by Earl Swift
They abandoned Holland Island: I here relied on Cronin’s The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake; Sheila J. Arenstam Gibbons and Robert J. Nicholls, “Island Abandonment and Sea-Level Rise: An Historical Analog from the Chesapeake Bay, USA,” Global Environmental Change 16, no. 1 (February 2006): 40–7; and Irving M. Parks Sr., “Vanishing Island: A True Story of Hollands Island,” an unpublished pamphlet written by a former islander in 1972, which I found in typescript form at https://sites.google.com/site/taleof2shores/enjoys-seeing-hollands-island-through-the-memories-of-irving-m-parks-sr/vanishing-island-a-true-story-of-hollands-island-by-irving-m-parks-sr (retrieved November 7, 2017). Population figures are from the U.S. Census.
Worrisome ghosts, those places: I was present on Ooker’s boat on May 24, 2016.
To look at it: My physical description of the bay is from numerous published and online sources, as well as maps, but a nice summary can be found on the Maryland Sea Grant’s website at “Chesapeake Bay Facts and Figures,” http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/topics/ecosystems-restoration/chesapeake-bay-facts-and-figures (retrieved November 7, 2017).
Even on calm days: Crisfield, Maryland, stakes its claim to the title via a big sign on its city dock.
I left impressed: I’ve used the measurements supplied in David M. Schulte, Karin M. Dridge, and Mark H. Hudgins, “Climate Change and the Evolution and Fate of the Tangier Islands of Chesapeake Bay, USA,” Scientific Reports 5 (2015). The paper estimates the island’s area at 789 acres (vs. Central Park’s 843) and the town’s area, minus the airstrip, at 83 acres (vs. the reservoir’s 106).
That’s what everyone called it: For an interesting discussion of the term “global warming,” see NASA, “What’s in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change,” https://pmm.nasa.gov/education/articles/whats-name-global-warming-vs-climate-change (retrieved November 14, 2017).
I took a sea kayak: Carol Moore’s uncle Kenny R. Pruitt Sr. operated his Pruitt’s Paradise bird-hunting camp from Canaan for years. It had a troubled relationship with federal game authorities.
Sixteen years later: Author interview with Carol Moore, February 11, 2016.
Ooker Eskridge thus: The passage on Holland Island was informed by Cronin, The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake. The population figures are from Gibbons and Nicholls, “Island Abandonment and Sea-Level Rise.”
Count the mayor: Ooker said this on his boat on May 24, 2016.
Carol Moore shares: Author interview with Moore, February 11, 2016.
Perhaps just as daunting: The 2000 population figure is from the U.S. Census. The 2016 population figure is from an annual island demographic study compiled by islander Donna Crockett, who shared it with me in July 2016. Tangier Combined School enrollment figures were supplied to me by Principal Nina Pruitt during a July 13, 2016, interview.
In fact, a February 2016 report: The article I quote is Robert E. Kopp, Andrew C. Kemp, Klaus Bittermann, et al., “Temperature-Driven Global Sea-Level Variability in the Common Era,” PNAS 113, no. 11 (March 15, 2016): 1434–41. The article was released in advance of publication on February 22, 2016.
Before I made that trip: Schulte, Dridge, and Hudgins, “Climate Change and the Evolution and Fate of the Tangier Islands.”
CHAPTER TWO
Cars and trucks remain: This vehicle inventory reflects the situation in June 2017.
Witness Ooker Eskridge: This scene is built around my day with Ooker on the water on May 24, 2016.
A couple of lemons: The blue crab’s life cycle is described in the all-time classic of Chesapeake Bay nonfiction works, William W. Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976). I also drew from Curtis L. Newcombe, The Biology and Conservation of the Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus Rathbun (Richmond: Commonwealth of Virginia, 1945); Robert Aguilar, Eric G. Johnson, Anson H. Hines, et al., “Importance of Blue Crab Life History for Stock Enhancement and Spatial Management of the Fishery in Chesapeake Bay,” Reviews in Fisheries Science 16, nos. 1–3 (2008): 117–24; and the website of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, “Blue Crab Life Cycle,” http://web.vims.edu/adv/ed/crab/cycle.html (retrieved November 14, 2017).
Ooker and his kin: My estimate of a crabber’s maximum haul is based on 47 bushels (each bushel containing 72 crabs) multiplied by 196 days crabbing—which in 2016 covered the period from March 17 to November 1, minus 33 Sundays.
Ooker is keenly aware: The mayor’s quotes are from a telephone interview on February 25, 2016.
And there’s the matter: Ooker’s quote is from our day on the water, May 24, 2016.
We chug to the next: My reference to Ooker’s genealogy, and similar references throughout the book, was made possible by a Johns Hopkins University asthma study conducted on the island in the 1990s. Islander Donna Crockett allowed me access to her copy.
Two of his older brothers: “Tangier War Victim 1st Since World War II,” Virginian-Pilot, February 5, 1969. Warren Eskridge died of gunshot wounds in Vietnam’s Tây Ninh Province on January 28, 1969. He’d been in the country for about six weeks.
A typical session might begin: I was present to hear Leon’s comments at the Situation Room session of May 21, 2016.
The group might mull: Ibid.
They might discuss: Situation Room session, June 27, 2016.
Talking “over the left”: I heard the Mustang exchange as the mailboat prepared to leave Crisfield on December 24, 2015.
On some days, too: Situation Room session, July 14, 2016.
CHAPTER THREE
The unnatural schedule: Situation Room session, July 11, 2016.
Indeed, much of Tangier: The figures I mention are from the demographic study of the island that Donna Crockett shared with me in July 2016.
In sum, about half: My conversation with Carol Moore and the tour described in subsequent paragraphs took place on May 19, 2016.
Carol replies: Crockett, demographic study.
Down at the end: I found a draftsman’s rendition of the earlier Heistin’ Bridge in the library of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District headquarters. Titled “Sketch of bridge at Tangier, Va., complained of by boatmen of the locality,” the December 1925 drawing depicts the bridge with a three-foot-wide deck, a fifteen-inch gap in its middle, and fifty-two inches of clearance at high water. USACE Baltimore District File No. H-50-20-09.
We negotiate: The statistics are from Crockett, demographic study.
The first Englishmen: Captain John Smith’s journal of his 1608 exploration was published in 1612 as part of his A Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion. Numerous editions of the book are available. I used Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606–1625 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 142, which is available online at www.americanjourneys.org/aj-075/.
In 1666, it’s said: The specious overcoat and first settler stories are described, and refuted, in Kirk Mariner, God’s Island: The History of Tangier (New Church, Va.: Miona Publications, 1999). Mariner’s well-researched book is the most complete history of the island, though it suffers a bit for its strictly chronological structure. Still, for readers seeking greater detail on Tangier history, I can recommend it.
The earliest published account: Thomas Crockett, Facts and Fun: The Historical Outlines of Tangier Island (Berkley [Norfolk], Va.: Berkley Daily News Print, 1891). Crockett’s book is arranged in two parts, the first a questionable but entertaining history and the second a Tom Sawyer–esque memoir of his boyhood on the island. So scandalized were his neighbors by the book’s latter half that they destroyed every copy they could lay their hands on. I read it first in 2000, when a librarian on the Eastern Shore snuck me a photocopy, first making me promise not to reveal where I got it. Nowadays you can actually buy a typescript of the book at the island museum. It excises the original’s use of the N-word.
But with all due respect: Mariner, God’s Island, and David L. Shores, Tangi
er Island: Place, People, and Talk (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000). The latter was written by a Tangierman who went on to a career as a linguist and professor at Norfolk’s Old Dominion University. That Joseph Crockett, not John, was the island’s first settler is affirmed by the Johns Hopkins asthma study cited earlier, insofar as few native Tangiermen are not descended from Joseph; no John Crockett appears.
In fact, the island: The marooning, which occurred in August 1645, is briefly chronicled by Martha W. McCartney, “Narrative History,” in A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: The First Century, ed. Danielle Moretti-Langholtz (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial National Historical Park, 2005). Sugar Tom’s quote is from Crockett, Facts and Fun, 2.
Mean though island: Thomas’s settlement on Tangier is described in the classic work on his life, Adam Wallace, The Parson of the Islands: A Biography of the Rev. Joshua Thomas (Philadelphia: Methodist Home Journal, 1872). I used the fourth edition, published eleven years after the original.
Thomas had been born: Ibid.
The young Thomas apprenticed: Ibid., 21.
One summer’s day: Thomas’s visit to the camp meeting is described in Wallace, The Parson of the Islands, and in Andrew Manship, Thirteen Years’ Experience in the Itinerancy (1856; repr. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2005). The quote I use, however, is from Robert W. Todd, Methodism of the Peninsula: or, Sketches of Notable Characters and Events in the History of Methodism in the Maryland and Delaware Peninsula (Philadelphia: Methodist Episcopal Book Rooms, 1886), 87.
John Crockett, Thomas said: The quote is from Wallace, The Parson of the Islands, 27. My characterization of early Methodism relies on Wallace; Mariner, God’s Island; and S. Warren Hall III, Tangier Island: Study of an Isolated Group (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939).
Later in the summer: Wallace, The Parson of the Islands, 31. My description of the first island service was informed by Mariner, God’s Island.
From then on: Ibid.
The Methodism here was: My description of Tangier Methodism’s Victorian character was informed by my December 15, 2016, interview with the Reverend Alexander Joyner, the Eastern Shore district superintendent, UMC Virginia Conference. The faith healing I describe took place on May 29, 2016.
Likewise, it’s not: Duane Crockett delivered the sermon on May 29, 2016.
CHAPTER FOUR
In June 1812: Passages about the British occupation draw on Mariner, God’s Island; Manship, Thirteen Years’ Experience in the Itinerancy; and Wallace, The Parson of the Islands.
And Joshua was surely rough: The quote about Joshua’s reading comprehension is from the Reverend James A. Massey’s introduction to Wallace, The Parson of the Islands, 7. The “wretched poverty” quote is from Bruce Gordy’s “History on the Beach,” a short manuscript he prepared for use by patrons of the island museum. My description of Thomas’s gifts relies on Massey.
“I told them they had better”: The passages about Thomas’s famed sermon rely most on Wallace, The Parson of the Islands, 54–6, and Manship, Thirteen Years’ Experience in the Itinerancy.
Alas, no plaque marks the place: The disappearance of the site by 1900 is chronicled in C. P. Swain, A Brief History of Tangier Island (1900; repr. Coram, NY.: Peter’s Row, 1993). Sugar Tom’s quote is from Crockett, Facts and Fun, 2.
Earth has seen: My passages on ice age effects on the bay rely on Benjamin D. DeJong, Paul R. Bierman, Wayne L. Newell, et al., “Pleistocene Relative Sea Levels in the Chesapeake Bay Region and Their Implications for the Next Century,” GSA Today 25, no. 8 (August 2015): 4–10; and Simon E. Engelhart, Benjamin P. Horton, Bruce C. Douglas, et al., “Spatial Variability of Late Holocene and 20th Century Sea-Level Rise Along the Atlantic Coast of the United States,” Geology 37, no. 12 (December 2009): 1115–8.
At the same time: A wealth of information is available on ice age sea levels. A particularly succinct summary can be found in a NASA briefing by Vivien Gornitz, “Sea Level Rise, After the Ice Melted and Today,” https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/, January 2007 (retrieved November 15, 2017). See also the U.S. Geologic Survey’s science summary prepared by Thomas M. Cronin, “Sea-Level Rise and Chesapeake Bay,” https://chesapeake.usgs.gov/sciencesummarysealevelrise.html, May 2013 (retrieved November 15, 2017).
So most of what we know: The ancient Chesapeake is described in Michael W. Fincham, “Channeling the Chesapeake: In Search of Ancient Estuaries,” Chesapeake Quarterly, April 2011, http://www.chesapeakequarterly.net/v10n1/main/; and Cronin, “Sea-Level Rise and Chesapeake Bay.”
The changes wrought: DeJong et al., “Pleistocene Relative Sea Levels in the Chesapeake Bay”; and Engelhart et al., “Spatial Variability of Late Holocene and 20th Century Sea-Level Rise.”
Sugar Tom had never heard: Ibid.
By the time Sugar Tom: National Geographic Society, “Sea Rise and Storms on the Chesapeake Bay,” at https://www.nationalgeographic.org/news/sea-rise-and-storms-chesapeake-bay/ (retrieved January 2, 2018).
The 1850 map: I was supplied an electronic scan of the Coast Survey map by Dave Schulte. Readers can peruse other nineteenth-century Tangier maps on NOAA’s Coast Survey Historical Map and Charts Collection page at https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/historicals/search.
The map testifies: My interview with Will Eskridge took place in March 2000 in Ooker’s childhood home in King Street. Leon McMann and Jerry Frank Pruitt recalled Oyster Creek on March 14, 2017.
As word of Joshua: The 1820 reference derives from Charles B. Cross Jr., “Camp-Meeting Tradition Rooted in Tangier Sands,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, January 26, 1976. Henry Wise’s quote is from his Seven Decades of the Union: The Humanities and Materialism (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1876), 95.
Renowned preachers: Miss Crippin’s glowing complexion was described in “A singular display of the goodness and power of Almighty God, at a Camp Meeting held at Tangier Island, August 15th, 1824,” originally published in the Norfolk Beacon of August 19, 1824. I found the story reprinted in the Boston Herald, September 1, 1824.
Better documented were spirits: Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 95–6.
By the time the map: Swain, A Brief History of Tangier Island, 6-7.
In the late spring: The New Testament service and Wheatley funeral occurred on May 22, 2016.
A couple of weeks later: The graduation took place on June 9, 2016. Trenna Moore, Nina Pruitt, and several students supplied me with scripts of their speeches.
CHAPTER FIVE
I found him outside: My visit with Ed Charnock occurred in early March 2000.
I’ve since heard: A wealth of insight into crab claws can be found in H. J. Pynn, “Chela Dimorphism and Handedness in the Shore Crab Carcinus maenas,” Field Studies 9 (1998): 343–53; and David L. Smith, “Patterns of Limb Loss in the Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, and the Effects of Autotomy on Growth,” Bulletin of Marine Science 46, no. 1 (January 1990): 23–36.
A Tangier crabber: For an incredibly detailed description and photos of both sexes, I’d recommend Austin B. Williams, “The Swimming Crabs of the Genus Callinectes (Decapoda: Portunidae),” Fishery Bulletin 72, no. 3 (1974): 685–92.
As invertebrate romances go: My passage on crab mating relied on Newcombe, The Biology and Conservation of the Blue Crab; and “Blue Crab” on the website of the Chesapeake Bay Program, at https://www.chesapeakebay.net/S=0/fieldguide/critter/blue_crab (retrieved January 2, 2018).
Crabbers know: For more on this nasty little trick, read Peter Hess, “Crabbers Use Sex to Catch Naked Soft-Shell Crabs,” Washington Post, June 1, 2016.
Ooker’s own courtship: Ooker described his romance with Irene on June 13 and September 13, 2016. I found copies of Harbor Light, the school’s now-discontinued yearbook, in the island museum. He made the comment about marijuana aboard his boat on July 30, 2016.
He was eighteen: The “light comes on” quote is from May 24, 2016. The “hard to get” quote is from September 13, 2016.<
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“It gets long, like brown hair”: Ooker’s quotes in this and subsequent paragraphs are from June 13, 2016.
“It seems to be a water quality issue”: Author’s telephone conversation with John Bull of October 2017.
Plus, there’s the allure: Leon made his “right dangerous” comment in the Situation Room on March 15, 2017. He described pulling up the pole on July 25, 2016.
Comes a Thursday: The wedding took place on June 16, 2016.
“I thought I was destined”: Author’s interview of Annette Charnock, October 6, 2017.
Then, after thirty-six: Ibid.
Now I take a seat: Jerry Frank’s quote is from the Situation Room session of November 10, 2016.
CHAPTER SIX
Dolphins are routine sights: This and the following paragraph were informed by Tim Prudente, “Researchers Finding More Dolphins Than Expected in Lower Chesapeake Bay,” Baltimore Sun, June 11, 2017.
Whether this is a new: The bay’s rising temperature is described by the Chesapeake Bay Program on its website at “Climate Change,” https://www.chesapeakebay.net/issues/climate_change (retrieved November 10, 2017), and in Haiyong Ding and Andrew J. Elmore, “Spatio-Temporal Patterns in Water Surface Temperature from Landsat Time Series Data in the Chesapeake Bay, USA,” Remote Sensing of Environment 168 (October 2015): 335–48.
Whatever the case: I conducted the dump inventory on July 23, 2016.
When I mention: My conversation with Ooker on his boat and at the shanty occurred on July 30, 2016.
Two cats prowl: Ooker introduced me to his cats on May 24, 2016.
He thinks for a moment: Ooker told me the “howard” story on July 30, 2016. I later consulted Allen Parks, who provided additional details.