The Long Shore

(waves rippling) * [Pete Lesher] It can start with the object or it can start with the story.

What is the story that we want to tell?

On the Chesapeake, there's 8,000 miles of shoreline on the Bay.

There's 600 miles of shoreline in this county alone.

And it is on that land-water intersection, that land-water nexus that so much happens.

* The Chesapeake is more than a Bay.

It's a living culture, a place with a sense of place.

From the earliest indigenous peoples, each generation has overcome hardship and peril, storms, combat, collisions, shoals, fires.

Those who ply the Chesapeake's waters have suffered them all.

When one industry declines, new ones emerge.

* Along the way, what endures are the cultures, the people tied to this place living our lives on the Chesapeake.

(waves rippling) Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is located in this small town of Saint Michaels, * which has always been a one-industry town.

It was founded around the time of the American Revolution as a ship-building town producing fast schooners.

And by the War of 1812, these became the blockade runners, these became the privateers that were serving as America's private Navy during the War of 1812, that were built in towns including Saint Michaels.

And after the war ended, peace was actually disastrous for this town because we didn't need ships to evade blockade.

We didn't need ships to carry grain to Europe.

I'm Pete Lesher.

I'm Chief Curator of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in Saint Michael's, Maryland.

I've been here now for 30 years.

So, the curator's job is a little bit behind the scenes.

I'm collecting for the future of the museum.

I am going out there and making contact with potential donors or folks who have things that help tell stories about people on the Bay and how do we ultimately see that those come into the museum's collection, so that they can inform today's audiences and future generations.

How do we tell these stories?

How do we put together an exhibition that has a thematic storyline?

And what separates a museum from any other educational institution is that we tell our stories with objects.

We use anything from sailmakers needles up to full-size boats.

* I've dedicated my life to preserving history and to interpreting history and to telling stories, which then lays the groundwork for how we plan for the future.

That is what the job of historical interpretation is really all about.

We will collect ship models that are what you would call scale models, beautiful, exact scale representations of a boat.

By having an exact scale model, a detailed scale model, you can tell stories about that original vessel.

Because we're always looking for the story, when we collect an object, it's so critical that we find the context for that object.

These objects remind us of those stories.

And we tell stories that we might not otherwise tell because we have the object that reminds us of that story.

And that is sort of the core of what we do in museum exhibitions is use those objects as touchstones.

* People have been living here for 13,000, 14,000 years.

Europeans, the English settlers in Virginia and Maryland would soon discover that there were some pretty familiar things here.

If you look at this terribly convoluted shoreline, there's all of this species of fish and shellfish and waterfowl.

They kind of found their way and figured out what will make money in this area?

What will help us survive and become our trade good?

It quickly evolves into tobacco.

The tobacco trade really established the Maryland and Virginia Colonies through the Colonial period.

This ultimately lured more people to this area, bringing people into conflict, pushing out native populations, treating them in some cases very poorly, very unfairly.

Ultimately, creating these colonies that would decide that they were content to be colonies; we need self-determination, we need to rule ourselves.

And it was on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay that American independence was secured.

The Bay begins to shape us from the time we first settle here.

* [Joe Connor] We're on the Miles River, which is about two-thirds the way up the Chesapeake Bay in a little town of St. Michaels.

Our office is this gorgeous campus.

It's 18 acres on the water.

Quaint little harbor that's a destination for you know, a lot of cruising boats.

A lot of people still making their living off the water.

It's been here since the '60s.

Collection now, I think that we got a dozen boats of different time period and different purpose, but most of them are work boats and we maintain them.

* [Spencer Sherwood] I got into ship building, I guess, by way of living on a boat.

And I spent a year building boats.

What I love about building boats is the functionality of creating.

And I think that's what resonates with me the most.

* [Ed Farley] You hang around boats and go out on boats and then you buy your first boat and then they start calling you captain.

(laughs) * I bought my first skipjack in 1975.

When I discovered the fleet of skipjack's that were still actively oyster dredging, I realized...I'd found home.

* [Jennifer Kuhn] This is Rosie Parks, our 1955 skipjack.

Rosie is a oyster-dredging vessel.

She was built side by side of two of her sister ships, Lady Katie and Martha Lewis.

One is actually actively dredging for oysters, and one is being run by a nonprofit that takes educational tours out.

A skipjack is the Maryland state boat.

And a skipjack is a oyster-dredging vessel with one mast, no internal engine.

It was a kind of a natural way to protect the oyster population by only dredging for oysters under sail power.

There are only about six vessels that actively have their dredging license.

This is something that has been a livelihood for hundreds and hundreds of years, and the rivers and the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay continue to feed this lifestyle.

And we hope that it continues.

* [Pete] Rosie Parks is the first skipjack set aside for preservation.

Oystering was still good in 1975 when this museum purchased the Rosie Parks from waterman Orville Parks.

Rosie Parks was for many years the best-maintained skipjack, and the winningest skipjack in the annual skipjack races under Captain Orville Parks, and selected for this museum as the outstanding example of the Chesapeake Bay skipjack to be preserved in a museum setting.

* I interviewed a waterman, an African-American waterman a number of years ago and asked him why he did this.

And he said, "Well, he was a crabber during the summer on his own boat, and he was the crew member on his skipjack oystering in the winter."

And he said, "It's all I've ever known.

I love it, being out there in the open air all year round."

And at the same time, this waterman who didn't know anything else, who loved this said, "He was proud of the fact that none of his children were doing it, that he'd managed to get several of his children college-educated and they were doing better things with their lives.

He didn't see a future in it, although he loved it so much."

(bridge bells ringing) * [Wade Hampton Murphy III] Get up about 3:00 in the morning and you'll leave the dock maybe 3:30, 4 o'clock and you head out.

We'd laid our line out to do that before light, and we'll usually work, do the same thing we did all day, making hauls till 12:00, 1:00, 2 o'clock.

And then, we'll pull in and go in, and sell our catch.

* Well, my great-grandfather come here from Ireland and he started working on the water, then my grandfather, and my father, he works on the water.

And just generations, we know, of working on the water.

* But I started, I don't know what year.

But I was 13 when I had my first boat and started crabbing.

But it's getting harder and harder to do it every year, you know?

So, my son is 16.

He don't work on the water.

He's going to get his land job and hopefully make more money than me.

(laughs) (crab box lowered in the water) The main thing, you're your own boss, you set your own hours.

You know, you'll pretty much work for yourself.

So, the only person you really have to answer to is the people that you sell your product to.

But I can pick and choose, if I want to go or don't want to go, you know?

So, it's pretty nice in that way.

Be your own boss.

Be out on the water every day.

* [Pete] There is a lure to this place.

There's something that a lot of the watermen, particularly those who are crabbing on their own boat, oystering on their own boat value in...you decide how hard you're going to work and you see the fruits of your own productivity.

So, there's a certain self-reliance that the watermen see in their work on the water because Chesapeake watermen tend to work in ones and twos, in small groups.

On a oyster dredge boat, maybe up to a half a dozen, something like that.

But still...small groups, not like the large factory fishing boats that you see in other parts of America or the world.

So many watermen get into working on the water, into crabbing, into oystering, into fishing because they're from families that have been doing this for generations.

* The best way to learn the trade as a waterman is to grow up with a father, with a parent who is also a waterman.

In many cases, their other family members are working ashore in the seafood, packing houses.

It's all family connected.

It's all community connected.

So that from building the boat, to using the boat, to harvesting the seafood, to packing the seafood, to getting it, in some cases, right on to the restaurant table, all of these people are connected all the way down.

[Ed] The project was announced that they were going to build a new replica of the Dove.

I thought was just such a great opportunity to use my skills and knowledge that I've gained over the years of rebuilding boats like this and schooners and small sailboats and so forth.

[Joe] We're looking at a reproduction of a early 1600s British merchant vessel.

This would've been a smaller trading cargo sailboat that brought supplies and settlers from England to a settlement in Southern Maryland that later became the state of Maryland.

It's the most robust vessel of this size I've ever built.

And the stem alone is like a masterpiece of live oak that's just insane.

But yeah, I would just want to crush ice or run something over because it's so stout.

This place is fantasy camp.

They've got all these tools.

There's a lot of autonomy on the projects they let you work on.

Everything is made right here, which it's pretty rare in modern times for that to happen.

Usually, it's some conglomerate of you ordering parts and pieces from all over and assembling it.

[Cole Meyerhoff] So, we got our oak from a few different places, but most of it...you know, we actually logged ourselves-- and either picked up trees that had already been taken down or took them down ourselves, and then cut them into rough slabs on our saw mill.

And then, it'll be a bit closer to finally going in the boat.

It's funny because I grew up in Saint Michael's, and so I was coming to the Maritime Museum as a kid.

Never really knew what went on in the shipyard side of things.

And so, I guess I was pretty surprised to find that there was as much actual restoration and construction work going on here.

I think, my idea was that the museum was just a museum where things were put on display and it wasn't really quite as much of a functioning piece of local history.

[Jennifer] Everything we do here at the museum, we're physically maintaining and taking care of some of these older craft and keeping them, so that in another 100 years they will still be around when most of the other boats may not be here.

[Christian Cabral] You have a blend of men and women who've been doing this kind of work for their entire lives to brand new apprentices.

Preservation aspect is very obvious in the care of historic artifacts like the boats this shipyard looks after and all of the artifacts that the museum looks after.

The less obvious but equally important aspect, I think is preserving the skills certainly and continuing to teach them.

I've learned a tremendous amount in the three years that I've been here.

And also, regardless of whether you're apprentice or you've been doing this for 10, 15 years, you're learning a lot every day.

And the major function of the shipyard is the preservation.

[Pete] It's real work that we're doing to maintain these vessels and to maintain them in their original context, that is afloat, and training the next generation of craftsmen as we do it.

When steamboats were newly invented, people were in awe at the power of the engine, no longer dependent on the wind.

But on July 4, 1924, Independence Day, the steamboat, Three Rivers caught fire in the middle of the night on a return trip to Baltimore.

10 people perished in the fire.

But thanks to the heroism and resilience of the crew, as well as the rescue missions of surrounding vessels, 94 souls aboard the steamboat were saved.

On August 20, 1933, the worst tropical storm to hit the Bay in 70 years arrived.

The tugboat Point Breeze fired a distress signal into the night sky.

(thunder explodes) Captain Kirchner, his seven-year-old son and crew were caught in the middle of it.

Lighthouse keeper, Thomas Steinhise answered the call.

He saved the lives of five crew members and recovered drowned chief engineer, Percy Harrison in a small motorboat, skillfully surviving the treacherous waters.

The Coast Guard arrived to complete the rescue of Captain Kirchner and his son.

Most days the lighthouse keeper leads a quiet existence.

But this is life on the water.

You don't know what's coming.

Countless shipwrecks and tales of survival on the Chesapeake are reflected by the resilience and rebirth of its culture and industry.

(camera shutter clicks) Here's one town that went from ship building, to seafood industries, to tourism.

(splashes water when diving) A small town that has only ever had one industry at a time but that remarkably has been able to reinvent itself twice over.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum was founded back in 1965, opened its doors to the public because people in this community saw a disappearing heritage.

They saw the end of the age of working sail.

They knew that the skipjack's were in 1965 already an anachronism.

* The story of the Chesapeake Bay and of Chesapeake Bay culture is an ongoing story.

This is still a living culture that we're interpreting, but we don't know the last chapter because it hasn't been written yet.

We want you to be able to go out on a historic vessel and witness this place as it still is, as the watermen are still working it every summer, to be able to pull up a crab pot with your own hands, or to try your hand at nippering an oyster.

You should be able to experience this because this is still a living story.

The Chesapeake Bay shapes who we are and who we understand ourselves to be.

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