Neil King’s American Ramble Is a Tour de Force By Jeff McGuiness

April 16, 2023 by Jeff McGuiness Leave a Comment

Putting down a book after reading its final page is usually just that. Done. What’s up for dinner? Finishing American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal by Neil King Jr. due out April 4 from Mariner Books rearranged my universe. It brought me into a new dimension, one in which I could see and appreciate everything around me more vividly and with greater compassion and comprehension. That sounds a lot like a religious experience, and perhaps Ramble is, because something changed in me fundamentally for having read it.

That feeling was doubly odd, because I had pored through three previous drafts of Neil King’s book as well as a daily blog that was the foundation for its development. Shouldn’t the published version have been déjà vu?

I first met Neil two years ago on a cold January morning while being driven around a farm near Claiborne, Maryland, by George Hamilton. George would go on to do the beautiful pen and ink drawings that illustrate American Ramble. I was looking for shots I could use in a photographic essay when a raspy voice rumbled, “You the guy working on a Frederick Douglass book?” George introduced me to the former global economics editor of the Wall Street Journal whose byline I had relied on for years in my policy work in Washington, DC. The Neil King Jr. in my mind was someone short like myself. To my surprise, towering over me was a rail thin figure on the legs of a heron. That started a conversation in the 25-degree weather that had five themes running simultaneously until George said enough—and drove us away.

It turned out that this journalist was working on a book of his own, one in which he would walk out the front door of his home on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and keep walking until he ended up in The Ramble in New York’s Central Park. His path would be “a shallow arc through the founding territory of our nation, its original heartland.” It would be an easy walk along a “swath of the country that most travelers want to put behind them.” His plan was to “poke among the graveyards of our past and brush the moss off forgotten things.” He would “to talk to America, listen to her, examine her, to wonder over her.” Neil accomplishes far more than that in American Ramble.

Since that January morning, I have discovered that Neil King is a gifted writer and exceptional intellect. He must have been that unusual guy in college who operated in a different reality, the one who couldn’t fathom a secure, pedestrian life, the type of student for whom schoolwork and struggle are disassociated terms, the free spirit who quits college to work his way around the world and begins by buying a one-way bus ticket to Laredo because he likes the sound of it.

Along the way Neil spent a month in Sri Lanka in a Buddhist monastery but couldn’t get with the program. Later, he went off to Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain was falling with no real job prospects and landed on his feet as a reporter. With that Kerouacian training, Neil ended up at the most traditionally conservative, buttoned-down newspaper in America writing this trenchant lead sentence in the Journal’s lead story on September 12, 2001, that led to a Pulitzer: “By successfully attacking the most prominent symbols of American power—Wall Street and the Pentagon—terrorists have wiped out any remaining illusions that America is safe from mass organized violence.”

There is a reason I heard a raspy voice that morning. A tick had nailed Neil with Lyme disease, and the man with the FM radio voice lost one of his vocal cords. His immune system had been compromised because of two excruciating bouts with cancer for which the initial prognosis was not good, terrible actually, yet Neil now brims with life, energy and yes, gratitude. He is, as he writes, not in the clear but in a “wide clearing with the forest too far away to see.” Speaking the language of the New Testament, he testifies that his “cleansing began the morning a doctor first uttered the word “cancer” and the trees on the way home impressed me as trees had never before.” His walk of renewal taught him “to bear witness in the most fundamental way. To marvel and behold. To take it in. To be present in a way that tilts toward rapture.”

American Ramble is not a walk up I-95. His path is along the backroads of the Mid-Atlantic discovering distinct regions he characterizes as Capitolia, Southlandia, Englandia, Anabaptistan, Presbyteriana, and Amazonia. He moved through them “in a meditative trance, a space both expansive and entirely my own.” He left “the day open as to what path I would take or what I would see along the way.” But this is not a casual saunter. “For more than a year I had studied the old maps and read the travelogues, this history of the early settlements, the injustices and travesties and triumphs, the decimation and then regrowth of its flora and fauna.” With Neil’s flair for identifying, attracting, and reveling in the offbeat, we are given a master class on how America was really formed and what we have become.

A few weeks ago, Neil sent me and our mutual friend Charlie Yonkers the link to his promo video. My petty interest in watching it was to see if he used any of my photographs. Charlie, who has a more expansive thought, focused on a book Neil had in his backpack, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. That launched a discussion between the two that was over my head, but in subsequently listening to the Audible version, Rovelli propounds that our concepts of time and how it flows are flawed, that time itself disappears at the most fundamental level. In reading the published version of Neil’s book, I realized the extent to which it is structured around Roveilli’s thinking and Neil’s own view of time. He sees his journey as “the satisfaction of having completed something magnificent, of having stepped outside of time, however briefly.”

Getting from DC to New York along a meandering path takes a lot of steps, 330 miles worth in Neil’s case. He talks about his stride falling “just shy of three feet.” I found that my first step can be stretched to that length, but when my other foot comes forward, I fall over. With the colossal stride that is walking and then writing American Ramble, Neil found something we should all aspire to, “a rhythm, a stillness, that can transfigure whole days and elongate time. A buried beauty that resides right there on the surface, for all to see.”

More information on American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal and its author can be found on Neil King Jr.’s website which includes purchasing information. The site has a six-minute video which is beautifully done and even uses some of Jeff McGuiness’s photographs.

Jeff McGuiness is the author of Bear Me Into Freedom: The Talbot County of Frederick Douglass. He considers Neil King’s help with it invaluable.

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Catching Shadows of a Forgotten People: The Photography of Anne Nielsen

January 19, 2023 by Jeff McGuiness Leave a Comment

Prepared to be startled stepping inside the Catherine Valliant Hill Center where a new exhibit by The Talbot Historical Society is being displayed. Catching Shadows is a sampling of the stunning portraiture of Talbot resident and New York fashion photographer Anne Nielsen who wants us to focus on an overlooked part of Eastern Shore’s history, the descendants of Delmarva’s indigenous peoples.

Nielsen’s work upends conventions we have grown accustomed to in studying the history of Native Americans which typically brings to mind the early twentieth century images of Edward Curtis. Those were made in the Western United States and Canada. Anne Nielsen wants us to focus on images of an ignored world living among us on the Shore.

Historians believe that Native Americans first began inhabiting the Mid-Atlantic region 10,000 years ago. By the early 1600’s, there were an estimated 20,000 such natives on the Delmarva Peninsula fishing, farming, and hunting. They grouped themselves into four tribes—the Accohannock, Assateague, Nause-Waiwash, and Pocomoke. Less than 150 years after coming into contact with the English, these tribes were nearly driven into extinction. If not killed outright or by European diseases, those unwilling to be pushed out survived through assimilation into the burgeoning white and African American cultures.

Nielsen has roots on the Shore, living on her family’s farm in Centreville and attending Gunston School, but she spent more of her childhood abroad. Her father was a diplomat, and he was posted to places such as Australia, Canada, and Europe with Nielsen in tow. As a small child, she lived in Norway shortly after World War II ended and remembers hiding in her house as defeated German soldiers were marched past. That upbringing in diplomatic circles may have helped her recognize, understand, and get close to diverse cultures.

After years in the New York fashion and advertising industries, Nielsen came back to Centreville to pursue a different type of photography. No more Nikons and Hasselblads. She was drawn to a ten-pound wooden camera that uses a Voigtländer Petzval lens made during the American Civil War. The type of photography done with this equipment is tintype. In a darkroom, Nielsen pours a flammable substance called collodion onto a glass plate, and very quickly the plate must be exposed through the camera’s eye. Exposure times are determined by Nielsen feeling the warmth of the light falling on the back of her hand and sensing the air around her. Once exposed, she has a few brief minutes to develop the plate into a negative back in her darkroom which is housed inside a trailer pulled along to her shoots by a Toyota pickup truck.

The tintype process with its flat monotones and imperfections gives images a timeless, ethereal look. They have aesthetic properties far removed from the crisp, color saturated images we see on today’s camera phones. The workings of the ancient lenses blur the edges and concentrate the eye on the subject. Used in portraiture, the shafts of random light that flicker across a soft, hazy perspective capture the soul of the sitter. And sitting is what is required. The subject of the portrait must enter into a meditation with the camera for however long it takes to strike a bond. Nielsen believes the random magic that produces tintypes is ideal for portraying the descendants of Delmarva’s indigenous tribes which she believes deserve greater recognition.

Early European settlers described Eastern Shore natives as peaceful and gentle, a people sheltered by the Chesapeake’s wetlands and protected by countless rivers and bogs that act as natural barriers. The tribes’ non-aggressive culture made it easy for the newcomers to appropriate their lands for tobacco plantations. Unlike some other Native American groups further west, Shore natives disappeared into the society overwhelming them without thought being given to reserving lands for tribal use.

Nielsen makes her photographs primarily at powwows where she feels at one with a different people. She struggles to describe it, but her subjects approach life in ways atypical for the Shore. They are quiet, patient, and reflective. While appreciative of others, they are more comfortable living within their culture, choosing to stay behind a line they will not cross. All Nielsen can do is try to catch their shadows.

The Eastern Shore has another important characteristic that profoundly influences Nielsen’s work. As European settlement proceeded, the Shore evolved as a land apart. The isolation of the more distant parts of Delmarva before the building of the Chesapeake Bay bridges meant the area never experienced the waves of ethnic migrations that swept nearby regions such as Pennsylvania and Maryland’s Western Shore. Settled by people predominantly of African, English, Irish, and Welsh extraction, the Shore’s population has had a significant degree of homogeneity for centuries. And that’s where the surprise comes in going through the exhibit Catching Shadows.

What will look back at you will be faces with characteristics common on the Shore yet with something difficult to define, familiar while distinctly different. These Native Americans are part of generations who pursued mostly obscure lives on what was a relatively isolated peninsula until the mid-twentieth century. Study their portraits carefully, and you too will be like Anne Nielsen divining the shadows of a vanished time.

Catching Shadows by Anne Nielsen runs through April 2023 at The Hill Research Center and Extended Museum located at 25 South Washington Street, Easton, MD. Further information and hours can be found on the Talbot Historical Society’s website: https://talbothistory.org/

Jeff McGuiness is the author of Bear Me Into Freedom: The Talbot County of Frederick Douglass.

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Remembering Frederick Douglass’s Walk to Wye House and his Return by Jeff McGuiness

September 21, 2022 by Jeff McGuiness

Frederick Douglass Day in Talbot County is set for Saturday, September 24. It will begin with hundreds parading from Easton Middle School to the County Courthouse, a walk that will commemorate the experiences and achievements of the county’s most famous native son. It will also remind us of a walk 198 years earlier that involved just two people—six-year-old Frederick Bailey and his grandmother Betsey.

In August of 1824, Frederick Bailey, who would become Frederick Douglass, was being taken by his grandmother from the cabin that he had grown up in along Tuckahoe Creek to the Lloyd Plantation at Wye House twelve miles away. Betsey Bailey had nine daughters and at least twenty-five grandchildren, all enslaved. After their birth, many of the grandchildren grew up under her care, but with so many coming along, those reaching the age of six or seven would have to be moved out of her cabin to make way for the newcomers. Typically, they would be transferred to the home of their enslaver, Aaron Anthony. He was the chief overseer of the thirteen farms that were part of the Lloyd empire and lived on the Wye House grounds.

Frederick’s walk to Wye House was probably the first traumatic experience of a life that would be filled with traumas. Frederick rarely saw his mother, and now he was leaving the warmth of his grandmother’s care to be placed in what was, among other things, an orphanage for enslaved youth. But the experience was not just distressing for him. It must have been far more so for his grandmother who saw Frederick as the very special person he was and was fully aware of the potential path before him. Not only might she never see her grandson again, Betsey Bailey had no idea where a life of bondage and its attendant violence might eventually take him.

To observe this important event in Douglass’s life, Brie Wooden and her five-year-old son Keegan were invited to walk the Wye House grounds and imagine what Frederick and Betsey were thinking at the time. I was asked to photograph their meditation.

Looking at the resulting images, we can glimpse what may have been going in the minds of Frederick and Betsey. “The liability to be separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me,” Douglass wrote in one of his autobiographies. He remembered his “grandmamma” as “looking sad. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she had lost many before.”

Frederick recalled that when he and his grandmother reached Wye plantation that August day, “Great houses loomed up in different directions, and a great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry, noise, and singing was very different from the stillness of Tuckahoe.” Young Frederick must have stood there transfixed by the spectacle, gazing at the new world he was entering, wondering how his life would be changing.

As Frederick neared the end of the walk, he looked up at his grandmother. “I knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell from her brow on me, though I knew not the cause.”

Frederick Bailey would return to Wye House as Frederick Douglass in 1881 when he was 63, and this time not on foot. He was transported there by the United States Revenue Cutter Guthrie that docked at the farm’s landing. In those intervening 57 years, Frederick Douglass had become a fixture in America’s history, one of the most consequential figures of the nineteenth century. He was invited by members of the Lloyd family into “the Great House” and graciously entertained. The shadow that had fallen from his grandmother’s brow so many years earlier had been obliterated by the brilliance of his works during the intervening half century. “To say that our reception was every way gratifying is but a feeble expression of the feeling of each and all of us,” Douglass penned.

Frederick Douglass Day will be held on Saturday, September 24, 2022. The program and schedule can be downloaded here.

Jeff McGuiness was the senior partner of a public policy law firm based in Washington, DC, and founder of HR Policy Association. A fine arts major in college who served as a photographer in the Air Force during the Vietnam War Era, he is the author of the forthcoming book, Bear Me Into Freedom: The Talbot County of Frederick Douglass.

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Life Along the Edges: The Chesapeake Artistry of Photographer Dave Harp

August 10, 2022 by Jeff McGuiness

“You know, I’m not an artist, I’m a journalist.”

[Read more…]

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Spy Review: American Prophet: Frederick Douglass In His Own Words

August 1, 2022 by Jeff McGuiness

If a performance at Washington’s Arena Stage is well received, the curtain call follows a predictable pattern. As soon as the play ends, all light in the theater is extinguished. The cast gropes its way through the black hole to find their places on the stage. Light then floods the hall, and applause politely starts as one audience member, then another, rises. Eventually, a standing ovation is achieved.

Something different happened on the evening of July 29th at the Arena’s performance of its new musical, American Prophet: Frederick Douglass In His Own Words. It was something I’d never seen in decades of attending plays at Arena Stage.

Even though the theater was pitch black following the conclusion of American Prophet, the entire audience jumped to its feet cheering wildly into the void, a surreal experience. Once the lights came back on, a roar of approval swept over the cast for its brilliant treatment of the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass. At the end of the curtain call, the lead actor who played Douglass, Cornelius Smith Jr., was so moved he was reluctant to leave the stage even though his fellow cast members had already filed off. He stood there alone, remaining in character as if ready to continue rousing the audience with the musical’s signature anthem, “We Need a Fire.”

If American Prophet opens on Broadway, and it’s hard to believe it won’t, its ticket prices may command more than $500 each just like Hamilton. Better to see American Prophet now before its run at the Arena ends on August 28.

American Prophet began with Marcus Hummon, a Grammy award winning artist and Nashville Songwriter Association Hall of Fame inductee. He saw the poetry in the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and wanted to create a biography set to music using those words to portray the abolitionist’s life from birth along Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County through the Civil War. Hummon had the good fortune of being able to collaborate with award-winning director Charles Randolph-Wright whose credits include Broadway shows such as Motown the Musical and Trouble In Mind as well as several TV productions.

Using hauntingly beautiful melodies and powerful acting, Randolph-Wright and Hummon bring us face-to-face with important characters from Douglass’s early years along the Tuckahoe and in St. Michaels and Fells Point—his grandmother Betsey, Hugh Auld, Demby, Reverend Gore, Edward Covey. Once Douglass frees himself from his bondage, the play focuses on his interactions with Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, and William Lloyd Garrison as all four shape the history of nineteenth century America. I was stunned by American Prophet’s ability to do a compelling portrayal of the complex character of these four struggling visionaries within the confines of a two-hour play.

But the heart and soul of American Prophet is the seldom told and little-known story of the bond between Frederick and his wife, Anna Murray Douglass, born across the Tuckahoe in Caroline County. Anna is portrayed by Grammy and Emmy Award-winning actress Kristolyn Lloyd. In a duet that brings tears to your eyes, Anna and Frederick declare their love for one another, singing “Children of the Same River,” a prescient acknowledgement of the struggle for freedom and racial justice that will consume their lives.

Much is known of Frederick. His life played out on the front pages of newspapers and in fiery speeches before thousands in the United States and Great Britain. It was detailed in his autobiographies read by millions that are the most powerful slave narrative in American literature. Anna, in contrast, is shrouded in obscurity. She raised their five children, ran an underground railroad station, and served as Douglass’s business agent and life coach during her 44 years of marriage to a public figure who spent most of his time on the road. She did so without either attracting or soliciting attention; she eschewed it. American Prophet and Ms. Lloyd’s portrayal are important elements in the movement to give Anna her due.

The play has already received excellent reviews from The Washington Post and The Guardian. Advisers to the production include people familiar to Talbot Countians—Kenneth Morris Jr. and Celeste-Marie Bernier. Information about American Prophet can be found on the production’s website and through Arena Stage. Don’t let this opportunity slip away!

For more information about American Prophet please go here. For the Arena Stage, please go here.

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The Courage of Volodymyr Riabtsev Should Be Our Inspiration in Thinking About Ukraine

March 5, 2022 by Jeff McGuiness

One of the joys of living in St. Michaels has been the opportunity to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life of life who provide rich perspectives from their varied experiences. Two people who have become dear friends are Sandy Cannon-Brown and Omer Brown. Sandy is well known from her work producing and directing environmental films as well as her leadership with the Chesapeake Film Festival. Not as well known is her husband Omer who is one of the nation’s leading experts in nuclear policy and whose work has brought him into contact with people all over the world, including someone by the name of Volodymyr Riabtsev.

Volodymyr is like so many who live in St. Michaels these days, people who have had interesting careers and accomplished much now in retirement hoping to lead a quiet life. He is like our friends with whom we enjoy pleasant evenings, ones full of laughter and the sharing of unusual stories in a place of relative security.

Volodymyr Riabtsev is retired from senior positions in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, including serving as Ukraine’s Charge d’Affairs in Japan. Omer became friends with him when they worked together in updating Ukraine’s nuclear laws following the Chernobyl accident, and he has kept in touch with him as Russian forces tear his country apart.

At the outbreak of the invasion, Omer asked Volodymyr if the things we were reading in the media about Ukraine were true. He replied, “Unfortunately it’s true. Ukrainians are fighting heroically. But the military equipment of the Russian army is better. Now Kyiv, Kharkov and southern cities are being attacked. All residents are ready to fight. Not enough weapons for volunteers. Victory, if it come, will cost Russia dearly.”

Volodymyr said more on March 3 in a note to Omer. He began his email with “Dear Omer.” How many emails do we send each other, most not bothering to even include the name of the person we are addressing? But here someone in extremis begins with the salutation Dear to remind us of how we should all treasure one another.

Volodymyr wrote,

“Now I realized and know that the war is war, and even my modest strength can be useful for defense.

“Yesterday and today I helped in organizing the defense in the Kiev region. We made anti-tank barriers in the direct translation “anti-tank hedgehogs”.

“Today the fighting is going on 15-20 km from my location. Explosions and shots are well hearable.

“I believe that I can do something more useful for the defense of Ukraine. The attached photo confirms my intentions.”

And he included this photograph:

Fiona Hill, the former Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, was recently interviewed by Politico regarding what Putin’s intentions were and where things are headed. The interviewer reflected, “There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III.” Ms. Hill’s response was, “We’re already in it. We have been for some time,” pointing out the invasion of eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. She continued, “People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.”

Ms. Hill’s observations were considered alarmist by many, but I am sure that Volodymyr watching Kiev being subjected to bombs and rocket attacks in advance of Russian soldiers coming down his street would agree with her.

My point in writing this article is that the next time you sit down with friends for a meal here on the Shore, please bow your heads and think of Volodymyr, someone not much different from yourself, but whose world that held such promise following the fall of the first Iron Curtain is collapsing all around him. Despite that hopelessness, what you see in his face is the reflection of someone at peace with the world into which he has been shoved, someone comfortable with his fate, someone committed to the higher goal of freedom and willing to give his life in the pursuit of it. All of us should strive to have the courage of Volodymyr Riabtsev and heed the message that he sent in another email:

“Dear Omer,

“I state that brutal battles are going on. The fact is that Ukrainians are fighting desperately and without self-pity.

“But it must be admitted that the Russians are also fighting aggressively.

“I do not think that Ukraine can win this war due to the power of military forces. But the Ukrainians will definitely not give up. Defending their land and their families, the Ukrainian people become “wild” and are ready to die but repel the enemy.

“Of course, there will be big losses. Many people will die. It’s amazing that this is possible in the 21st century. But it happens and it’s true.

“Let’s support Ukraine.”

Jeff McGuiness was the senior partner of a public policy law firm based in Washington, DC, and founder of HR Policy Association. He was also a partner in Mathews Brothers for ten years. A fine arts major in college who served as a photographer in the Air Force during the Vietnam War Era, he has picked up where he left off 50 years ago with Bay Photographic Works. He lives in St. Michaels, MD.

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Pete Mathews Contemplates the Future of Mathews Brothers by Jeff McGuiness

November 22, 2021 by Jeff McGuiness

There is the inescapable cycle of the seasons on the Shore, but so too cycles of much longer duration, the cycles of succeeding generations of family businesses, some of which date from the 1600s. Richard and Beverly Tilghman, for example, are the twelfth-generation proprietors of the farms at Wye House. Mark and Susan Hill of Easton are the fourth generation of Bailey Marine preparing for the beginning of the fifth with Stephen Hill. Arbre Group Holding, the parent company of Paris Foods in Trappe, has transitioned to the fourth generation of leadership under Dylan Marks. And David and Missy DeLuca of Delco Packaging in Hurlock are second generation, readying the third.

Other generations are of more recent vintage and families more extended, people like Pete and Annie Mathews of Mathews Brothers, a builder of classic Chesapeake Bay yachts in Denton. Pete will be turning sixty in December and, like others at his point in life, has begun wrestling with how to keep the Chesapeake boatbuilding traditions of Lempke, Robbins and Roe, all bundled together under the Mathews Brothers umbrella, continuing as an integral part of the Shore’s culture.

Pete Mathews testing a recently completed Mathews Brothers Bay Explorer 26.

Like other successful businesses, Mathews Brothers started with a dream followed by experimentation, acquisitions, dogged determination, and the building of a skilled team, all fueled by sweat equity, demanding work schedules, and an unconditional commitment to turn that dream into reality. Its efforts over the past thirty years resulted in the creation of a distinctive business model—products that are works of art capable of taking whatever the Bay dishes up enjoyed by a loyal following.

The dazzling teak work of a Mathews Brothers yacht.

The company was launched during the Shore’s residential building boom in the mid-1990s when Mathews noticed that those who had purchased the home of their dreams wanted a powerboat to go along with it reflecting the region’s characteristics. They were looking for a hand built classic Chesapeake deadrise that had the soul of a workboat elegantly carrying amenities for comfortable cruising.

Pete Mathews in the Mathews Brothers manufacturing facility in Denton, phone at the ready.

During the first years Mathews exhibited their new concept at the Annapolis Power Boat Shows, the common refrain was, “Now, that’s what a boat should look like on the Chesapeake.” Mathews then discovered that once owners had taken delivery, they were unwilling to be separated from the builder. The marine industry can be rigidly segmented with companies that only manufacture boats, others that only service, repair, and maintain them, and still others that only store and house them. Mathews yachts are built with considerable customer input during the manufacturing process such that a bond develops between the builders and owners. Once launched, these owners wanted Mathews providing their pride and joy with complete care, sheltering it indoors in the winter and responding to calls on a Sunday summer afternoon when something unexpected popped up. Meeting those demands, a full-service business model emerged that resulted in Mathews Brothers today enjoying an 85 percent customer retention rate, enviable in any business.

A postcard of the first Mathews Brothers 22 cruiser.

Mathews Brothers started in St. Michaels when it purchased several molds from Clarence Lempke, a builder of workboats in Windy Hill, one of which was used to create the first 22 footer. As the concept caught fire, Mathews purchased Robbins Boatbuilders in Cambridge and moved to the Denton Industrial Park. Cecil Robbins had been making 29 and 40 foot workboats for 25 years, and those were lengths Mathews customers were demanding. Later, when Ricky Roe sold his workboat business, Mathews picked up his 26 foot molds, giving it the foundation for a series of Bay style boats from 16 to 40 feet. These molds were the templates the skilled craftspeople at Mathews painstakingly used to fashion their distinctive watercraft.

The author’s Mathews Brothers Patriot 29 at North Hero, Vermont. A blog of his four-week cruise on the Hudson River and Lake Champlain can be found here.

In the current fevered boat market, a used Mathews is listed for only a day or two before it goes under contract, but it wasn’t always that way. The financial meltdown in 2008 devastated the boating industry, forcing many companies into bankruptcy. Mathews Brothers was fortunate that its customers still wanted the same blanket of care even though times were tough, and Pete and Annie weathered the storm.

Today, Mathews Brothers is at that existential point that each generation of small business confronts. Like so many specialty enterprises on the Shore, it is a successful family enterprise with Pete and Annie’s son Spencer Mathews heading sales, but it is also the extended family of its employees, specialty contractors, and customers. For decades, Pete muscled the boulder of the company uphill while pulling the family along with him. Now that gentle nudges are all that’s needed to keep the boulder moving, he has begun noticing the weariness in his bones. It is gratifying for him to see hull numbers 87 and 88 under construction and that more than 100 boats are stored with Mathews each winter, every single one needing some level of service. But as Pete moves into his seventh decade, he is wondering how long he can physically remain fully invested.

Going through the Mathews shop, anyone acquainted with the business leadership philosophy of Phil Jackson and how he built teams that won 11 NBA titles can see those principles in practice. Work proceeds with little confusion or conversation. Each person instinctively knows what needs to be done and how their competencies fit into the whole. Whenever a new project begins, those decades of experience flood the zone to make the next creation even better. That is magic in any enterprise. For Pete, the question is how to keep that magic alive.

A few days ago, I sat down with Pete to ask him who might come into the business in the future. I was thinking about a blustery morning on the Little Choptank River where I’d anchored for the night and was watching dozens of workboats heading out to the Bay the following morning where they were in for a pounding. Nearly half were Robbins workboats, some of them pushing 50 years old still going strong. Does he want those Robbins and Mathews out on the Bay years from now, a vibrant part of the Bay’s heritage? Absolutely, Pete said. What he hopes to see coming along is someone focused on the numbers while committed to carrying on a centuries’ old tradition of Chesapeake boatbuilding, someone who sees the value in all the lessons learned from all the talent and intellectual property Mathews has cobbled together.

A Robbins 40 by Mathews Brothers powering down the Bay.

As I was leaving, I said to Pete that he is an entrepreneur, the creator of the business, and that Mathews Brothers reflects his vision. I asked whether it will be difficult for him to let go and allow someone to come in behind him one day. Yes, he said. He has been doing it for so long, it is who he is. “But what’s on my mind right now is Annie and I going cruising. We hear that it’s great fun!”

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Island Life: Jay Fleming’s Celebration of Those at Peace with Adversity by Jeff McGuiness

October 13, 2021 by Jeff McGuiness

Editor’s note. It is with profound sadness that we must note that Dwight Marshall, a central figure of Jay Fleming’s book and whose photo graces its cover, passed away as he was working on the water yesterday. The Spy has decided to publish Jeff McGuiness’ article of Jay’s work today as a tribute to Dwight, his family, and their remarkable contributions to our Chesapeake Bay heritage and culture.

Its title deceptively simple, Jay Fleming’s magnificent new book, Island Life, uses brilliant photography to address a fundamental issue of our time, dealing with overwhelming change while joyously appreciating the beauty surrounding us as we do. His photographic essay is so moving that ever since I saw the book’s proofs, I’ve had a recurring dream that is a metaphor for what our lives have become.

James “Ooker” Eskridge, waterman and mayor of Tangier Island, Virginia

I wake up in our home in St. Michaels with unsettling images of a vanished life. I am walking through the home we left in Northern Virginia that was torn down by a developer, a house in acres of woods that was part of a land of pastoral farms in verdant fields of clover that became cloverleafs, shopping centers, mega developments, and office towers, all within a thirty-year span. As I open my eyes, I wonder what the dreams are of those who live a few feet above sea level on the distant islands of Smith and Tangier in a remote part of the Chesapeake. Do they sleep with images of the heaving waters around them, the enormous skies of the lower Bay, workboats disappearing in the shimmering haze of summer, winter gales sweeping over the frail soil, the land underneath gnawed away by salt water?

Tangier Island, Virginia

These islanders and those that came before them live with that water constantly in sight, a still pond one day, a sea surging past their doorsteps the next. They trace their heritage to those who emigrated from Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset in southern England in the 1600’s after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Their ancestors settled along the shore and on the islands of the lower Chesapeake, planting crops and drawing sustenance from the area’s bountiful waters which, unlike the privations faced in other New World settlements, made starvation impossible. Their descendants have lived on these islands for eight to ten generations, first primarily working the land, then as fortunes changed, moving onto the water. Those who have remained on the islands prefer the slower pace of life, separation from what our world has become, the intimacy with elemental forces.

A red fox taking home a striped bass.

During the War of 1812, the British Navy used Tangier as the base from which they sacked America’s new capital and burned its White House. After returning for a two week break before heading to Baltimore to continue their mayhem, the British asked Tangier’s leader, Joshua Thomas, to “exhort the soldiers” during a ceremony as the marines and sailors prepared to board the fleet. Thomas chose instead to tell the troops that they were making a big mistake, that they would “not succeed,” that Baltimoreans were different from Washingtonians, and that they should “prepare for death.” What prescient message can those distant souls on Tangier and Smith give us mainlanders struggling with life today?

For decades, tourists from metropolitan areas have traveled by boat to this separate world to gawk at the locals and listen to their unusual dialect before smugly returning to the security of their well-ordered communities. Then the Pandemic hit. Those communities emptied as Americans roamed about searching for a different, less vulnerable place to live. For decades, Smith and Tangier have been the target of requiems and elegies from mainlanders focused on the Chesapeake’s waters slowly overtaking the islands’ shores. The writers ask, often condescendingly, don’t you people know what is going to happen to you? Now the islanders can ask, don’t you know what’s happening to you because of the consequences of your hypergrowth? Are you prepared to deal with it? The lesson of COVID is that no one is immune from unexpected change, so the question is, how to do we survive, prosper, and find happiness amid uncertainty?

Daniel Dise paddling home after fishing his crab pots on Tangier Island.

Island Life is Jay Fleming’s answer. He burst onto the Chesapeake Bay photographic scene five years ago with his first book, Working the Water. We were immediately captivated by his boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm. Never before had we seen someone grinning ear to ear while immersed in a pound net full of fish so things could be photographed from the point of view of the captured. In a world saturated with photographs of the Chesapeake, Fleming’s vivid colors, unusual perspectives, and bold, simple designs set him apart. Soon his work was hanging in galleries, featured on magazine covers, and displayed in design houses. The book, now in its fourth printing with nearly ten thousand copies, is an achievement for someone who is his own publishing house.

Jay Fleming in his studio in Stevensville, MD. Photograph by the author.

Working the Water is a magnificently illustrated guide to everything that goes on in Chesapeake waters—fyke netting, haul seining, gill netting, crab scraping, bank trapping, pound netting, crab potting, and purse seining, for example. It is required reading for any Chesapeake boater not involved in commercial fishing. No more puzzling over what all those flags, floats, and poles are as they slide past your stern.

Oyster dredging on a rough winter day, Tangier Sound, Virginia.

Island Life goes in a different direction. It is a story of resilience in a world both beautiful and haunting. Unusual marine life in green water harvested in challenging conditions that becomes a delicacy on a dinner plate hundreds of miles away. The making of Mary Ada Marshall’s Smith Island cake, the iconic Maryland state dessert she ships from the edge of the world all over the east coast. A nesting colony of brown pelicans in tall grass hovering over their hatchlings who will soon be able to fly in formation a few feet off the water searching for menhaden. But it is Fleming’s oneness with the lives of the islanders and his depiction of their strong sense of community produced by their isolation and the challenges of their unique way of life that makes the book so distinct.

Mary Ada Marshall shipping her Smith Island Cakes from her dining room on Smith Island. Dwight Marshall is behind her in their living room.

Over the past few years, Fleming has spent months on Smith and Tangier working on his photography and conducting workshops to the point he is no longer an outsider looking in. He is an island waterman in his own right, piloting his center console Privateer, a photographic platform custom built by Mary Ada and Dwight’s son, Kevin, as he documents who the islanders are and what they do. His is a studied observation that has created a connection, a bond, with these god-fearing souls that allows him to see life through their eyes, feel the water’s unpredictable grip, and dream the dreams they dream. Yes, the islanders live amidst fierce forces as they have for centuries, but so now do we all, and the way he shows how they see the wonder of life while living along peril’s edge can be a guide for all of us on the mainland.

A puffed-up northern pufferfish, Tangier Sound, Virginia.

Of the dozens of photographs in Island Life, the one that knocked me off my chair shows Darlene and Morris Marsh in their home in Ewell on Smith Island. Morris is seated comfortably in their living room reading the Bible next to a Christmas tree decorated with American flags. Why the flags? Because the Holiday season has not yet arrived. Darlene is in the foreground looking directly at the camera. And what is she doing? Holding a knife while picking crabs. Now, most people who pick Chesapeake crabs are appropriately attired for the collateral damage that occurs when crustaceans are dismembered. Darlene is dressed as if she is about to go out for the evening. She would look no different if she were using the knife to butter a dinner roll at a church social.

Darlene and Morris Marsh at home on Smith Island, Virginia.

When I first saw this image, I was reminded of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, the iconic painting that hangs in the Chicago Institute of Art depicting a middle-aged couple standing in front of an Iowa farmhouse in the early years of the Depression. He holds a pitchfork while she, primly dressed, looks prepared to deal with any challenge thrown her way. American Gothic has come to be regarded as one of the finest representations of resilience, fortitude, and dignity in the face of mounting hardship on the early twentieth century prairie. If the Baltimore Museum of Art is searching for the twenty-first century Chesapeake equivalent, Jay Fleming’s image of the Marshes of Smith Island is worth consideration.

Island Life will be released in November. It is available for purchase on Jay Fleming’s website and will soon be available in book shops, museums stores, and art galleries throughout the Chesapeake region. The Trippe Gallery in Easton, MD, will hold a book signing for Jay on Saturday, November 13, 2021, as part of Waterfowl Festival.

Jeff McGuiness was the senior partner of a public policy law firm based in Washington, DC, and founder of HR Policy Association. A fine arts major in college who served as a photographer in the Air Force during the Vietnam War Era, he has picked up where he left off 50 years ago with Bay Photographic Works. He lives in St. Michaels, MD.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Crab Alley to the Crab Claw: A Father’s Day Remembrance by Jeff McGuiness

June 20, 2021 by Jeff McGuiness

Some people say it is playing 18 holes of golf, others say spending the day in a blind when the geese aren’t flying. But for me it is a quiet sail on a warm day across a long stretch of water barely ruffled by the wind that makes two people open up to one another and tell each other things they would never say in any other setting.

One of these sails occurred with my father who passed more than twenty years ago. He was neither a boater nor someone who liked the water. So, one dry summer late in August when the sea nettles were as thick as Jello in the Bay’s shallows, he said to my astonishment that he wanted to do the Crab Alley to Saint Michaels run I had been talking about around the office.

Our boat then was a 16 foot Hobie catamaran. This particular trip started at the public landing on Crab Alley Creek on Kent Island, out Crab Alley Bay, across the Eastern Bay and up the Miles River to St. Michaels for lunch at its iconic restaurant, the Crab Claw, next door to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. If the winds hold up in the afternoon, a Hobie can sail the twelve miles back to the public landing by five in the afternoon which we were always able to do.

Crab Claw Restaurant, St. Michaels, MD

At the time of the sail, my father and I were practicing law together, something we did for fifteen years in a classic father-son business relationship. Still years away from retirement, he was enjoying all that he had accomplished. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else but come to the office each day to make sure everything was being done the way he wanted it. I, on the other hand, was at the beginning of my career and, with the supreme confidence of youthful denseness, wanted to change most everything. We were in the heated argument stage, each trying to convince the other of the rightness of his position through intense force of will, and each exasperated and profoundly disturbed by the shortsightedness of the other.

This relationship is described frequently in management journals, my favorite being a book by Thomas Watson, Jr. In Father, Son & Company, he writes about IBM and his travails with his father who founded the organization. Our small firm was hardly an IBM, but there were distinct similarities in the way the Watson and McGuiness males treated one another.

Tom Junior fought day in and day out with his father. He thought the future of computers was in transistors. His father felt just as strongly that the punch card would continue to be the key to success. Since the 1930’s, it had made IBM one of the largest and most successful organizations in the world. Just because it was the Fifties, there was no need to change something that had been so reliable and that had created so much wealth.

There is a picture of these two titans shaking hands on the day Tom Senior retired and handed the reins of his beloved company to this hothead who didn’t have the maturity to leave well enough alone and would no doubt go on to ruin it. A man who has only a few months to live, Senior has a look of resignation, knowing full well this kid is going to change everything that he had worked so hard to build.

Source: IBM

When my father and I had our sail that quiet day in August, we were still five years away from the passing of the mantle, a process that would begin three years later at a fateful annual meeting of one of our association clients.

At that time, he was the president of an industry trade association, and I was the number two. A few months before that meeting, this association had been involved in defeating a major piece of legislation in Congress that had a provision in it our members found abhorrent. Our involvement in the debate had resurrected a long running argument about the organization’s appropriate public profile. He prided himself on keeping things low key to avoid as much controversy as possible. The last thing he wanted, particularly at this point in his career, was the organization to be attacked publicly by anyone for any reason.

I, on the other hand, thought a political organization could be more effective by making one’s presence known and that a bit of controversy, in addition to making life interesting, was useful in drawing attention to one’s arguments. At the same time, I was being told by our members that they were tired of hearing policymakers at our meetings who mirrored their own views. They wanted the discussions broadened and new perspectives brought in. So, to add a little spice to this session, I had invited the prime sponsor of the legislation we had helped defeat to be a part of our panel of Congressional speakers. Much to everyone’s surprise, he accepted.

On a Friday afternoon in Williamsburg, Virginia, before an audience of senior corporate executives, the congressman opened his presentation by saying that the reason he had accepted the invitation was that an important message needed to be delivered. “Make no mistake about it,” he solemnly intoned, “your organization was primarily responsible for the defeat of my bill.”

No one likes to tell someone else their true feelings about something the other holds dear, and this penchant is pronounced when people deal one-on-one with powerful politicians. Members of Congress are routinely lobbied by sycophantic business representatives who tell them that the legislation they are sponsoring is wonderful and that they are very sorry that their retrograde, staff driven, out of control business associations (to whom they faithfully pay their dues and serve on their boards) are giving them such a hard time.

Some politicians actually believe that companies are grateful to policymakers who saddle them with enormous legal liability. Perhaps, for that reason, the congressman expected that his charge against us, that we defeated a bill that he had written, would so shock the membership that they would immediately launch impeachment proceedings against my father and me. This is absolutely great, I thought. Here we are being given credit for something that few groups could ever hope to accomplish—primary responsibility for an action taken by Congress—and not only that, the sponsor of the bill was the one presenting the award.

But the glow quickly faded. The Congressman shifted from an attack on the association to an attack on the executives sitting in the room who were headquartered in his home state, many of whom he knew personally. “What are you doing in this room,” he would say, calling out each one by name. “I’m sure you’re not contributing to an organization like this.”

Exhausting that pool, he then turned to me, accusing me of unethical conduct and intoning that my license to practice law should be revoked. What had been exhilarating was now headed into the abyss. The audience knew full well that it was the pot calling the kettle black, but his repeated personal attacks were beginning to raise questions as to whether there wasn’t at least some truth in what he was saying.

The congressman harangued the group like an instructor in a reeducation camp, repeatedly referring to a fact sheet that I had developed on blank paper describing various aspects of the bill. One of its points had been picked up by the legislation’s opponents during the House floor debate and used as the principal argument against it. This blank format was in keeping with my father’s no identity, low profile approach which the two of us had battled over for years. I couldn’t believe sinister motives were now being assigned to my use of it. Even more puzzling was the fact that the congressman said repeatedly that the language I had used in the fact sheet was an egregious misrepresentation of his bill.

This harangue went on for 45 of the most painful minutes of my life. Squirming in their chairs, no one was willing to look in my direction. My father was pacing back and forth in the back of the room muttering violently to himself, his worst fears realized.

Earlier that day, I had proudly recounted our accomplishments to these very same people, and they had seemed so very, very appreciative of what we had done. From the high of that morning, I was now looking at the gates of hell. Growing up in Washington, DC, I had watched the oft repeated ritual of those in the wrong place at the wrong time being dismembered for misdeeds that weren’t sins at all, and now I couldn’t believe that it was happening to me, right in front of the very people with whom I wanted to build my career.

Eventually, it hit me that I was completely on my own. No one was going to come to my rescue, not my father, not the moderator who at this point was looking for a way to slide off the riser, nor any of those people who usually stand up in a group setting like this to make long-winded points.

With nothing left to lose, I rose from my chair in the back of the room and moved rapidly to the dais, loudly interrupting the congressman on my way forward, saying that it was time to bring a little bit of truth, common sense, and decency into this discussion. Yes, this sounds remarkably lame in the retelling, but it shocked the room and caused the congressman to freeze momentarily in disbelief at my indiscretion.

Once on the stage, I yanked the fact sheet out of his hand, reading aloud the passage he found so offensive. “Yes, I wrote that. Yes, I gave it to everyone I could in Congress. But what you’ve neglected to tell the audience, Mr. Chairman, is that there are quotation marks at the beginning and end of the sentence you find so egregious. The reason for those quotation marks is that this sentence comes directly from your bill. You wrote those words, Mr. Chairman, and if those words were the cause of your bill being defeated, then you have no one to blame but yourself.”

With that I shoved the fact sheet back into his hands, turned my back to him and walked to my seat, very slowly. As I did, I could feel the mood of the room swing fiercely to my side. People pounded their fists. Tables were slapped. I was patted on my arms, back and legs as I worked down the row back to my seat. I was Rocky. I wanted to bow in four directions and drink in the cheers.

The Congressman tried to continue his hectoring for a few more minutes, but his colleagues on the panel had grown weary of his act and tugged on his sleeve. It was over, and they soon left the room.

After the meeting had recessed for the day, I knocked on the door of my parents’ room in the hotel. My mother let me in without, uncharacteristically, saying a word, just nodding in my father’s direction.

He was slumped in a heavy chair that he had turned to the resort’s elegant small window. Staring out at the peaceful golf course, the geese walking across the lawn, and the trees just beginning to bud, he looked as if the world had crashed in around him. The bill would become law without the offending provision, but the association’s name would be on everything we touched. Our profile had been raised permanently, and there were members of Congress who would try to squash us whenever they got the opportunity.

As I stood there beside him, he wouldn’t look at me or even acknowledge my presence. I told the back of his head not to worry, the whole thing had worked out fine and that for once no one had fallen asleep during the afternoon meeting. He turned and glared at me, and said, acid dripping, “You just don’t get it, do you?”

But that was all to come. By some unspoken agreement that August day in 1982, all the usual mind games we played on each other had been suspended.

As we glided out of Crab Alley Bay, he sat looking across the water towards the narrow strip of trees in the distance that marks Tilghman Point at the mouth of the Miles River. Instead of his usual golf hat from an expensive resort, he was wearing a black billed Winchester Rifles cap that he’d bought at a convenience store where we had stopped for ice that morning. He’d never owned a gun in his life.

Crab Alley Creek Landing, Dominion, MD

We talked about our experiences growing up and what had happened to relatives and people we knew. As the morning wore on, we started thinking about those points you reach in life when the fog lifts. It reveals an attractive channel, and turning towards it, an irreversible journey begins taking you thousands of miles in a direction you had never anticipated. Had the fog not lifted just at that moment, you would have chosen another course with an altogether different set of experiences. We had never talked like this before.

When we got to St. Michaels, we tacked the Hobie through the harbor in the light wind to the dingy dock at the Maritime Museum and then walked over to the picnic tables on the Crab Claw’s deck. It was a day that comes as summer is ending, when the sky is less intense, the green leaves are losing their luster, and the crickets trill their high register symphony.

Fogg Cove, St. Michaels, MD

We watched a small seaplane land on the Miles and taxi towards the Crab Claw as we ate. The pilot shut down its engine as he neared us, passed a long wooden oar through a side window, and paddled the last few feet to tie up directly in front of our table. We smiled at each other and shook our heads, thinking how foreign this pleasant place was to the universe we normally inhabited.

At the time I was stumbling my way through a book Nigel Calder wrote called Einstein’s Universe. It said on the dust jacket, “Relativity Made Plain” which is a bit of a reach. As part of his discussion of the theories Einstein formulated replacing Newtonian concepts of gravity with ones involving time and space, he provides a description of how two bodies influence one another.

Moons and planets are falling freely, travelling as straight as they can through curved space. A massive body, he says, “distorts time and space around it and those distortions guide the movements of other objects in its vicinity.” He goes on to explain that a massive body bends space to such an extent that a smaller object falling freely at the right speed goes right around the massive body and back to its starting point.

Calder’s explanation summed up our relationship at the time. Two bodies falling freely in space, but my father’s being so massive that I was trapped in his orbit. He would move inexorably forward, while I could only move through the space that curved around him.

On that day in August as I picked through a pile of steamed crabs and he ordered a second helping of crab cakes, relativity changed. We were both falling freely, neither one curving the other’s space. At least that’s how I felt. Maybe it was just because he was on my boat going where I wanted to go and only I knew how to sail it. He was riding in my car, and I would be driving him home. If he didn’t like what I was doing, he would have to call my mother, and she was not going to drive all the way to the Eastern Shore to pick him up. So maybe, for a change, he was having to orbit around me just to survive the day. Except that he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself and always spoke afterwards about what an enjoyable day it was. In any event, it was the first time in my life of 35 years that I saw my father as neither a parent, an employer, nor someone in my way, but just another confused human being grappling with life.

A few days after we returned to the office, the relationship reverted to its normal state. Five years later, the mantle was passed, albeit reluctantly. And one August afternoon fourteen years later as he sat in the family room of our house, the two of us looked directly at one another, staring into each other’s eyes for a long time, saying no words because we didn’t need to. A feeling was being exchanged that he did not have long to live and that he wanted to make his peace with me and I with him. It would not be until the following August that I would watch those eyes burn brightly for a brief moment as he saw a new course that would take him forever in a new direction, and then dim as he took it.

Today, I live in St. Michaels on that same harbor, and I can see the roof of the Crab Claw from our home. Now and then when the intensity of the August heat breaks, I like to sit on our deck and imagine the Hobie with its two figures aboard working its way over to the dingy dock where we had tied up so long ago, and then try to bring back that feeling. In all our years together, it was one of the few times neither of us wanted anything from the other. For a brief moment in time and space, we were just two guys, at peace.

Jeff McGuiness was the senior partner of a public policy law firm based in Washington, DC, and founder of HR Policy Association. A fine arts major in college who served as a photographer in the Air Force during the Vietnam War Era, he has picked up where he left off 50 years ago with Bay Photographic Works. He lives in St. Michaels, MD.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Reflections On Boating’s Holy Grail by Jeff McGuiness

April 4, 2021 by Jeff McGuiness

Being on the water is bliss. There is no other place I’d rather be. In my belief system, cruising for days and weeks on end is as close to Nirvana as one can get. Still, at the end of a toasty day after sweat has oozed out of every pore, there is no better denouement than a pleasant shower and a clean set of clothes. Just thinking about that, however, raises The Issue.

Let’s start with our beloved Mathews Brothers 29 built in Denton, MD. A comfortable cruiser perfect for poking around the nooks and crannies of the Chesapeake Bay, she is a bit small compared to those typically tied up alongside us during our explores. Here we are next to a Monk 36 trawler, for example.

And just look at this magnificent Selene in the next dock over from us when we took our Mathews up the Hudson River into Lake Champlain.

Over the years, I’ve been bewitched by these floating condos, particularly during Annapolis boat shows when their interiors can be examined microscopically. After one show, I couldn’t get a Kady Krogen Express 52 out of my mind for weeks. She had more room down below than an urban flat. Still, I wonder why boaters want to take these behemoths on long journeys, especially through the canals and locks we went through getting to Lake Champlain. It has to be a nerve-wracking experience, one we are able to avoid with our nimble craft.

*Locking through the Champlain Canal in our Mathews Brothers 29*

I think the reason comes down to showers. By the end of the first week of a long cruise, you’ve had it with marina showers. Yes, there is a bathing system in the head of our boat, but with our small water tank, you’re limited to a quick rinse. If Dorie needs to wash her hair, she’s on her way to a marina shower, and that’s when a cloud passes over the sun.

Don’t get me wrong. The Chesapeake has some outstanding marina showering facilities. Tides Inn in Irvington, Herrington Harbor, Somers Cove Marina in Crisfield, and the Wharf and Marina at Onancock, for example. My favorite is Osprey Point Marina in Rock Hall. It makes you feel as if you’re in residence at a tony country club.

*One of the finest marinas in the Chesapeake, Osprey Point Marina in Rock Hall, MD*

But these are the exceptions. Too often marina showers are endured rather than enjoyed. You want to wash and get back out the door as quickly as possible. It isn’t just the haphazard attention they seem to get from marina operators which results in one shower stall having no hooks for your towel and clothes while the adjacent one has four, something that happens altogether too frequently. It’s more than that.

It starts with the quality of the shower’s water. Marinas can be in towns with municipal water systems, but they also can be in remote locations. Showering using a well sunk along a waterway means sampling the region’s geology. It can be sulfuric. Once our hair reeked of iron filings for days. Our skin has been chalked white from a limestone slurry in which we bathed. It’s best never to open your mouth while in a marina shower.

Shower nozzles can be pain inducing. Mid-twentieth century vintage is common in marina fixtures with jets having become blocked by calcium sometime during the Carter administration. You can perform laser surgery with what hisses out the remaining holes. I carry a needle in my shower gig to free things up.

A lot of entomologists must be boaters because of the extensive amount of insect life that can be studied while showering. The Chesapeake is oppressively hot during the summer, and most restrooms are air-conditioned which keeps mosquitos to a minimum. But in New England that’s not the case because, theoretically, the weather is better. The way a shower room is dried up north is by leaving all doors wide open when not in use. At night when the lights come on, they become insect petting zoos.

If you have spent any time at a summer camp in the deep woods, you have a pretty good idea how most marina shower facilities are constructed. You rarely see ceramic tile. Tile is easy to clean and holds its appearance for years but is comparatively expensive. The basic idea of a marina restroom is something built as cheaply as possible using materials from a nearby cache of collected scrap. If something needs to be purchased, it will likely come from a farm auction or yard sale. No item should go directly from hardware store shelf to marina restroom because then it would be new, and proper marina restroom décor dictates the use of materials well worn to the point of being worn out.

Plywood is often used for walls, doors, and shower stalls despite the inevitable warping. Floors can be linoleum, paint over something hard to describe, and bare concrete. And not all concrete floors are flat. We have seen them hand molded to create shower pans and drains like a kid would do playing in a sandbox. If you find yourself in a shower with a fiberglass shower unit, you’re in a more upscale marina, no matter how cheap or beat up the unit might be.

And then there is the maintenance. Running a marina is challenging from a resource standpoint even if the operation fills its slips every weekend. Obvious repair items can be overlooked because of the shortage of working capital. We were at a marina once that, uncharacteristically, had two identical restrooms, both looking very nice and neither having warning signs attached. Pleased, I went into the first one and got all set to take a shower. When the faucet was turned on, nothing happened no matter how much I fiddled with it. Putting my clothes back on, I went to the second one only to find there was no way to lock its door. But at least the shower worked. I had one and later so did Dorie. Fortunately, no one walked in on either of us.

That clean thing can be a stumbling block for marinas because, after all, they may be working boat yards. Stepping off the dock can mean stepping onto gravel or shells if you’re lucky, but more likely a mixture of pieces of something hard, mud and various liquid substances. A walk across this surface goes by boats hanging from travel lifts that have had the glop from their bottoms sprayed into the ooze. Garnish that with drips from oil changes, other lubricants, and a dash of antifreeze, and you come up with the muck your shoes eventually track into the restroom.

But more than anything else, it is the hardware selections that truly distinguish the marina shower.

Most marinas have been around for decades which means they are places where watercraft have been serviced for long periods of time. During those eons, little has been thrown away. Boat parts are expensive, and you never know when something might be needed. Stuff gets tossed out back creating layers of yachting civilizations. It is from this detritus that the marina restroom draws its materials.

That is why fixtures are seldom alike or done in a uniform manner. Each door hinge and knob may be unique. If there is a fiberglass shower stall, chances are an access hole has been cut into it and then covered with a hatch off a dead boat. I have showered with the hot water coming through a kitchen sink faucet and the cold controlled by a lever valve from a retired boat’s plumbing system.

I’ve often thought that we could own and operate a killer marina by treating the restroom facilities like a destination spa instead of a necessary evil. It would be a commodious building with wide corridors and subtle lighting. Elegant marble tiling would be liberally applied. Faucets and fixtures would be sparkling chrome from places like Restoration Hardware. Plumbing and electrical conduits would be invisible, not the major architectural feature. An attendant who cleans the spa frequently would hand you a large, fluffy, freshly laundered towel so you wouldn’t have to bring your own from the boat, you know, the one that never really dries. You could luxuriate in a long, hot shower with powerful exhaust fans whisking away the clouds of steam. The entrances to each shower stall would be glass doors instead of cheap plastic curtains from a factory closeout sale if you’re lucky to have one at all. And the floor would be clean, antiseptically clean. If you accidentally dropped a shirt on it, you wouldn’t have to worry about major stain removal issues. Imagine a couple talking about their boating plans? “Yes, but only as long as it includes The Spa at Marina Creek.”

What possessed me to write this was standing in the marina restroom in Burton Island State Park in Vermont one morning feeling that something was amiss. It was devoid of nautical charm, yet everything functioned properly, even effortlessly. Was the lack of charm part of the reason why? Then it dawned on me that all the plumbing, hardware, and electrical fixtures were uniform and up to code. Why? Because it was a government facility. It was not built by someone in the marina business. The construction was done by a government contractor in accordance with specifications written by an architect. Everything was purchased new at taxpayer expense from a builders’ warehouse. The work was inspected to ensure code compliance. No, I’m not a socialist, just a boating realist.

I think the primary motivating force driving cruisers to move up to a larger boat is the shower. Yacht manufacturers have gotten wise to this and designed into their products separate shower stalls, 100-gallon water tanks, and large water heaters. That means the owners of these water-borne penthouses never need to use a community shower. Can you imagine someone with a tote bag getting off a Fleming like this one to head to a marina shower?

We have friends with a commodious Mainship 34 that is a home afloat, complete with a lounger. They are serious cruisers. They were on their boat for several months over one winter leisurely going to Florida and back from the Chesapeake. She says that she never uses the marina’s shower while he always does.

For years, I could not figure out why until we did our first four-week cruise. He is an engineer by training and otherwise the type who excels in solving mechanical problems. For him, showering in a marina must be a form of entertainment. I’ll bet he stands there soaping up with a big smile on his face, marveling at the ingenuity that went into putting all those disparate pieces together to create that boating icon—the marina shower.

Jeff McGuiness was the senior partner of a public policy law firm based in Washington, DC, and founder of HR Policy Association. A fine arts major in college who served as a photographer in the Air Force during the Vietnam War Era, he has picked up where he left off 50 years ago with Bay Photographic Works. He lives in St. Michaels, MD.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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“You know, I’m not an artist, I’m a journalist.”