Point Lookout State Park is a peninsula, initially explored by John Smith in 1612. The site suffered British raids during both the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. The use of the word "lookout" in the park's name originates in the peninsula's use as a watch station for British naval activity within the Chesapeake Bay. Still later, the site was used to contain Confederate prisoners of war between 1863 and 1865. Several of the prison guards were African Americans, previously enslaved in the South. Today, features in the park include a U.S. Navy lighthouse; Civil War-era earthworks from Fort Lincoln; reconstructed barracks, officer's quarters, and the partial prison pen; and graves, now open, which originally held Confederate dead.
The park offers exhibits, a nature center, outdoor activities, and self-guided tours of Fort Lincoln.
The Captain Salem Avery House, built circa 1860, served as the home of a local fisherman, known as Captain Avery, and his family. The museum presents the history of the Chesapeake Bay's western shore—with a particular focus on the years between 1850 and the present.
The house offers exhibits and a research library. The library collection includes oral histories. The website offers an activity guide for teachers.
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Doug Owsley discusses the colonial remains found at Harleigh Knoll in the Chesapeake Bay area and some of the information that studies of such remains can reveal.
The Dorchester County Historical Society is dedicated to preserving the history of Cambridge, MD, and the rest of Maryland's eastern shore. The society is headquartered in the Meridith House, which also serves as a historic house museum. The society also has recently opened the Robbins Heritage Center, which serves as a local history museum.
The society offers guided tours of all of their museums, and tours of local communities. The website offers visitor information and a brief history of Dorchester County.
The Mariner's Museum presents information and artifacts relevant to the field of maritime history. Highlights include more than 150 small vessels from over 36 countries; August F. Crabtree's miniature ships; displays on shipbuilding, cartographic, and navigational advancements between 1400 and 1700; the largest international maritime library in the western hemisphere; and the USS Monitor Center. The center includes a full-scale replica of the Monitor, the first U.S. Navy ironclad warship, used in the Civil War. The museum also owns and maintains a 550-acre park.
The museum offers exhibits, maritime science and history educational programs which complement state educational standards, scavenger hunts, distance learning programs, outreach speakers, lectures, research library access, research assistance, paddle boat rental, and fishing boat rental. Payment is required for research assistance. The website offers virtual exhibits, artifact of the month, and images for educational use.
The Calvert Marine Museum collects, preserves, and showcases the maritime history of southern Maryland, including the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay.
The museum offers exhibits on the people, culture, and environment of southern Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay; interpretive events and programs for students; in-class outreach presentations; and special events including lectures and performances. The website offers visitor information, a history of the museum, an events calendar, and a listing of all educational programs.
With Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th, students may be rolling their "Arrs." Popular media focuses on pirates pillaging at sea, but pirates didn't limit themselves to the open ocean. Consider these questions on oyster pirates, who made their living thieving shellfish in America's bays.
1. Oyster pirates were at the height of their trade during what years?
a. The 1700s, the Golden Age of piracy
b. The 1800s, prior to the Civil War
c. Approximately 1930 to 1940
d. Approximately 1870 to 1920
Oysters became a high-demand source of protein and nutrition following the Civil War. With the rise of industry and of shipping by rail, canneries and corporate oyster farming operations sprang up on both coasts, eager to supply the working class, and anyone else who wanted the tasty shellfish, with oysters shipped live or canned. In San Francisco, a center of oyster piracy, the boom years of the oyster industry corresponded, unsurprisingly, with those of the oyster industry—both took off in 1870, as the state began allowing major oyster farming operations to purchase the rights to underwater bay "land" (traditionally common property), and petered off in the 1920s, as silt and pollution disrupted the bay's ecosystem.
2. Which famous author spent time as an oyster pirate?
a. Jack London
b. Mark Twain
c. Ernest Hemingway
d. Upton Sinclair
At 15, Jack London bought a boat, the Razzle Dazzle, and joined the oyster pirates of San Francisco Bay to escape work as a child laborer. London wrote about his experiences in his semi-fictional autobiography, John Barleycorn, and used them in his early work, The Cruise of the Dazzler, and in his Tales of the Fish Patrol. The latter tells the story of oyster pirates from law enforcement's perspective—after sailing as an oyster pirate, London switched sides himself, to hunt his former compatriots.
3. What was popular working-class opinion on the oyster pirates?
a. Oyster pirates should be hunted down and captured, as they gave a bad name to common fishermen
b. Oyster pirates meant very little to the working class in bay areas; a few people admired or condemned them, but most people ignored them
c. Oyster pirates were heroes, fighting back against corporate ownership of underwater property
d. Oyster pirates pulled attention from more important issues, such as urban crime rates and public health
The working class romanticized oyster pirates as Robin-Hood-like heroes, fighting back against the new big businesses' private control of what had once been common land. Traditionally, underwater "real estate" was commonly owned—anyone with a boat or oyster tongs could fish or dredge without fear of trespassing. Following the Civil War, states began leasing maritime "land" out to private owners; and the public protested, by engaging in oyster piracy, supporting oyster pirates, scavenging in tidal flats and along the boundaries of maritime property, and, occasionally, engaging in armed uprisings.
4. On April 3, 1883, the comic opera Driven from the Seas; or the Pirate Dredger's Doom played to an appreciative audience at the Norfolk Academy of Music in Virginia. What Chesapeake Bay event did the opera satirize?
a. A successful raid against Chesapeake oyster pirates by Virginia governor William Evelyn Cameron, in 1882
b. The sinking of two dredgers' ships in February 1883, when the dredgers ran against rocks while being chased by overzealous patrol boats
c. The misadventures of a group of drunk oyster pirates arrested for causing a public disturbance in Norfolk in March 1883
d. An unsuccessful raid against Chesapeake oyster pirates by Virginia governor William Evelyn Cameron, in February 1883
The opera satirized Governor William Evelyn Cameron's second raid against oyster pirates in the Chesapeake Bay, on February 27, 1883. Cameron had conducted a very successful raid the previous February, capturing seven boats and 46 dredgers, later pardoning most of them to appease public opinion—which saw the pirates as remorseful, hard-working family men. His second raid, in 1883, went poorly. Almost all of the ships he and his crews chased escaped into Maryland waters, including the Dancing Molly, a sloop manned only by its captain's wife and two daughters (the men had been ashore when the governor started pursuit). The public hailed the pirates as heroes and ridiculed the governor in the popular media—the Lynchberg Advance, for instance, ran a poem comically saluting the failed raid.
Oyster piracy highlights the class tensions that sprang up during post-Civil War industrialization. Big business and private ownership began to drive the economy, shaping the lives of the working class and changing long-established institutions and daily patterns. Young people such as Jack London turned to oyster piracy as an escape from the new factory work—and the working class chaffed against the loss of traditional maritime common lands to business owners.
For more on oyster piracy, consider Jack London's fiction on the subject. Full-text versions of The Cruise of the Dazzler, John Barleycorn, and Tales of the Fish Patrol are available at Project Gutenberg, which provides the full text of hundreds of out-of-copyright works.
The Smithsonian's online exhibit On the Water includes a section on the Chesapeake oyster industry, with a mention of oyster pirates.
The oyster war!
The oyster war!
The biggest sight you ever saw;
The Armada sailing up the Bay,
The oyster pirates for to slay.
With cannon, brandy, cards aboard,
They steam from out of Hampton Road,
The Govnor wearing all the while
A Face lit up with many a "smile."
But when the pirates hove in view
Quick to his post each sailor flew!
The squadron, with "Dutch courage" bold,
Sweeps like the wolf upon the fold.
They to the Rappahannock turn
To fight like Bruce at Bannockburn,
And give the oyster-dredgers fits,
Like Bonaparte at Austerlitz.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, in 1607. The first years were extremely difficult for the colonists, under the leadership of John Smith. Food was scarce and relations with the Native Americans were tense.
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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the colony of Jamestown's struggles to survive, as tense relations with local Indians erupt into the First and Second Anglo-Powhatan Wars of the early and mid-1600s.
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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes an arrangement at Jamestown settlement in Virginia, in which both the English and Indians exchanged young children, including Pocahontas, in order to learn more about each other's culture and language. This arrangement fathered a cultural exchange between the two groups.
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