Yo, Ho, Ho and a . . . Bushel of Oysters?
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.
- Joseph Becker, "Favorite bed for small boats—Gathering and dressing oysters under difficulties," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 47, no. 1219 (February 1879) (accessed July 27, 2009).
- Matthew Morse Booker, "Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates in San Francisco Bay," Pacific Historical Review, 75, no. 1 (2006): 63-88.
- Ellsworth D. Foster, "A salt-water mollusk, highly esteemed as an article of food," 1921 (accessed July 14, 2009).
- Bonnie J. McCay, "The Pirates of Piscary: Ethnohistory of Illegal Fishing in New Jersey," Ethnohistory 31, no. 1 (1984) (accessed July 14, 2009).
- James Tice Moore, "Gunfire on the Chesapeake: Governor Cameron and the Oyster Pirates, 1882-1885," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 90, no. 3 (1982) (accessed July 14, 2009).
- Schell and Hogan, "Pirates dredging at night," Harper’s Weekly (March 1884) (accessed July 14, 2009).
- Schell and Hogan, "I demand the surrender of Sylvester Cannon," Harper’s Weekly (March 1884) (accessed July 14, 2009).
- James W. Tuttletown, "Jack London in His Short Stories," The Hudson Review, 47, no. 2 (1994) (accessed July 14, 2009).
- Lissa Wadewitz, "Pirates of the Salish Sea: Labor, Mobility, and Environment in the Transnational West," Pacific Historical Review, 75, no. 4 (2006): 587-627.
