Navigating the Chesapeake

For many Black Marylanders, the Chesapeake Bay has long been a source of sustenance, strength, community, and opportunity.

In times of slavery, the ability to collect oysters allowed men and women in bondage to feel a “pinprick of freedom,” as author Kate Livie describes it in her book Chesapeake Oysters: The Bay’s Foundation and Future. On the Chesapeake, wind on their faces and a good distance from often cruel masters, they could taste a life outside of chains—however fleeting.

In this issue, we highlight the contributions of Black watermen and seafood and maritime entrepreneurs, even as we acknowledge the hardships and discrimination they have faced over the decades. We’ll describe stories of ambition and resilience in the face of restrictive laws, including  a community of Black families who left Maryland’s Eastern Shore  to carve out a new, free life working the waters off Staten Island, New York.

We’ll introduce you to some influential and unforgettable Chesapeake innovators, including  Downes Curtis , an artist who made sails for both working watermen and the one percent;  Samuel Turner , who started his own seafood company in Bellevue; and  Captain George Brown , a master mariner, savvy businessman, and philanthropist who ran a steamship line on the Chesapeake, ferrying Black customers to his own bayside resort where they could enjoy amusements not available to them in Baltimore and Annapolis.

You will meet  several Black fishing captains  who do a robust business out of Kent Narrows,  a young entrepreneur  trying to bring more minorities into aquaculture, and  an Extension specialist  dedicated to trying new techniques and equipment for growing oysters.

A huge thanks to all of our sources who give us their time, perspective, and expertise when we’re reporting, researching, and photographing a story. For this issue, these include historians, watermen, Department of Natural Resources officials, and archivists. We are especially grateful to Vince Leggett, founder of Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation; Jenifer Grindle Dolde, associate curator of collections at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum; Pat Nugent, deputy director of the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College; Creston Long, director of the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture at Salisbury University; The Mariners' Museum and Park; and Talbot Historical Society. They and others have helped us bring to life fascinating and under-reported stories in our backyard, and ones well worth telling. 

 Rona Kobell 

Editor, Chesapeake Quarterly

Header photo: Two watermen knee-deep in catch on the deck of a workboat, shoveling fish into a basket to be loaded onto the dock at Tilghman Packing Company. Photo, H. Robins Hollyday, undated, from the collection of the Talbot Historical Society