Oyster Boats John McCabe

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While 17th and 18th century oystermen were known to modify just about anything that floats, the 19th century introduced a number of particularly fine boat designs specifically for oystering. Ultimately, these oyster boats functioned in complete harmony with the natural characteristics of the respective oyster beds.

Tongers and dredgers were (and still are) are two different "breeds" among oystermen. An oysterman working his tongs in relatively shallow water, usually preferred a stable, small boat, possibly with a sail, more or less flat bottomed, possibly with a convenient centerboard, ideally big enough to accommodate two tongers plus possibly a boy, who would continuously sort the catch as it came on board. Of course, the craft was also expected to accommodate many bushels of oysters. Many tongers also preferred their boats to be more versatile, as they sometimes engaged in tonging for clams, crabbing and occasionally liked to do a bit of fishing as well.

Image above: This 19th century book print engraving depicts tongers at work. Tonging off these little boats was always a "shaky business". The two tongers dump their haul into a wooden tray mounted across the craft's center section for sorting oysters from unwanted debris (rocks, empty seashells...).

An oysterman working a dredge needed a considerably larger boat than a tonger. He required a sailing craft, sleek and powerful enough to pull (at least) one heavily laden dredge effectively. For smaller oyster sloops of the dredging type, a crew of 3 to 4 men was generally necessary. More men were needed for small schooners.

Connecticut was the birth place of an oyster sail boat design called "sharpie". Although not powerful enough to pull a dredge, a sharpie was ideally suited for tonging. A Mr. James Goodsell invented sharpies in 1848. They were about 27 to 36 feet long, narrow, flat bottomed, with a round stern, usually equipped with one mast (occasionally also two), no jib, a center board and a rudder, with a carrying capacity of about 100 bushels of oysters. Inside the sharpie there were two brass-tipped wooden poles, about thirty feet long, with a diameter of about 6 inches. These poles served as anchors. If the oystermen happened to get stuck in a prolonged wind lull, they could return to shore by paddle. Sharpies in one form or another ultimately became very popular with tongers clear down to the Gulf of Mexico. A similar sail boat called the "Chesapeake Bay Skiff" was also a popular choice in the latter half of the 19th century. Both of these small sail boats shared similarities with a French oysters sail boat design called a "Pinasse", which had already been in use in Arcachon, France, since the late 18th century.

During the 19th century, the Chesapeake Bay was home to some of the finest sailing ship builders in the world. Although many of them could not read a blueprint, they let their experience and instinct guide them to build the finest "slippery" hull designs. The famed Baltimore clippers, for instance, were owed to these craftsmen. Moving along at 12 knots or more, these fast and highly responsive schooners were a favorite amongst smugglers, slave runners and opium dealers of days gone by. Baltimore clippers could also be fitted with armaments and successfully raided British shipping in the war of 1812.

Shortly after the Civil War, most of the restrictions on dredging were lifted in the Chesapeake Bay. This led to the dredging boom years for Virginia and Maryland oystermen. The bigger the sail boat, the better, as a bigger dredge (or possibly more than one dredge) could be pulled. An older Chesapeake Bay schooner design called the "pungy" was initially modified and implemented. It was powerful, yet soon proved to be inadequate, as the deep draft keel kept the schooners out of the shallow oyster beds. It was also not manageable enough for precision dredging. Although a few of the pungies were modified with center boards to offset the draft problem, the pungy design soon faded in desirability among oystermen on the Chesapeake Bay. In its place, a far more suitable and less expensive sail boat design for oyster dredging called the "bugeye schooner" won the hearts of the dredgers. It featured the shallow draft needed for dredging shallow oyster beds. The hull was built robustly enough to scrape along the sharp oyster reefs occasionally and not sustain much damage. Most of all, the bugeye was a very manageable craft for dredging. They measured, on the average, about 50 - 70 feet in length. This design also pleased dredgers outside the Chesapeake Bay (on the Delaware Bay for instance).

In the season of 1884/85, the Maryland oyster harvest amounted to 15,000,000 bushels of oysters. After that, a steady decline became noticeable. Maryland's harvest season of 1897/98 amounted to a little over 7,200,000 bushels. The expense of maintaining a schooner and paying a fairly large crew to work it, had to be offset with consistently large hauls of oysters. As the oyster supply started to shrink, simple economics dictated the need for a new oyster boat design, which was smaller, more cost effective to maintain and could be operated with fewer crew members. The boat building spirit of Chesapeake Bay craftsman once again came alive in the form of a new oyster boat design called the "skipjack".

"Skipjack" is actually the common name of a number of fish species. These fish usually have several things in common: They are sleek, fast, strong and tend to elegantly cut through waves, sometimes even successively leaping from the sea.
Inset image: A beautiful skipjack pictured on a 1905 postcard titled "An oyster lugger". Klick image to enlarge. More pictures can be viewed in the "boat gallery".
The skipjack oyster boat fittingly derived its name from these graceful types of fish. Skipjacks were extremely sleek, very fast, strong and able to elegantly ply the waves with seeming ease, even in light winds. They usually measured 25 to 50 feet in length, featured a single mast with a simple two sail sloop rig (triangular sail with a full cut jib), shallow draft with a centerboard, winch and dredge. The triangular "leg of mutton" sails could be rapidly reefed or taken down during dredging to adjust for wind conditions. An unusually broad beam translated into plenty of work space on deck. As their design dispensed with the more complicated rounded bows and rounded bilges of other boat designs, a good house carpenter could build and maintain these crafts fairly inexpensively. The design was simply perfect! Inset image:

Skipjacks became were very common on the Chesapeake Bay. Most of them were built during the 1890s and the first decade of the 20th century. Historians estimate that nearly 2,000 skipjacks were ultimately built for use in and around the Chesapeake Bay. Watching a large fleet of Skipjacks race out to promising oyster grounds under billowing sails was a grand sight. Due to the constant decline in the oyster harvests, only about 25 skipjacks were still afloat by 1993. A small fleet of lovingly restored and maintained Skipjacks still exist today in the Chesapeake Bay. A few still function as workboats, but the paltry harvests hardly offset the maintenance expenses. Skipjacks were the last American fishing vessels under sail and, in 1985, were honored as the Maryland State Boat. Although they could be considered by some as a grim reminder of over-harvesting in the Chesapeake Bay, they nonetheless are a part of our American heritage and could qualify as the most beautiful historical fishing vessels in the world.

And then there existed the, comparatively speaking, rather "unromantic" looking "buy boats". They were usually big and powerful motor boats, which would meet the skipjacks after a hard day of oystering and buy their harvest. They would then transport the oysters to the large processing plants ashore.

Another pretty sail boat design called the "Chesapeake Bay Flattie" also became popular in Virginia and North Carolina in the later part of the 19th century. Ideally designed for shallow coastal waters, it proved quite suitable for crabbing and oystering. It was, however, particularly useful for transporting larger quantities of oysters, other seafood as well as produce up creeks and rivers to specific markets. A number of these "flatties" have also been lovingly restored. The West Coast also featured a few 19th and 20th century oyster boat designs.

In 1874, Peter Decker, an oysterman from Norwalk, Connecticut, managed to revolutionize the American oyster industry single handedly by converting his little sloop called "Early Bird" into the first little "oyster steamer". He had already invented the first steam powered oyster dredge two years or so earlier. A famous oysterman from Fair Haven, Connecticut, a man by the name of Rowe, bought his first big steamer, the "William H. Lockwood", in 1878. It was built in Norwalk, Connecticut, and measured 65 feet. The oyster steamer was housed over, allowing the crew to dredge in almost any kind of weather. Oyster steamers of this type evolved into extremely efficient oyster harvesting rigs. With their powerful steam engines they could pull multiple dredges at once with ease and were, unlike the traditional sailboats, completely independent from favorable winds. Average oyster steamers with a crew of 7 - 8 men could dredge more oysters in a single day than their traditional sail powered dredger counterparts with a crew of 3 or 4 men could achieve in more than a month. Oyster steamers thus rapidly became a common sight all along the eastern seaboard. They also grew bigger and bigger in size. Ultimately there were enormous oyster steamers plying the waters with a crew of 25, operating six large dredges and boasting a capacity of about 8,000 bushels of oysters per day.

Inset image: A huge oyster steamer of the early 20th century. The square opening visible on the side wall is one of several bays where large dredges were pulled in. Image of men pulling a dredge into one of these bays can be viewed by clicking here.