My thanks to Chris Brady for letting me know about this tremendous late 1940s herring fisheries documentary made by the government’s Central Office of Information available on YouTube. Don’t let that Orwellian-sounding organisation title put you off though – there’s some great footage here.
Category: wooden boat
Watermen – oyster dredging and racing on the Chesapeake in the 1960s
‘In 1965, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, there was the last operating fleet of sailing work boats in the United States. Forty-odd “Skipjacks” were still used by Maryland watermen to dredge up oysters from the Bay. At that time, the fleet had survived because of a Maryland conservation law which prohibits the use of motor power for oyster dredging. The watermen traditionally marked the opening of each oystering season with a skipjack race which the Maryland State Tourist Board incorporated into its annual “Chesapeake Bay Appreciation Day”.’
Read about skipjacks here and oystering on the Chesapeake here and here.
EW Cooke’s Fifty Plates of Shipping and Craft, published in 1829
Fifty plates of shipping and craft , a collection of drawings by EW Cooke, 1811-80. They were published in 1829, when he was just 18…
Read about him here.
As Arthur Percival points out (comments below – thanks Arthur) there’s a relatively recent biography, if you’re interested and have a few bob to hand.