Oystering in Hampton Roads

THE most extensive natural oyster beds of the world are to be found in the states of Virginia and Maryland. In Chesapeake Bay and in the rivers that flow into it there are thousands of acres of "oyster rock" which are the property of these two states and are known as the public lands. Those belonging to Virginia were surveyed in 1894 by Lieutenant Baylor of the United States Coast Survey, the grounds being staked off by three commissioners for each district, appointed by the judge of the adjacent county. For years the natural oyster beds were inadequately protected by the state, and suffered so severely from the unrestricted use of dredges and tongs that the oyster grounds were in danger of being entirely depleted. The charting of the natural beds by Baylor's Survey and the enactment of new oyster laws, with the amendments added from time to time, have served to greatly stimulate the oyster industry and to protect the natural beds of the state. All of the grounds contained within the limits of Baylor's Survey are known as the natural rocks or beds and are claimed by the state for public lands. Upon these any person may take oysters with tongs during the season by obtaining a license, and on certain portions of these grounds dredges also may be used, on the same condition. Outside of these limits the bottoms may be rented from the state by any resident, for the purpose of planting and propagating oysters, at the rate of one dollar per acre per year for a term of twenty years, each assignment being limited to two hundred and fifty acres.

The average inland citizen may not know that oysters are planted, cultivated and harvested like any other crop, a person who engaged in this industry being known as an oyster planter. Thousands of acres of oysters are under cultivation in Hampton Roads, which, during the harvesting season, is often literally alive with the reaping machines of
the oystermen. These are tongs and dredges made of iron and worked by hand or steam power from canoes and from the decks of sail or
steam boats. When one wishes to engage in the oyster business he goes to the inspector of his district and leases a certain number of acres of river bottom. He then stakes out his "land," and divides it into squares which correspond to the fields of the ordinary farmer. Next, he buys "seed" from some oysterman who is licensed to take oysters on the public lands, which lie, for this section of Virginia, in the James river. Seed oysters should be, as nearly as possible, round and single; they vary from the size of a ten-cent piece to that of a dollar, and are sold on the beds at an average price of twenty-five cents a bushel. These are sown as evenly as possible by being shoveled overboard from the deck of the vessel as it is sailed back and forth over the square or field to be planted, from four to five hundred bushels of seed oysters being placed on an acre. Different squares are planted in different years. "Seed" is usually sown in the fall, though it may be done at any time between September first and May first, the remainder of the year being the spawning season. When the oysters are from one and a half to two years old, they are usually large enough to be sold, and, as a rule, part of them are sold at this age and the balance in the third or fourth year, after which time the ground is allowed to rest a year before being planted again. Great care must be exercised in the selection of bottoms for oyster planting, if the planter would be financially successful. The oyster will thrive best on a bottom with a soil between clay and sand. If it is too soft, the oysters will sink in the mud and be smothered; if too sandy, the sand will enter the shells and kill them. Care must be taken also that the bottom is not a shifting one and that it is accessible to a good tide, for upon the tide the oyster depends, to a large degree, for its food. During the oyster season -- the months that have r in their names -- the picturesque canoes follow each other out of the rivers, running before the wind or, close hauled, sailing into the teeth of it. Or, again, they are sculled out over the glassy water or taken in tow, with the large schooners, by the steam dredging boat of some energetic oyster planter, anxious to get his fleet at work on
Hampton Bar. All day they plant or harvest, in fair weather or foul, in freezing or balmy air, amid icy winds or in the dead calm of a warm sunny day. At evening they come sailing or sculling into the harbor in the red glow of the sunset light.

Oysters are harvested in three different ways. In small boats and in shallow waters, oyster tongs are used. These are shaped like a pair of huge pincers, the size varying somewhat with the depth of water and the abundance of the oysters on the bottom. At their lower ends are iron teeth that hold the oysters in their grasp when the tongs are brought to the surface. As a rule, the tongers in this section of Virginia are Negroes; they usually own their boats and either tong for themselves under a license on the public lands or work on the large oyster grounds of the planters, who pay them ten cents a bushel for catching the oysters. Abound one hundred of these boats are owned by Negroes living in the vicinity of the town of Hampton. On the larger boats -- schooners and sloops -- two dredges are used, one on each side of the vessel; these are dragged over the bottom at the end of a rope, the other end of which is attached to a drum turned by a crank on the deck. Oyster planters usually supplement the work of the tongers and hand dredgers whom they employ, by using steam dredges. The most powerful of these now in use in Hampton Roads is able, with two ten-bushel dredges moved by steam, to take about twelve hundred bushels in three or four hours when working on a bed of "thick" oysters. With a hand dredge, from fifty to four hundred bushels can be taken in a day, the number depending upon the wind and the quantity of oysters on the bed; while tongers catch from fif-
teen to seventy-five bushels in the same time. The steam dredge boat also has the advantage of being able to reach the oyster beds
quickly. On one occasion when the wind was light, the writer noticed that a schooner which had started from the wharf in Hampton before the steam dredge left, had not reached an oyster bed nearer home than the one being worked by the steamer, when the latter had headed for the harbor with her load -- the result of five hours' work. The largest steam dredge in Hampton Roads is owned by Mr. Frank W. Darling of Hampton, and is eighty feet in length and of fifty-six tons' burden. It has a crew of twelve men including the captain and engineer, and is able to carry a load of thirteen hundred bushels of oysters. A trip to Hampton Bar on this boat is full of interest. The start is made before dawn, breakfast as well as dinner being served on board. Crabs are often caught in the dredges, and these with the oysters make acceptable additions to the excellent bill of fare offered the visitor. The steamer moves slowly over the bed that is being worked, lowering the dredges first on one side and then on the other and bringing them up to the deck full of oysters, which are dumped out and shoveled into the piles "forrard" and amidships. The dredge itself is an iron framed work from four to six feet wide on the tooth-bar, having sides converging to a point at the end, where a rope or chain is attached by which it is drawn over the bottom by the vessel. Strong, wedge-shaped iron teeth attached to the tooth-bar and projecting downward two inches, drag the oysters from the bed into a bag of rope and chain which stretches out behind, being fastened at the bottom to the tooth-bar and at the top and sides to the framework of the dredge. As the visitor sits idly on deck watching the men who are shoveling the oysters onto the steadily growing piles, large flocks of ducks of many varieties circle and cry about the boat, diving, swimming and flying in close range; schooners loaded with Virginia pine and turpentine or with coal from the Virginia coal fields and bound for Northern cities are continually passing; oyster canoes and sloops are at work here and there; and, afar off, passenger steamers ply to and fro past the quarantine boat and a ship of the white squadron lying at anchor off Old Point

By one o'clock about one thousand bushels of oysters are stowed on board and the dredge heads for home. Arrived at the packer's wharf, the oysters are shoveled into wheelbarrows and carried into the shucking room of the packing house. Here are long rows of "shuckers" -- Negro men who sing at their work as they stand before the stalls where they dump their oysters and open them with strong oysters knives. Good shuckers can open from twelve to twenty gallons a day. They are paid nineteen cents a gallon and earn from eight to fifteen dollars per week. The largest packer in Hampton, Mr. Darling, opens from 100,000 to 200,000 bushels of oysters in a year. In this house, as the men open the oysters, they drop the shells on an inclined plane from which they slide into a trough and are carried along by scrapers attached to an endless chain called a "shell conveyor," which takes them without further labor to the shell pile in the yard. When a shucker
has filled his gallon measure, he carries it to the strainer, where the oysters are strained and measured. They are then emptied into large casks kept full of fresh water, by means of which any loose shell or grit is washed out. From these casks the oysters are dipped into a second strainer and when separated from the water are again measured and packed in twenty-five gallon packing barrels painted inside with a paint prepared especially for this purpose. In these they are shipped to Baltimore and Northern markets. The shells are sold for from one to three cents a bushels and are used extensively by oyster planters for the propagation of oysters. They are placed in small piles on grounds found suitable for the purpose, where the spat or small oyster will attach itself to the shells. They are also used for making shell lime and for building the excellent shell roads found in some parts of the Virginia peninsula.