Chesapeake Bay Skipjacks documents the skipjack and its role in the oyster dredging industry, describing the natural and manmade disasters that affected the trade, including the August storm of 1933 that swept vessels into pastures; ice-locked harbors that led to the idea of dredging through the ice with sleighs, cars, and trucks; and the Great Depression that crushed the oyster market overnight and forced many to abandon their vessels and way of life. The history of the skipjack, a vessel type that has only existed for about a hundred years, is seen here primarily through the eyes of the men...

From the beginning, it was a struggle to light the Chesapeake. Its soft, undulating bottom presented different problems from those faced along the rocky coasts of New England. The bay's shores shifted before the winds, tides, and hurricanes that plagued the 200-mile-long estuary, and so did the towers of the Chesapeake. On land, erosion was the silent menace; on the water, it was ice. More than a dozen Chesapeake lighthouses bowed and broke before the pressure of thousands of tons of ice bearing down on them. In many cases, the keepers barely escaped with their lives. Lighting the Bay: Tales...

When Captain John Smith sailed up the Chesapeake Bay in 1608, he discovered a land so rich in wildlife that numbers could not begin to tell the whole story. The abundances of birds blackened the sky. Meat-eating wolves and mountain lions had so much game at their disposal that they didn't bother the caged livestock. Deer could be easily killed ten or fifteen at a time by the native tribes, using primitive tools. The wildlife was so abundant that it was no wonder generations of Europeans--used to the barren countryside at home--could not imagine the need to conserve. So, they didn't. In fact,...