Pocomoke Shipbuilding • Vane Brothers Chevy Chase Bank Is a Proud Sponsor of The

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Summer 2007 Pocomoke Shipbuilding • Vane Brothers Chevy Chase Bank is a proud sponsor of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Call 301-987-BANK, 1-800-987-BANK (out of area) or visit chevychasebank.com BensonMangold.FP.1-2/05 11/30/04 1:53 PM Page 1 Four hundred years and counting… Our President and our (favorite) Queen recently celebrated the first permanent WaterWays English settlement in the New World, in Jamestown on the Chesapeake Bay. Summer 2007 How did you react to the anniversary? I have been taking an informal poll. Some of us are enthralled. We find ourselves trying to picture life here Volume 5 Number 2 400 years ago. We can never fully appreciate the suffering and conditions that awaited the settlers, but we try. We want to understand what drove them to these shores. Some of us really care and want to connect to them. Editor Others simply let the events wash over, a sound bite in the flood of news Dick Cooper events. Why stop to look back on these desperate pilgrims? [email protected] I reacted a third way. I treasure the past and the artifacts that have sur- vived. I marvel at the Graphic Design/Photography strength of these pil- Rob Brownlee-Tomasso grims and I am stunned by their cruelty. Yet as I Contributors read the news accounts Cristina Calvert of the festivities, I find Julie Gibbons-Neff Cox myself thinking about Rachel Dolhanczyk the future. Let me explain. Robert Forloney History museums such Pete Lesher as CBMM are firmly Melissa McLoud rooted in the past, but John Miller we are not just ware- Stuart L. Parnes houses of old stuff. We Kathleen Rattie study and preserve and share stories of the past to encourage thoughtfulness Michael Valliant about the future. If museums use history to encourage reverence for the past, or nostalgia for the “good old days,” then we accomplish little. But, if our work can broaden perspectives, deepen understanding and perhaps even in- Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum form decision-making, then we serve both the past and the future. Navy Point, P.O. Box 636 So when I look back 400 years to John Smith and the Jamestown colony, St. Michaels, MD 21663-0636 this is what I really wonder: What will life on the Bay be like 400 years from now? Can I imagine what a visitor to Jamestown or St. Michaels in 2407 will 410-745-2916 Fax 410-745-6088 experience? While the quality of human life has improved beyond the wildest www.cbmm.org [email protected] dreams of the colonists, the rich natural abundance described by Smith has all but vanished. This is what we Americans proudly call “progress.” But what have we learned? I wonder how much more progress we will inflict on the Bay The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is a private in the next 400 years. not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational institution. A In this issue of WaterWays, we will offer you a fascinating look a boatbuild- copy of the current financial statement is available ing in Pocomoke City a century ago, take you aboard a tug to offer a view of a on request by writing the Vice President of Finance, P.O. Box 636, St. Michaels, MD 21663 or by calling family-owned Baltimore company and recount the launch of the first log bug- 410-745-2916 ext. 238. Documents and information eye in almost 90 years. We will also offer you a glimpse into the future with a submitted under the Maryland Charitable Solicitations journey into some of America’s disappearing marshlands, and a dip below the Act are also available, for the cost of postage and surface to meet some of the latest immigrants to Maryland’s waterways. copies, from the Maryland Secretary of State, State House, Annapolis, MD 21401, 410-974-5534. I hope each of these stories will help you adjust your perspective on both the past and the future. If they do, then we are doing our job. On the Cover Vane Brothers’ tug Nanticoke bearing down on the Baltimore skyline. The Company is building a new fleet of tugs and double- hulled barges. (See story, page 10) Stuart L. Parnes, President Contents (Above) An eared grebe gives her young a ride. Their photo is one of Features 40 by photographer William Burt now on display at the Museum. (See Marshes, page 18.) Shipbuilding Powerhouse 6 E. James Tull turned a sleepy Pocomoke River village into a major shipbuilding town more than a century ago, launching scores of Bay and ocean craft. By Pete Lesher Departments Tugging into the Future 10 Vane Brothers is a Baltimore tradition. A family-owned business Events Calendar 19 evolves from a chandlery in the age of sail into a marine transportation company. By Dick Cooper To the Point 30 Marshes Exhibit 22 Wood Works 33 An exhibit of photographs by William Burt opens at the Museum documenting the beauty and the secrets of the disappearing marshes Around the Bay 34 of North America. By Michael Valliant Mystery Photo Answers 35 Christening a Bugeye 24 The Katherine M. Edwards, the first log bugeye built on the Bay in almost 90 years, is christened at Sidney Dickson’s dock in St. Michaels. By Dick Cooper Invasion of the Crawdads 27 The invasion of the big and ornery Louisiana crawdad into Maryland waters is driving the local crayfish out of their habitats throughout the state. By Jay Kilian 5 Shipbuilding Power on the Banks of the Pocomoke By Pete Lesher, Curator of Collections E. James Tull E. James Tull transformed Tull trained as a ship carpenter at the yard of W. J. S. Clarke, Pocomoke City from a small timber a timber merchant who had expanded into shipbuilding in town to a major shipbuilding center, 1864.1 Tull’s career choice was not uncommon in this town; becoming the leading citizen of the by 1883, there were 54 current or former ship carpenters in community, its longtime mayor, Pocomoke City.2 and perhaps the most prolific Tull was born on a farm near Westover, Maryland, in builder of wooden ships on the neighboring Somerset County, on January 19, 1850, and Chesapeake. moved to Newtown, at age 18. After six years at the Clarke Although he was located shipyard, he had learned enough of the business to go into far from the conveniences of partnership with the adjacent Hall Brothers yard. By 1882, he an urban center, Tull adapted to was supervising the construction of new vessels and certify- changing technologies to build ing them at the Crisfield customs house. In 1884, Tull severed steamers and early gasoline-pow- his 10-year partnership with Hall Brothers, rented the Clarke ered boats, as well as the last large shipyard and became a sole proprietor at age 34.3 After Clarke sailing vessel on the Chesapeake. died in 1893, Tull purchased the yard. Beginning in the mid 19th cen- Tull’s first vessels were the standard bugeyes, schooners, tury, a lumber industry grew up in and sloops of the day, destined for the oyster trade or freight- and around Pocomoke City, then called ing around the Chesapeake. Bugeyes, the quintessential oys- Newtown, near the mouth of the Poco- ter dredging boats of the region, were likely products for a moke River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, lower Eastern Shore boatbuilder in this period. The oyster taking advantage in particular of the nearby stands trade was near its peak and demand for these boats soared. of rot-resistant cypress. Earlier bugeyes were built with logs, and others were still By 1880, five steam sawmills in and near the town were building log bugeyes into the 1890s, but Tull appears to have feeding not only a lumber trade along the East Coast, but a built plank-on-frame bugeyes, from the start. local shipbuilding industry that boasted three shipyards and At the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Tull ex- two marine railways. The same year, the railroad built a hibited a model of his 1885 bugeye Lillie Sterling with the bridge across the river at the town, initiating daily service U.S. Bureau of Fisheries in the Transportation Building, to Philadelphia, which supplemented a steamboat connection and won a medal for the design. The model is now at the to Baltimore. Although it had just 1,500 residents and 225 Smithsonian along with Tull’s own half-hull model for the houses, Pocomoke City was growing rapidly. same boat. Lillie Sterling was a relatively small bugeye, but In the midst of this civic and economic growth, a young typical of the type in almost every way, with a shoal draft, 6 house The four-masted schooner Lillian E. Kerr bound for New York with a load of Nova Scotia lumber in 1941. relatively flat bottom, and trunk cabin aft. She was steered was a notable exception. Although there were no engine with a tiller and lacked a patent stern platform or even a builders or boilermakers in or near Pocomoke City, in 1888 duck tail around the rudder head, all typical characteristics Tull constructed the fish steamer Isaac N. Veasey for the of earlier bugeyes.4 American Fish Guano Company. At least 17 more menhaden A half-hull model, as Tull made for the Lillie Sterling, was steamers emerged from the yard from 1897 to 1912. the design tool for Chesapeake shipbuilders. Like other build- Menhaden steamers were rather substantial vessels. Be- ers of bugeyes, schooners, and other commercial vessels, Tull fore the Isaac N.

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