Coming Soon! 27 MORE Eastern Shore Road Trips I hope you enjoyed the first round of Eastern Shore Road Trips! I realized early on while putting that book together that one book of Road Trips wasn’t going to be enough. I got to work right after finishing that one on More Eastern Shore Road Trips! Here, as promised, are three preview trips from that book. --Jim Duffy, Secrets of the Eastern Shore SecretsoftheEasternShore.com Facebook.com/SecretsoftheEasternShore [email protected] Bonus Road Trip #1 MUSEUMS: The Shipwrecks Tour In the heat of their moment in time, shipwrecks are tragic affairs, full of despair and danger and death. But with the passage of decades and then centuries, they take on something of a magical aspect. I think Hollywood is to blame for this, having served up so many treasure-hunting tales built around shimmering underwater scenes where time stands still and every thing is laid out in a dreamy tableau that looks like it will last for all eternity. The Atlantic Coast of the Delmarva Peninsula is thick with this sort of shipwreck lore, nowhere more so than in the waters around Cape Henlopen. When sailing into Delaware Bay, vessels need to navigate perilously close to nearby shoals, and in bad weather, that journey can go from dangerous to deadly in the blink of an eye. Wrecks piled up in such numbers near the Cape back in Colonial times that the merchants of Philadelphia took up a collection among themselves in the 1760s in order to build Cape Henlopen Light, just the sixth lighthouse in the colonies. Farmers were our first responders in those days, often turning into working- class heroes who went to amazing lengths trying to help strangers in need. The U.S. Lifesaving Service got up and running shortly after the Civil War. They arrived on the Delaware Coast in 1876, setting up shop at the Indian River Inlet. The building they put up there is now a National Register affair that has been meticulously restored to the way it looked in 1905. It houses an interesting little museum called the Indian River Life-Saving Station, which is located below Dewey Beach in the sprawling Delaware Seashore State Park. Inside, you will learn about the “surfmen” who left the comforts of family life to live in then-remote outposts where they would spend their days in training and their nights on beach patrol, always gearing up for the next sighting of a ship in distress. The crew at Indian River responded to more than 60 wrecks over the years. They are credited with saving more than 400 lives. Along with their compatriots up and down the coast, they were lionized in the media back than as “storm warriors.” There is a brief introductory movie at the museum, after which you should consider taking the self-guided cell phone tour, which is quite well done. You will learn about the small-ish, but incredibly heavy lifeboats that allowed surfmen to navigate by oar even in the worst conditions Mother Nature had to offer. There is also interesting material about the “breeches buoy” method of lifesaving, which was basically rescue by makeshift zip line. Surfmen would use cannon-like “Lyle” guns to shoot lines equipped with a leg harness and a pulley as far as 600 yards. (Be sure to check the station’s event calendar before visiting—they put on breeches buoy reenactments several times a year.) One last note here at Indian River: There is a bit of irony to the story of how the Indian River station came to the end of its life as an active outpost. The brutal Ash Wednesday storm of March 1962 left the building buried in sand up past the first floor windows. For a few years there, its roofline stuck up out of the sand like a landmark out of the last scene in the original Planet of the Apes. The building was fully restored in the 1970s. The route to the next stop on our shipwreck tour leads south along the highway, through Bethany Beach. There are a bevy of good dining options here. Seafood lovers will want to consider Off the Hook, Matt’s Fish Camp, and Bluecoast Seafood. The traditional American comfort food at The Cottage Café gets great reviews as well. Another swell option to consider is trolling for junk food while strolling the boardwalk. Most of the museums that I write about in these books are set up as either traditional nonprofit operations or government enterprises. Our next stop, the DiscoverSea Museum is a little different. A private enterprise located in Fenwick Island, it’s a labor of love put together by scuba diver, treasure hunter, and amateur archeologist Dale W. Clifton Jr. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Clifton at the time of this writing, but I’ve read and heard quite a bit about him. Legend has it that he caught the shipwreck bug as a boy after hearing about how a stretch of beach near the Indian River Inlet was known as “Coin Beach.” He spent most of a year combing through the sand there on a regular basis before he finally found what he was looking for. Holding that old coin in his hands, the young Clifton started thinking about the fact that he was the first human being to touch it in some 200 years. Then he started wondering about the person who had touched it before him. What was his or her life like way back then? “It was like shaking hands with history,” he says. That’s pretty much the mission statement for his museum. Housed on the second floor of a run-of-the-mill looking retail building, DiscoverSea showcases quite the treasure trove of shipwreck artifacts. Most items here are straight from Clifton’s personal collection, which is believed to be the largest one of its kind in the country. Coins, weapons, china, keys, gold bars, and much more are on display. He even has a collection of silverware from RMS Republic, the sister ship of the Titanic. If you’re lucky, Clifton himself will be working the place when you arrive. From what I’ve heard, he seems to be the kind of guy who can gab in spellbinding fashion for hours on end about something as small as a thimble, as long as it came out of one of his wrecks. One quick extra note for shoppers while we’re here in Fenwick: The sprawling Seaside Country Store is a must stop if nautical and country-style décor are up your alley. The third stop on our shipwreck tour is a little ways south, across the Maryland line. The Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum is a little different from its compatriot up at Indian River—in addition to stories of surfmen and shipwrecks, this one also focuses on the broader history of Ocean City as a resort town. The town was barely a blip on the map in 1891, when the U.S. Lifesaving Service put up the building that houses the museum. Originally located up on Caroline Street, it now stands at the lower end of the boardwalk, near the Ocean City Inlet. It’s quite the kid-friendly affair, thanks in no small part to a couple of giant 250-gallon aquariums. Artifacts from 24 different shipwrecks are on display in an exhibit area dubbed “Davy Jones’ Locker.” Another exhibit, “Wreck in the Offing,” showcases one of the country’s best collections of vintage lifesaving equipment. The big surfboat here is the item that caught my attention—I couldn’t get my head around just how small it was while also imagining a team of surfmen heading out into the teeth of a bad nor’easter or worse hurricane. There are regular breeches-buoy lifesaving reenactments here, too, so once again, check the calendar of events before you go. The Boardwalk of Yesterday” is the exhibit where the museum turns its attention to the story of Ocean City and its growth from a remote settlement into a 21st century resort that has just 7,000 full-time residents, but holds a midsummer population of 300,000. I could gawk forever at the sweet old photos on display here. This is also where you will find “Laughing Sal,” the clown-like figure whose eerie howls of laughter echoed up and down the boardwalk in the 1940s and 1950s. Sal was set up outside of Jester’s Fun House at Worcester Street back then—that’s the site of today’s Sportland Arcade—and she was secretly wired up to a nearby concession stand, where workers would randomly unleash her infectious cackle of a soundtrack. Here is a valuable tip for you armchair travelers out there. There is lots to see and smile about up on the website of the Ocean City Life-Saving Museum. There are fun oral histories under “Memories of Ocean City” and lots of interesting stories under “Shipwrecks & Rescues.” The “Video Collection” is great, too—you will find it under “Exhibits & Events.” Your first stop there should be at the one titled “The Storm of 1933.” One last option I would like to mention here is geared toward true shipwreck aficionados. In recent years, the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs has presented a regular series of warm-weather events focused on the wreck of the British warship HMS DeBraak. Some 35 crewmembers and 12 prisoners perished when she went down in a sudden squall on the Delaware Bay on May 25, 1798.