This article is the third in a series commemorating the American Evolution – Virginia to America 1619-2019 . See article one and two.

THE THREE SHIPS

VIRGINIA'S LIGHTHOUSES

OLD MEN AND THE SEA
From the beginning, numerous Virginians have earned their survival and subsistence from the water. Several valuable institutions – including the Eastern Shore Watermen's Museum and Research Center in Onancock and the Watermen’s Museum in Yorktown – honor, celebrate, and seek to preserve the proud tradition of the fishermen, oystermen, crabbers, and shrimpers who earn their living from the water, comprising an important facet of Virginia’s rich maritime tradition.
Due to its relative isolation, the Eastern Shore has doggedly preserved a unique culture shaped largely by its relationship to the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay. Housed in the historic schoolhouse just steps from the Onancock Wharf and Marina, the museum is full of displays that relay the lives of commercial crabbers and fishermen. It also houses more than 45,000 digitized photographs that trace the history of skipjacks, the traditional boats that dredged for oysters all along Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Similarly, the Watermen’s Museum in Yorktown shares the experiences of those who plied their trade on “the other side of the bay” (as those from the Eastern Shore would call it), with 2,200 square feet of exhibition space detailing the lives of watermen. It also organizes local field trips and summer camps, while celebrating the lives of watermen. One tangible, hands-on way to experience the history and culture of life on the water is through the museum’s “come as you are” boat building project, which perpetuates the centuries-old tradition of wooden boat building on the shores of the Chesapeake. Visitors are encouraged to help build a 14-foot cedar skiff or refurbish a juniper rowing skiff from the 1940s, or even help build a replica of an 18th-century oak gunboat. The Deltaville Maritime Museum and Holly Point Nature Park also offer occasional family friendly build-your-own-rowing-skiff workshops.
Slightly further north, the Fishermen’s Museum in Reedville celebrates Chesapeake Watermen, as do other points along Virginia’s Northern Neck. Established in 1706, the village of Kinsale, for example, is the oldest town on the Virginia side of the Potomac and celebrates a rich maritime tradition. Then from Reedsville, which still supports a thriving menhaden fishery (the village holds a 125-year record for tonnage of fish landed in the country), hop on the ferry to Tangier Island, the “Softshell Crab Capital,” to experience a truly unique maritime culture and dialect largely preserved by more than 200 years of relative isolation.
JAMES RIVER BATTEAUS

EXPERIENCE THE TRADITION
