Annapolis Maritime Museum

At the turn of the 20th century, eight or more oyster houses surrounded Annapolis City Dock and harbor. Oysters were shucked, packed and shipped all around the country by steamboat and railroad. The market for "Chesapeake white gold" was so lucrative, Maryland and Virginia watermen sometimes exchanged gunfire with the Maryland Oyster Police — and each other — over the right to harvest.

William J. McNasby, Sr., son of Irish immigrants, founded his oyster house at Annapolis City Dock in 1886. He moved the business to this site in 1919. The McNasby Oyster Company building behind you is now the last remnant of a once-thriving industry.

Key
1. Watermen harvested oysters with long-shafted hand tongs from workboats called "deadrises." The V-shaped hull and other features of these craft were designed to suit the Bay's shallow, often choppy waters.
2. Single-masted "shipjacks" replaced larger schooners for dredging oysters under sail. In 1919, there were 2,000 skipjacks harvesting oysters on the Bay; today, only a handful remain.
3. "Buy boats" ferried the harvest to market at oyster houses like McNasby's so that the watermen could keep working out on the Bay. (From a photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine)
4. The U.S. Navy erected the tall Eiffel-shaped towers



on Greenbury Point in 1918 to beam radio signals across the Atlantic. They transmitted news of the armistice that ended World War I.
5. The Greenbury Point Shoal Lighthouse was a screwpile structure like the one at Thomas Point. It replaced the original land-based lighthouse in 1891 and was taken down after it was damaged by the hurricane of 1933.
6. One of the three 110-foot submarine chasers built at the Chance Marine yard in Eastport for the U.S. Navy in World War I.
(See the Eastport Walking Tour for more information.)
7. The common loon dives for fish.

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Show me all markers in:  Annapolis, MD  |  Anne Arundel County  |  21403  |  Maryland  |  United States of America

From this spot, you can see 1887 - The Age of Steam
From this spot, you can see 1998 - Annapolis: America's Sailing Capital
From this spot, you can see 1608 - Captain John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages
From this spot, you can see 1672 - Providence: Settlement on the Severn
Oysters: Vital to Nature. Vital to Our Future.
Oysters: Vital to Commerce. Vital to Culture.
Oysters: Vital to the Lifeline of the Chesapeake
From this spot, you can see 1774 - The "Annapolis Tea Party"
Welcome to Eastport
Harvesting the Bay

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