#watermen

"This frost will hold, I'm afraid," continued Stapleton, "and we shall have nothing to do for some days but to blow our fingers and spend our earnings; but there's never much doing at this time of the year. The winter cuts us watermen up terribly."

— Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful

From: Lankes, Julius J., 1884-1960. Virginia woodcuts. Newport News, Va. : Virginia Press, 1930

Waterman’s shanties in Dorchester County, Maryland, ca. 1941. Collections of the Library of Congress.

Springtime means flood tides here in the Chesapeake, both today and historically. These images from a waterman’s community in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1941, show that flooded fields, catwalks above drowned yards and an unclear distinction between water and land are nothing new.

What has changed is that these flood tides are now no longer relegated to spring. Dorchester County barely skims above sea level- it the second lowest county in Maryland and one of the lowest in the United States- and because of that, it experiences the ravages of high water and the prevailing winds across the Bay more intensely than anywhere else in Maryland. Today, flooding happens year-round, and along with impassable roads and submerged cars, whole stretches of the shoreline are steadily eroded by the ceaselessly encroaching waves of the Chesapeake.

The loss of land is particularly acute on the islands the lie offshore of Dorchester- Hooper’s, Holland, and Bloodsworth, where more than 20 acres a year disappear into the Bay. In many of these communities, residents have attempted to protect their homes by armoring their shorelines or jacking up their houses. Many have been forced to leave all together.

1/30 Day Studyblr Challenge by @hayley-studies -  A photo of your supplies

I decided to include my notebooks since I use specific ones for specific things!

Top photo: Rainbow tape, yellow post-it-notes, transparent cloud and transparent heart post-it-notes, retractable eraser, red and blue erasable muji pens, Pilot G-TEC-C4 0.4 blue gel pen, generic Japanese black gel pen, 0.5mm Pentel P205 mechanical pencil, generic HB pencil, green, light blue, dark blue and pink Mini Fine Writer 05, pink and blue Paperchase highlighters, Lamy Safari with an extra fine nib and refillable cartridge and finally Watermen Intense Black 50ml.

I found the signification of “take care of any one,” very different on shore from what it was on the river, where taking care of you means getting out of your way, and giving you a wide berth; and I found the shore-reading much more agreeable.

— Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful