3,913 Followers, 670 Following, 1,055 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Tipsbladet (@tipsbladetdk). Greed combined with guns to make the Eastern Shore a rough-and-tumble place. Poaching was common and more than a few men died violently in the headlong rush to make money. The author of The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay and a lecturer for the Maryland Humanities Council's Speakers Bureau, Wennersten recently regaled the Culinary Historians of Washington, D.C., with oyster tales.
| Oyster Wars | |
|---|---|
| Date | 1865–1959 |
| Location | Chesapeake Bay Potomac River |
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| Casualties and losses | |
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The Oyster Wars were a series of sometimes violent disputes between oyster pirates and authorities and legal watermen from Maryland and Virginia in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River from 1865[1] until about 1959.
Google Play Store, formerly Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google.It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating system, allowing users to browse and download applications developed with the Android software development kit (SDK) and published through Google. The Oyster Wars was a true event that took place on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac river from 1865-1959. This is a story about piracy, treasur.
Background[edit]
In 1830, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation which authorized only state residents to harvest oysters in its waters.[2] Maryland outlawed dredging, while Virginia continued to allow it until 1879.[3] In 1865, the Maryland General Assembly passed a law that required annual permits for oyster harvesting[2] and this has been described as the start of the Oyster Wars.[1]
Clashes[edit]
After the Civil War, the oyster harvesting industry exploded. In the 1880s, the Chesapeake Bay was the source of almost half of the world's supply of oysters.[4] New England fishermen encroached on the Bay after their local oyster beds had been exhausted, which prompted violent clashes with local fishermen from Maryland and Virginia.[4] Watermen from different counties likewise clashed.[4]
Government responses[edit]
Maryland[edit]
In 1868, Maryland founded the Maryland Oyster Police Force, nicknamed the Oyster Navy, which was the predecessor of the modern Maryland Natural Resources Police. It was headed by Naval Academy graduate Hunter Davidson and was responsible for enforcing the state's oyster-harvesting laws, but it was an inadequate force to compete with the more heavily armed watermen.[4][5]
Virginia[edit]
Virginia made its own attempts to fight illegal oystering. In the 1870s, Virginia imposed license fees, seasonal limits, and other measures to prevent over harvesting and preserve the oyster population.[6] However, the cash-strapped commonwealth had limited enforcement capabilities—especially after it sold its three-vessel maritime police fleet at auction.[7] After violence broke out between oyster tongers, individual small boat oystermen using hand held tongs to collect oysters,[8] and more affluent oyster dredgers, Virginia banned oyster dredging in 1879.[9]
When armed and organized dredgers, many from Maryland,[9] violated the ban, Virginia Governor William E. Cameron found an opportunity to boost his popularity by taking on the pirates.[7] Cameron personally led an expedition against the illegal dredgers. On February 17, 1882, Cameron's force, consisting of the tugboatVictoria J. Peed and the freighter Louisa, engaged pirates at the mouth of the Rappahannock River.[10] The governor's raid resulted in the successful convictions of 41 dredgers and the forfeiture of seven boats.[11] The raid represented the high point of the governor's term.[12]
When Cameron's popularity sank and dredgers returned to the bay, the governor undertook a second expedition. Cameron once again used the Peed but the steamer Pamlico became his flagship.[13] Cameron's second expedition was not very successful. Captured dredgers were acquitted or escaped indictment in court.[14] The opposition press also mocked the governor for failing to capture the Dancing Molly,[15] a sloop run by three women who managed to outrun the governor's ships.[14] The Norfolk Academy of Music lampooned the governor's expedition in an April 1883 comic opera, Driven from the Seas: or, The Pirate Dredger's Doom.[16] In 1884, Cameron established the 'Board on the Chesapeake and its Tributaries,' which led to improved law enforcement and better fishery management.[17]
In 1959, the Potomac River Fisheries Commissioner H. C. Byrd ordered the fisheries police disarmed after an officer killed a Virginia waterman who was illegally dredging. The move was credited with bringing an end to the violent conflicts.[18]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ abWhite, Christopher (2009). Skipjack: The Story of America's Last Sailing Oystermen. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 240. ISBN978-0-312-54532-1. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
- ^ ab'Oyster Wars'. Baltimore Sun. Retrieved October 13, 2010.
- ^'Reshaping Virginia (1877 to 1901)'. Virginia Memory. Library of Virginia. Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- ^ abcdKimmel, Ross M. (Winter 2008). 'Oyster Wars: The Historic Fight For the Bay's Riches'(PDF). The Maryland Natural Resource. Maryland Department of Natural Resources: 4–6. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
- ^'An Evolving Force: Natural Resources Police Celebrates 150th Anniversary'. Maryland Department of Natural Resources. March 30, 2018. Retrieved 8 October 2019.
- ^Moore, James Tice (July 1982). 'Gunfire on the Chesapeake: Governor Cameron and the Oyster Pirates, 1882–1885'. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 90 (3): 367–377. JSTOR4248570.
- ^ abMoore, pp. 367–368.
- ^Botwick, Bradford; McClane, Debra A. (2005). 'Landscapes of Resistance: A View of the Nineteenth-Century Chesapeake Bay Oyster Fishery'. Historical Archaeology. Springer. 39 (3): 94–112. doi:10.1007/BF03376696. JSTOR25617272.
- ^ abMoore, p. 368.
- ^Moore, p. 369.
- ^Moore, p. 370.
- ^Moore, p. 371.
- ^Moore, p. 372.
- ^ abMoore, p. 373.
- ^Moore, p. 374.
- ^Moore, p. 375.
- ^Moore, p. 376.
- ^Keiner, Christine (2009). The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay Since 1880. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. pp. 174–175. ISBN978-0-8203-2698-6. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
Further reading[edit]
- Wennersten, John R. (1981). The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay. Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers. ISBN0-87033-263-5. OCLC7551367. (Republished: Wennersten, John R. (2007). The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Eastern Branch Press. ISBN978-0-615-18250-6. OCLC471798328.)
External links[edit]
Oyster Wars Mac Os Download
Media related to Oyster Wars at Wikimedia Commons
Oyster Wars Mac Os 11
During the colonial period a fiercely contested dispute over the ownership of the waterways along the coasts of Maryland and Virginia and the bounty (oysters) which lay within them resulted in the 'Oyster Wars'. Read more about the Chesapeake's fascinating feud, ‘oyster pirates' and more in this story by Kathy Warren, for the Summer 2008 Southern Maryland This is Living Magazine.
The Infamous Oyster Wars
Printed with kind permission of Southern Maryland This is Living Magazine.
Around the world and throughout history the oyster has played a significant role in the lives and livelihoods of both royalty and peasants. The popularity of this small filter feeding bi-valve dates back thousands of years when it served as a dietary staple during the Neolithic period. Roman emperors traded gold for oysters, and their guests were said to have gorged on oysters brought back by slaves from the fertile shores of England.
The mystical powers of the oyster have been touted throughout the ages where they were deemed to be both medicinal and a powerful aphrodisiac. The word 'aphrodisiac' comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty who is said to have risen from the sea on an oyster shell to give birth to Eros, forever connecting oysters with romance.
Although the well heeled have long enjoyed these delicacies, the oyster also has a more humble and practical side. Once found in abundance throughout the world, the oyster was a common food found in many homes. Native Americans living near waters where oysters thrived used the oysters to supplement their diets when other game was scarce.
Maryland, with its many tributaries and nearly ideal conditions for growing and sustaining oysters, was once one of the most prolific oyster producing areas of the world. So it's no surprise that when settlers first came to the region they were struck by the shear numbers of oysters found across the region. Discarded oyster shells were so numerous during the colonial era that they created artificial reefs or 'middens,' which sometimes grounded ships. It was also during the colonial period that the stage was set for what would later become a sometimes bloody dispute over the ownership of the waterways along the coasts of Maryland and Virginia and the bounty which lay within them resulting in what is commonly known as the Oyster Wars.
In 1632, Cecil Calvert obtained a charter that granted the newly established colony of 'Mariland' control over the upper Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. Virginians, who felt they should have the water rights to the bay, campaigned heavily to maintain interests they believed rightfully belonged to Virginia, and managed to maintain control of the strategic lower portion of the bay. This would prove to be a bone of contention for both Maryland and Virginia for years to come, with each colony and later each state, flexing its political muscle through regulation of 'their' sections of the tidewater region.
Throughout the 1800s and well into the 1900s oyster shucking and packing houses could be found all along the shoreline of Maryland and Virginia. Newly freed slaves, whites, and immigrants labored side-by-side working long hours with little pay to fill the demands for oysters from as far away as Australia. Even the shells themselves became a commodity as farm fertilizer and for use in mortar.
Watermen, often known as a rough and bawdy lot, made their living from the water often under harsh conditions and amidst several major wars. It was hard work harvesting oysters, and often men were tricked into working on boats only to be left along the shoreline with no pay. Another more sinister method of payment was called 'paid by the boom,' meaning that after a stint aboard a boat, the worker would mysteriously fall overboard, never to be heard from again.
Tonging, the method of pulling up oysters from deeper waters with the use of long metal or wooden rake style tongs, became the preferred method for collecting oysters along the Chesapeake and Potomac waterways. As the demand for oysters grew, so did the ingenuity of the watermen harvesting them.
In the early 1800s a new method for collecting oysters known as 'dredging' came into favor in the Northeast. This new contraption with its metal teeth, and mesh style basket could be dragged from a sailing vessel and reeled in, yielding a much larger catch with less effort. Though initially designed to collect only oysters in deeper waters, it was soon misused in shallower waters where it quickly destroyed the oyster's natural habitat. Watermen from New York and as far north as Connecticut, soon found themselves without the commodity they needed to sell, and began working their way further south, eventually landing along the shores of Maryland and Virginia. The debate between dredgers and tongers would only add fuel to the fire and spawn future conflicts.
The practice of dredging prompted Maryland lawmakers to enact legislation preventing non-residents from harvesting oysters along their waterways and led to the beginning of the Oyster Wars. With the passage of the Acts of 1820, the legislature attempted to stem the tide of New England watermen and their wanton disregard for the preservation of the shellfish. Oyster pirates, known as the Mosquito Fleet, largely ignored the new laws and continued to dredge, mostly under the cover of night.
Finally, in 1868, the State Oyster Police Force was created with former Naval Academy graduate Hunter Davidson serving as the first commander. In 1874, the oyster police force was restructured and renamed the State Fishery Force, and is today known as the Maryland Natural Resources Police. Captain Amos Creighton served as commander of the oyster police from 1912 until 1952.
Oyster Wars Mac Os X
The oyster police took their responsibilities very seriously and used several ships including the Governor R.M. McLane, which was built in 1884 for the U.S. Navy and outfitted with a 12-pound howitzer on her deck. It was purchased by the state of Maryland and used by the oyster navy to patrol the waters along Maryland's coast looking for violators. Citizens became so upset over the powerful gun that it was eventually removed. This game of cat and mouse between law enforcement and the watermen was often heated and sometimes even deadly.
The battles over who had the right to oyster where, and dredgers versus tongers, continued well into the 20th century pitting the police against the watermen as well as Marylanders against Virginians. An article in The Washington Post dated 1947 reads: 'Already the sound of rifle fire has echoed across the Potomac River. Only 50 miles from Washington men are shooting at one another. The night is quiet until suddenly shots snap through the air. Possibly a man is dead, perhaps a boat is taken, but the oyster war will go on the next night and the next.'
Oyster Wars Mac Os Catalina
Although the police and illegal dredgers sometimes scuffled with one another, as well as watermen fighting other watermen, there remained a sense of civility and dignity amongst them all, each respecting one another's need to make a living. By the 1960s, under the Potomac River Compact of 1958, legislation was enacted allowing dredging of the Potomac River and effectively bringing an end to the earlier conflicts. Many Maryland watermen feel that this was the beginning of the end for small independent oystermen in Maryland.
Today, natural events such as hurricanes, lowered salinity levels and diseases have markedly decreased the number of oysters, which were once so plentiful. Human causes such as over harvesting and increased pollution have also contributed to the decline in oysters in the Chesapeake and Potomac.
Efforts by conservationists will hopefully bring the beloved oyster back to a sustainable level, but the days of our waterways being dotted with skipjacks and bugeyes bringing home the day's catch seem a distant memory for many. The oyster wars of this century will entail saving a piece of our history for generations to come.
For further reading on the topic: 'SlackWater Volume IV: Crassostrea virginica,' Spring 2004, St. Mary's College of Maryland and 'The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay,' by John R. Wennersten.
