Barcat Skipper: Tales of a Tangier Island Waterman

By Larry S. Chowning

Tangier Island lies in the Chesapeake Bay about midway between Tidewater Virginia and Virginias Eastern Shore, about ten miles below the Maryland state line and about forty miles above Cape Charles. Since Tangier was settled, nearly three hundred years ago, most of the men who have lived there have worked the water, and to a large extent that is still the case. Until recent years, the islanders lived in remote isolation. They were an independent lot, self-reliant, and not infrequently rather eccentric.
The tales in this collection are true. For the most part they recount events in the life of Elmer Crockett, born on Tangier in 1903, who has shared with Mr. Chowning the reminiscences of his lifelong occupation as a waterman. A few of the stories involve earlier generations of Crocketts and the accounts, handed down, have become part of the island lore. Sometimes two or more events have been woven together, sometimes names have been changed, a little poetic license has been taken, butall in allthe tales are a true mirror
of life on Tangier Island. This is the real stuff, told by a natural-born storyteller, recorded by a sensitive reporter with an ear for the turn of phrase and the rhythm of the island speech.
The barcat of the books title refers to a workboat characteristic of the Tangier areaa small skipjack, usually 26 to 28 feet long, with a catboat rig.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 19, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467846455

Larry S. Chowning

Larry S. Chowning, author of 11 books, wrote the 260-page book Chesapeake Bay Buyboats, a definitive history of deck boats, in 2003.

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© 2008 Larry S. Chowning. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/20/2008

ISBN: 978-1-4678-4645-5 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4343-9859-8 (sc)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Earlier versions of some of these stories have appeared in Chesapeake Bay Magazine, National Fisherman, and Shellfish Digest.

Cover photo by Robert Mason, Jr.

Contents

FOREWORD

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

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19

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

To Elmer Crockett

Foreword

It was in 1972 that Elmer Crockett and I first sat down and talked about his life on the isolated Chesapeake Bay island of Tangier, Virginia. There was never anything very formal about our talks. Most occurred behind my home in Urbanna, Virginia, at the top of the steps which lead down to the Urbanna Creek. There Mr. Crockett kept his two work skiffs and a dozen or so peeler floats which he used for harvesting soft crabs. He would retail his crabs at his home in Urbanna.

Some of our talks, though, took place on Mr. Crockett’s back porch and occasionally I’d awake at the crack of dawn, stumble down the hill before work, and go with him to his peeler pounds in Weeks, Lagrange, and Robinson creeks on the Rappahannock River. It was during these trips that Mr. Crockett shared with me the reminiscences of his lifelong occupation as a watermen.

There was little thought, in the beginning, of one day developing his thoughts into stories. I was fascinated from the start, however, by his knowledge and his clear memory of how things were during his youth.

Mr. Crockett was born on Tangier Island on August 31, 1903, to Sarah Elizabeth Crockett and Willie Thomas Crockett. His father, like most of the men who lived on the island back then, worked the water and owned an old sailing bateau, named the H. G. Alexander. It was on this vessel, as youngsters, that Mr. Crockett and his brothers, Weldon, Seward, and Ed, received their first taste of working on the water. In later years, his father also owned a store and served as mayor of Tangier for nine years.

Tangier Island is situated about 10 miles south of the Maryland-Virginia state line in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Over the years, the island people have been known for their skills as fishermen and Mr. Crockett learned his trade well. In the many years of living and working on the Bay, he accumulated vast knowledge of Bay life.

He and his wife, Ida Shores Crockett, raised five children and one adopted son. Today, one son and several grandchildren continue in the ways of their forefathers by working the water to make their livings.

Like his father, Mr. Crockett was mayor on the island for several years during the late 1950s and early 60s. In more than fifty years of living on Tangier he worked in just about every fishery on the Bay, from dredging for oysters by sail, to working on a menhaden steamer. With the coming of the engine in boats he watched the use of sail decline, and like many of the old-timers was sorry to see the old working sailboats disappear from the Bay.

His forefathers were crabbers, oystermen, fishermen, and market hunters. John Crockett who is a character in the story The Gunning Partners was Mr. Crockett’s grandfather and was a notorious market hunter on Tangier. He used the punt gun and on many occasions would bring home a solid wheelbarrow full of ducks and geese. Mr. Crockett sold an occasional duck himself. His duck blind was on Piney Island, near Tangier. A gunning light and hollowed out decoys were standard equipment on his boat.

When he moved to Urbanna in 1966 he brought with him all of the decoys he had collected over the years, and he began to acquire quite a reputation locally as being an ace shot. Due to some loss of sight, he no longer hunts.

Several years ago he asked me to come down and look over his collection of decoys. He had arranged for them to be sold to a collector on the Eastern Shore. As he pointed to each one and talked of all the geese and ducks he had killed, I could sense the sadness he felt in having to part with them. A well-known decoy maker on the Eastern Shore made the geese and brant decoys, and the rest were old decoys purchased from a Sears, Roebuck catalogue.

In 1978, Mr. Crockett presented our son with a Christmas gift, which will be treasured in this family for generations. He had carved a goose decoy and brought it to the house with a message. This is not for you, he said referring to me. It is for your son, because he’ll be around longer to appreciate it. Merry Christmas.

Naturally this collection doesn’t include all of Tangier’s colorful characters. One, for example, who doesn’t figure in any of the stories, is Lew Dunkin, an old fisherman on Tangier, and well known for his courage. Mr. Crockett said of him, I didn’t know him, but he was one who was talked about a lot around Tangier by the old-timers. He was supposed to be a tough man. As the story goes, when a bad storm would come up, most all the fishermen would go to shore, but not old Lew Dunkin. He would sit out on his boat and yell out as if God in Heaven could hear, ‘Thunder, Lord thunder, drive them in.’ He wanted the Lord to send the storm, so all the fishermen would go ashore. I guess, that way, he would make all the money. By golly, he must have been rough as an old lighter’s knot.

Having grown up myself with most all of the modern conveniences of life, I was intrigued by the tales that touched on the way life was on Tangier without the use of electricity, refrigeration, central heat, artesian wells, airplanes, and gasoline engines. Most of these have been mentioned in the stories to some degree, except the importance of refrigeration in the crabbing business. Refrigeration has played such an important part in the industry that there should be some mention of it. Mr. Crockett recalled, "Refrigeration was important to crabbing. Peelers and soft crabs weren’t worth much before good refrigeration came along. People would go out in the harbor and catch all the crabs they wanted, but they were just used for bait and for eating around the house.

When my grandfather was working the water, fish and oysters were the mainstay of making a living. They would take their little boats and go over on the Bay side of the island and catch hard crabs on trotlines. I did that too, but way back, fishing and oystering was what everyone did to make a living. There wasn’t any money in crabs. Fish were preserved by salting and oysters in the shell lasted for several days. The perishable soft-shell crab lasted only a few hours without refrigeration.

The people living on the island in those times would store their food in wells and under porches to keep it cool. There was very little ice around Tangier, but with the coming of electricity and refrigeration it gave the crabbing industry on the island and the Bay a great boost.

Times have changed, too, in other ways. One of the stories in this collection talks about sturgeon fishing on the Bay, which was big business before the turn of the century. There was a time when the annual sturgeon catch easily exceeded a million pounds, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of caviar were harvested from the Chesapeake Bay. Today, few sturgeons are caught on the Bay.

Crab pots are fairly recent. The first crab pot seen by Mr. Crockett was in the 1940s and this is the topic of one of the stories. B. F. Lewis from Harryhogan on the Northern Neck of Virginia patented the crab pot in 1938. Lewis first used it in the 1920s, but there was no upstairs in the first style of pot that he made. For many years, Lewis traveled throughout the western shore collecting a fee from those using his patented crab pot.

These stories are based on fact. In some cases there have been several names changed throughout to protect the families of those on Tangier, and some stories did not necessarily happen as they are told. The story of The Migration for example, was told in part by Melvin Dize of Urbanna and formerly of Tangier. Dize is a great grandson of Mrs. Estridge who is a character in the story, which was taken from two different incidents told to me by Dize and Mr. Crockett. During the Civil War, many families did leave the western shore and migrated to Tangier to escape the violence of the war. Many stayed after the war ended, only to die in a cholera epidemic that swept across the island.

There is one point, which I have noticed in the many talks I’ve had with Mr. Crockett and others who are in the twilight of their lives. When the talk drift toward a subject that is a reminder of something that has been, but is no longer, such as the steamboat, or an old ten-gauge shotgun, or an old toller goose, or whatever, there is always a moment of silence and then a statement like this, By golly, they were good old days. I’d like to have just one of those days back to hear the steamboat whistle again and watch it head on down the Bay loaded with people. I’d like to hear the chatter of a loud talking toller and feel the excitement just before making a good shot on a flock of geese. I’d like to put my feet down on the cold wood floor in the morning when I rolled out from under the warmth of my little bed with its feather mattress. Lord, what I’d give to smell the sweet aroma of the bread my mama used to bake in the old wood cookstore in her kitchen or just to have my mama and papa back for one last hug.

I would like to thank Elmer Crockett for his help, and simply say the pleasure has been mine. A special thanks must also go to my wife Dee and our children Peyton, Damon and Hannah who in their own way have toiled over this project as much as I.

Larry S. Chowning

Barcat Skipper

1

The Shortcut

The August wind was blowing hard on the island. There were lots of gulls and terns flying. All the young boys were going over to the Inlet Gut, on the West Ridge of Tangier Island to go swimming. My brother, Weldon, my cousin, Coleman and myself were together when we decided to go ourselves. There were two ways over to the gut. One was by the road, and the other was a shortcut that we would take down this little ditch bank.

We decided to take the shortcut on this morning, because it was so hot. We had to walk over a ditch bank that belonged to Captain George Anderton. He was an old man and did not like for anyone to walk on his land. When he was a young man, Captain George had been a waterman and a market hunter with the big gun. I’ve heard the old-timers around Tangier say he could make the brant fall like an old blanket when he was gunning. Since he had gotten old, however, he just stayed at home and worked his garden.

When we got to his ditch bank, we saw a little boat on the shore that belonged to Captain George. We all stepped into it and walked onto the bank where there was a pile of sea grass he was using to fertilize the garden. We walked through the pile and went on toward the swimming hole. I could see Captain George looking at us from his house. We didn’t think