterman and the boats used to dredge for oysters--the Chesapeake Skipjack. Once numbering over a thousand, the fleet had dwindled to 35 active boats by 1985 and then to 13 as recently as last year. This past season, no more than a half dozen Chesapeake Skipjacks actively dredged for oysters. It has become abundantly clear that the fate of the Chesapeake Skipjack is inextricably linked to that of the oyster.

As it becomes increasing difficult to make a living from dredging oysters, watermen have fewer resources to maintain their boats. Maintenance is deferred on the remaining working boats and the others are converted to non-fishing uses or left to decay in the tidal marshes and sometimes even at dockside (in November 2000, The City of Crisfield sank at the Cambridge city dock). The effects of years of deferred maintenance are described in master shipwright Mike Vlahovich's survey findings for the City of Crisfield, prepared to support a restoration decision by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum:

The above mentioned findings...are the most serious and visible repair requirements to the skipjack City of Crisfield; but it is in no way a complete list of the vessel's structural deficiencies...In a neglected vessel such as the City of Crisfield, it should be assumed that the extent of the problems will far exceed those found by visual inspection and soundings. To completely restore the City of Crisfield to a state of reasonable integrity, safety, and insurability would be an ambitious undertaking. Preliminary cost estimates to do a thorough and professional rebuild...far exceeds the budget parameters of the program as it now stands. Although a substantial amount of work can be accomplished within the allotted $50,000 per boat cap, there will most likely (still) remain a number of serious structural problems.

Given the boat's extensive deterioration, restoration, in Vlahovich's opinion, will primarily "add structural strength and rigidity to the hull to stabilize its shape, repair the deck, and address the worst plank and seam damage below the waterline." Substantial additional work and investment will be required of the owner to allow the City of Crisfield to return to oyster dredging. But, given declining oyster harvests, the City of Crisfield may eventually join the growing fleet of skipjacks owned by environmental organizations, outdoor schools and boat captains who use their boats as floating classrooms and for ecotourism.

While the Museum's restoration program seeks to stem this trend by preserving the remaining working skipjacks, some may question whether it's sound public policy to return restored skipjacks like the City of Crisfield to work the Bay's depleted oyster beds. As Michael W. Fincham, writing in Maryland's Sea Grant publication Chesapeake Quarterly, put it: "the state of Maryland (is) trying to put oysters back in the Bay to revive water quality; at the same time it (is) rebuilding the boats that helped tear down the reefs in the first place."

But, restoring the working fleet of skipjacks is also about trying to save the dying culture of the oysterman described so poignantly in the same issue of Chesapeake Quarterly:

While those (oyster) reefs lasted...they also played a role in sustaining the social ecology of the tidewater region. In dozens of waterside towns and on half a dozen small islands, the oyster business was one of the best ways for hard-working men and women to make a good-enough living off the Bay--some from harvesting, others from shucking, packing or shipping. Until the early 1980s, cold-weather oystering was the "keystone" industry for a way of life that, for many, also included fishing and crabbing in the spring and summer and fall. Down at the end of a long neck of flat woodlands and wide-open wetlands, Deal Island, for example, is home to 900 people clustered around three harbors and three villages, and at least six Methodist churches, and it was here that Art Daniels was able to raise his sails every winter and through hard work and summer crabbing raise his five children. His three sons all went to work as watermen, and so did some of their children. His skipjack, some days, (had) three generations of Daniels men on board. All his children still live nearby. For most of the 20th century, during decades of rural out migration to the cities, fishing villages like these created habitat for thousands of men and women who carried on the pace and pleasures and traditions of small town life in supportive communities, close-knit by kinship, work ethic and church.

But the future of these traditional Chesapeake communities, the skipjack, and the oyster itself is not good. In reporting on the recently concluded oyster season, The Washington Post noted that only 70 oystermen had worked the Maryland portion of the Bay. This was down from 437 last season and as many as 2,500 just four years earlier. When there are no jobs for oystermen the grandsons of Art Daniels leave Deal Island for greener pastures and a way of life dies.

The Chesapeake Skipjack

Origins

Howard Chapelle's seminal classic, American Small Sailing Craft, documents over 100 plans of sailing craft once used in coastal trade and maritime occupations during the days of sail. Chapelle notes that these boats, unlike their modern-day replacements, were uniquely suited to the environment and regional conditions in which they worked: "Each had been developed to work in its home waters and weather conditions and to meet the physical requirements of its employment." He goes on to sadly note: "Most of these small sailing craft are now gone: their value in commercial work was destroyed when sail was replaced by low-cost gasoline engines in work-boats. A few types became extinct earlier, owing to exhaustion of local fishing grounds, changes in fishing gear, or...harbor facilities." The disappearance of these boats also resulted in the loss of regional skills and knowledge required to build, maintain, and operate them. Chapelle notes that each section of the country, like the Chesapeake, had its own boatbuilding methods and "fancies" that have since been forgotten.

The Chesapeake Skipjack fleet may be the one exception to the rule--it survives today as the only remaining working fleet of sailboats in America. First built during a time of declining oyster catches in the late 19th Century, the skipjack was intended to be a cheaper and even more efficient harvester of the Bay's oysters than methods then in use. In this sense, the skipjack was an example of ecologist Garret Hardin's concept of the "tragedy of the commons." In a 1968 essay, Hardin posited that when a resource was commonly held it was in everyone's interest to take more of that resource and in nobody's interest to preserve it. So, when oyster catches declined significantly at the end of the 19th Century it was a reasonable response to introduce ever more efficient ways to catch oysters. Chapelle, himself, notes this dilemma as early as 1951:

The (skipjack) have continued in use as work-boats in Maryland waters because of a law there that permits dredging to be done only under sail (note: this was later modified to allow these boats to be powered a few days each week by gasoline or diesel engines contained in "pushboats" that are lowered from davits at the stern). This was intended to prevent depletion of the beds by power dredging and to keep the business in the hands of small, independent operators. In the last the law has been successful, but the beds are being depleted because of the number of boats employed and the size of the dredges now permitted. It seems probable that, in a relatively short time, the law may be repealed in favor of private ownership of beds and power dredging. This will have the usual result of bringing about the extinction of the sailing dredge and of the individual operator, in favor of companies and power craft.

But, Maryland never did adopt a system of leasing its oyster beds as Chapelle assumed it would have to in order to preserve its dwindling oyster stocks. Instead, Maryland kept its oyster grounds as a common resource in an attempt to support the livelihoods of the watermen that worked them. Even as oyster harvests continued to fall, the image of a skipjack dredging under sail came to be viewed, ironically, as a conservation measure preventing even more destructive methods of harvesting the Bay's oysters.

Design Features

The Chesapeake Skipjack, like most traditional sailing craft, is uniquely suited to both its environment and its work. Among these features are:

• Low sides, which makes the handling of dredges easier and faster than in boats with higher freeboard. • Limited draft and a centerboard, allowing for access to most oyster reefs in the shallow Chesapeake. • A broad beam, allowing ample deck space for dredging equipment, the culling and sorting of the catch by the crew, and the storage of dredged oysters. • A heavy structure and framing built to withstand the enormous strains of hauling dredges and carrying a heavy rig in winter weather, yet simple enough in design so that it could be built utilizing readily available skills and materials. • A rig--consisting of a huge mainsail, a club-footed jib, and a sharply raked mast--that was designed to both power the boat and its dredges over the oyster bars yet allow it to sail well when close-hauled to the wind. (This attribute also permitted a skilled captain to retrace his course very closely with each lick of the dredges, leaving no oysters behind for other skipjack captains to find). • And, while substantial, the rig also utilized many labor-saving devices, such as lazy jacks, which allowed for the sails to be lowered quickly in a winter gale and to be easily handled by a small crew.

Chapelle's overall assessment follows:

The (skipjacks) are surprisingly seaworthy craft and withstand extremely well the steep and dangerous seas met with on the Chesapeake, in the stormy months of the dredging season. Most of them are very fast sailers and work with remarkable certainty. They usually carry some ballast, which, with their great structural weight, helps in working. Their large area of sail, in a rather low rig, makes them move well in light weather, yet not lie over excessively in the breeze (as) boats that sail on their sides would be useless as work-boats in the oyster business.

Preserving the Chesapeake Skipjack

Growing Awareness

On June 6, 2002, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Chesapeake Bay Skipjack as one of America's "eleven most endangered historic places." In highlighting the plight of the skipjack, the National Trust noted:

...Skipjacks...represent a time when the natural resources of the Chesapeake Bay contributed greatly to the economy of not only Maryland but also the whole Mid-Atlantic region. However, as the Bay's oyster population plummeted so did the skipjacks. Additionally, the high cost of maintaining a wooden boat has caused the fleet to disappear one by one. The remaining fleet is severely deteriorated and threatened by the elements, deferred maintenance and the difficulty and expense of obtaining appropriate materials for repair and restoration. In 1988, 35 vessels remained; today, there are only about a dozen. At this rate, in just a few years, there will be none.

Prior to the National Trust's listing of the skipjack as endangered, the State of Maryland had appointed a task force to develop a set of recommendations for preserving the remaining skipjacks. Chaired by former Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer, the task force examined a number of issues and made a variety of recommendations. Among them were recommendations on how to repair and maintain the existing fleet to avoid further losses. To accomplish this, the task force recommended:

...the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (be) the center for (this) specialized marine work. The museum intends to increase the capacity of its marine railway to accommodate this work and will engage apprentices, supervised by experienced skilled craftsmen, to perform the work. The museum will also document the history of each vessel as it is being repaired...and will feature the work in its education program. The task force is recommending that the Maryland Historical Trust allocate $150,000 annually for three years beginning with the next fiscal year (July 1, 2000) to fund the work...

Getting Started

With funding from the Maryland Historic Trust, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, individuals and numerous private businesses, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum began this project in July 2001. Eligibility criteria were established and a task force comprised of skipjack captains, state government representatives, marine insurers, museum staff, and private citizens advises the restoration program. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources' historic oyster harvest records are used to determine the eligibility of individual boats. A committee comprised of two skipjack captains from Deale Island, two from Tilghman Island, and a retired judge sets boat restoration priorities and timelines. Overall, approximately 12 working skipjacks and one working schooner have been assessed for this program. Fully half of these have already been either substantially rebuilt or have had major repair work done by the museum.

Restoration Philosophy

Due to deferred maintenance, many of the eligible boats require substantial restoration work. For example, the skipjack Lady Katie recently received a new centerboard trunk, strongback, sister keels, chine logs, side planking, frames, deck and mast (see photo). Such substantial work is viewed as more maintenance than preservation by the program's boat yard manager, Mike Vlahovich. In his view, it is impossible to match materials in doing this restoration work. Instead, the goal of the program is to retain the original shape and design integrity of the boat while restoring it to a safe condition so it can once again be used commercially. This is different from restoring a boat for a museum where the boat's seaworthiness isn't an issue and more authentic restoration work might be undertaken. Also, original materials for restoration work are hard to come by. For example, good grade Georgia pine is hard to find. Using cheaper loblolly pine, although often used in the original construction, would be a mistake because it wouldn't hold up over time. Furthermore, east coast pine is often pressure treated with wood preservatives that are toxic and can't be used if the program is to provide visitor access to the restoration areas. As a result, the museum has imported Douglas fir from the West Coast for both masts and decking.

In often substantially rebuilding these skipjacks, original materials are replaced with more durable materials that can hold up under the harsh conditions experienced when dredging for oysters. For example, cabin tops are covered with fiberglass. These decisions reflect the dilemma of the wooden boat preservationist: ships, especially workboats, were built to last a few decades and then be scrapped and replaced. But it would be a waste of public and private resources to not use more durable, non-traditional materials in restoring skipjacks destined to continue working as oyster dredgers.

In addition to establishing eligibility criteria, attracting funding, and determining appropriate restoration goals, Maryland's skipjack restoration program has also faced a number of other important issues, including:

Determining the appropriate role of public v. private investment: In undertaking to restore the skipjack fleet, Maryland faced the inevitable question of whether or not the state should pay for the restoration of what is essentially a private asset. Maryland has made the case that these boats are historic, iconic images of the Chesapeake Bay, and that their continued existence is important not only to the waterman but also to the state's tourist industry. In essence, while the oyster fishery may be on hard times, working skipjacks convey the image of a healthy, vibrant Chesapeake Bay that is invaluable to the growing tourist economy of Maryland. In the end, Maryland has chosen to fund about half of the restoration costs, relying on other governmental and private funds for the remainder.

Not rewarding negligent upkeep: As private assets, these boats have not been uniformly maintained. Some owners have put both time and money into maintaining their boats, others have deferred maintenance for years. Concerned that the program not reward "bad" behavior, the state created a committee of the skipjack captains to recommend restoration priorities (presumably, it would be difficult for a captain who had routinely deferred maintenance to argue before his peers that his negligence should now be rewarded).

Treating all skipjack owners fairly: The collapse of the state's oyster fishery raises a question of whether it's realistic to expect that these boats, once restored, will ever again work as oyster dredgers. More likely, they will be used for non-commercial purposes in the future (e.g., tourism and environmental education). This raises an equity question since skipjacks currently owned by non-profit organizations and adapted for non-commercial use have, to date, been ineligible for funding under the Maryland program.

Protecting the public's investment: Finally, wooden boats, by their nature, are subject to continued deterioration if not maintained. Having made a substantial investment in the skipjack fleet's restoration, what role should the state continue to play so as to ensure the proper maintenance and upkeep of the fleet? Conversely, what type of commitment and financial assurance should owners provide to protect the public's investment? (The museum recognizes that continued maintenance will need to be done on the restored boats. Currently, routine maintenance and annual haul-outs are provided for each restored boat and captains are advised of appropriate preventative maintenance steps at these times).

Conclusion

Maryland's efforts to preserve the remaining fleet of working skipjacks is unique in maritime preservation--it represents the first large-scale effort to save historic maritime vessels which are still in active use. Furthermore, the program is also unique in that the skipjacks will remain in private ownership after restoration and continue to be used for the same purpose for which they were first built. Unfortunately, it may all be too late. It appears that the Chesapeake oyster fishery is all but dead after centuries of plunder and environmental decline. Without the oyster, there is no longer a role for the skipjack or the waterman. While current efforts are underway to "seed" depleted oyster beds and to introduce disease-resistant oyster species into the Chesapeake, the future success of these efforts remains highly uncertain.

With the decline of the oyster, an increasing number of skipjacks have been adapted for other uses. Some are floating environmental classrooms and others cater to a growing tourist demand for an "authentic" Chesapeake experience. With only a half dozen skipjacks attempting a go of it on the oyster grounds this winter, it is almost a certainty that many of the boats restored by the Maryland program will similarly be adapted for non-commercial uses in the future. As a result, Maryland may need to reexamine its program goals and restoration approaches.

Finally, this is a critical time for the survival of these historic boats: with the virtual collapse of the oyster fishery, documenting what remains of the Chesapeake's oyster fishery and traditions is as essential as preserving the remaining skipjacks. But most importantly, renewed attention and energies need to be directed toward restoring the environmental quality of the Bay itself-- without a healthy Chesapeake Bay we loose not only the oyster, but the watermen, their unique culture, and the magnificent fleet of working skipjacks that once graced the Bay.

Afterword

On a cold, wintry December morning I met Captain Byshe Hicks of the skipjack Martha Lewis on a dock in Baltimore's Locust Point neighborhood. We drove out to Sparrows Point, at the mouth of Baltimore Harbor, and waited for the tide to lift the Martha Lewis off the shallow creek bottom. There was skim ice on the creek, harbinger of colder winter days to come. After having lived in the Chesapeake area for 27 years, I was finally going oystering.

Bronza Parks built the Martha Lewis in 1955 at Wingate, Maryland. She was one of three ships built by Mr. Parks at that time, the other two being the Lady Katie and the Rosie Parks, the latter being in the collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. The Martha Lewis is 49 feet on deck with a 16-foot beam. She is eight gross tons and draws nearly four feet with the centerboard up. She was acquired by the Chesapeake Heritage Conservancy in the early 1990s and restored by master shipwright, Allen C. Rawl. She has been modified to obtain Coast Guard approval, allowing her to carry passengers. Otherwise, she retains her traditional appearance, including the presence of two oyster dredges and a motorized windlass midships, a diesel-powered push boat at the stern carried on davits, and a traditional two sail rig with a club-footed jib and a large main carried on a sharply raked mast.

The rising tide allowed us to leave the dock shortly after nine in the morning. We passed blue herons fishing in the creek, flocks of snow geese in for the winter, and the ghostly landscape of the old Bethlehem steel works. Motoring out to the oyster bar, we dropped the dredges overboard. The crew worked hard, dropping and pulling up the dredges again and again, culling oysters and shoveling debris off the deck to make it ready it for our next "lick" at the bar. It remained cold throughout the day, with temperatures never getting much above freezing. This was the relentless, exhausting, cold and wet work that was promised. It was hard to imagine why anyone would choose this as an occupation today.

Each lick seemed to bring up an impressive amount of oyster shells and raised the expectations of the crew, but little by way of live oysters. In fact, most licks contained only 10 percent or less of market-sized oysters. We returned to downtown Baltimore over six hours later with about two bushels of oysters on deck. Selling for $35-50/bushel, the day's work by a three-man crew amounted to no more than $100, or somewhere around $5.00/hour for each crewmember with no provision being made for boat upkeep or the captain. What I had been reading in the newspapers about this being the worst oyster season in history was sadly brought home.