Wickedness of the Frozen Up Oysterman
And the Wickeder Man Who Thrived on it Till He Tried to Become a Trust.
Crisfield, Md., Feb. 18. It is long since Chesapeake oystermen have seen the shallows of the bay frozen tight and the oyster beds scaled up with ice for two winters in succession. Hard and long continued frost in this region mean distress and sometimes ruin to the oystermen, both employers and employed.
All through the oyster season, when the water is open, the gray of early dawn sees hundreds of tongers sailing out of this landlocked little harbor to tong in the shallows of Tangier Sound. The long line of little canoes and bugeyes slowly trailing out to the oyster grounds in the early morning makes even this unlovely little town picturesque.
What goes on here is to be seen in twenty other little harbors -- at Cambridge, at the neighboring harbor of Oxford, inlets and creeks all about Deal's Island and Hooper's Straits, and in the Virginia harbors of Onancock and Lewisetta and the beautiful St. Mary's River on the western shore of Maryland. Now the oyster fleets are frozen in at all these harbors and may have weeks of idleness.
Time was when the enforced presence of an idle oyster fleet in any harbor was a cause of alarm to orderly citizens and a source of real danger in sparsely settled regions. The Chesapeake still reeks with stories of Lewisetta near the mouth of the Potomac.
Season after season it was just such a hell on earth upon a small scale as the malodorous Suez or the once terrible Sandy Point, at the southern extremity of South America. Lewisetta took its name from a man, since sent to jail, who was famous throughout the Chesapeake for his sudden wealth.
He set up a general store in the little Virginia harbor of Coan River, a favorite resort for oystermen who worked the rich deposits near the mouth of the Potomac. He would buy anything or sell anything. He sold supplies of every kind of the hundreds of oyster men who frequented the harbor. Above all, he sold them whiskey.
He bought and sold muskrat skins, terrapin, game of all kinds, oysters, fish, what you will. He gave dances, he had a place where oystermen off duty could have a quiet little game. In this lonely spot there were barbaric suppers with terrapin and champagne.
The oysterman with a full pocket is a prodigal soul, and Lewis knew how to draw money from all he met. He was generous enough himself in a calculating way.
Lewisetta speedily became a scandal to the region; and Sunday, when the oystermen did not work, was dreaded by the orderly portion of the small community, while the enforced idleness consequent upon continued hard frost was contemplated with horror. Lewis was making money fast in half a dozen ways, but he was not satisfied; he went into oystering, and speedily owned many oyster boats.
Then he bought steamboats, until he had a fleet of them. But good luck seemed to drive him mad. He had won the greater part of his wealth from the patronage of the oystermen. In an evil hour he forgot this, and actually endeavored to seize and convert into his own private property one of the richest natural oyster deposits near the harbor.
That was enough; the word was passed round, and his former patrons ceased to deal with him. A rival store was set up, and to this they transferred their trade. After that ruin speedily followed for Lewis, and upon a charge of arson he was finally sent to prison.
But his works survive him. A hundred stories of violence, robbery, even murder, are told of the lonely little harbor as it was at the height of his prosperity and power. The name still remains to the place, and although it is seventy miles across the bay from the nearest in Maryland, it is still a prosperous little oystering village.
It was not very many years back that Lewis flourished, but the oyster men are far less dreaded now than then. You still hear tales of the shanghaied wretch, who is worked all winter and turned loose in the spring with frosted hands and feet and empty pockets; but instances of the kind are rare.
If you board a train at Philadelphia bound for Baltimore you may see, in charge of half a dozen ill dressed young men from the slums, a sinister looking fellow, who takes his convoy to the smoking car, where he hands each a bottle of vile whiskey. They arrive at Baltimore in a drunken stupor, and wake next morning aboard an oysterman well down the Chesapeake. That is the present method of shanghaing for the Chesapeake oyster fleet.
If the men can stand hard work and exposure, they are likely to come though the winter with nothing worse than chilblains, and not without money. As a matter of fact, the natives do the greater part of the oystering in the Chesapeake, and they are less to be feared than the semi-vagabond from the slums of a great town when an oyster fleet is frozen up in a small harbor.
Many of the natives leave their boats with caretakers and go home when the ice prevents tonging. Of course there is a sudden demand for strong drink in any harbor where any oyster fleet is frozen up, and the prohibition laws which prevail in some Eastern Shore counties are then sorely tried. Trade in other lines also improves, for not only have the men to be fed, but those of them who have a few dollars in pocket spend it freely for all sorts of things that the shops sell.
The Bowery itself cannot show a livelier scene than that which may be witnessed in this town night after night in the oyster season. By the flare of pitiless, bright electric lights the shaggy crowd that packs the long narrow auction room is picturesque beyond almost anything east of the Rockies, and in the presence of such a scene the business street of Crisfield, with its railroad tracks down the centre and its row of wooden stores on either side, looks more than ever like the sole thoroughfare of a new far Western mining town.
In that double row of shabby shops the frozen in oysterman can buy anything that he cares to have, from an oil skin or an anchor to a gold watch or a muskrat skin overcoat, and somewhere in town he can find almost any form of amusement that his heart desires. Fights are frequent, and gambling is rife among the rival oystermen, but it is evidence of the improved conditions prevailing in the fleet that serious crimes of violence are few.
The laid up oysterman finds some employment for leisure in repairing boats and implements. It is a sight to delight the heart of one who likes to see a fine handicraft deftly plied to look on when a big bugeye is to receive a new mast. The long, raking stick is shaped and trimmed perhaps before the eyes of the onlooker, and then is stepped and stayed with amazing skill and speed as the vessel lies at anchor among fifty or more of her own kind packed like the traditional sardines.
Ten days of hard frost means a loss of many thousands of dollars to the oystermen, a stoppage of wages in scores of oyster packing houses and forced economies of a year to come among the families of the oystermen. And the loss is never made up, for, while the enforced rest of the oystermen may give the oyster beds a chance to recuperate, the opening of the water will bring out more tongers than ever, and if the beds show increased richness at the opening of the next season the number of licensed tongers will further increase.
What a long period of hard frost means to the Chesapeake region may be guessed from the general conditions of the tonging business in these waters. It is a toss-up with many a man whether he shall farm the soil or the sea. Many do both.
Every dweller upon tidal water in these parts has a boat than can be used at a pinch for oystering in a small way. He can hire a boy of fifteen at 50 cents a day as a helper, buy with small outlay the necessary implements of the trade, pay the trifling tonger's license fee, and appear a fully equipped oysterman. Perhaps within sight of his house are natural oyster deposits open to all licensed tongers of the county, and the market is likely to lie within a few minutes' sail.
The hard freeze not only ties up fleets of tongers in the harbors, but also stops this strictly domestic trade. Little bugeyes and narrow sharp canoes lie frozen tightly within view of every farmhouse and cabin, and hundreds of households have to forego the two, three or five dollars a day that the tonger in a small way may hope to earn.