What with one book and another, the Chesapeake has been pretty well
worked over - and still there's a fascination in the skipjacks as
the one U.S. fishing fleet under sail (thanks to an 1865 Maryland
conservation law), in the tricky, inbred life of the islands and
bay. Peffer, a young prep-school teacher, went to Tilghman Island
thinking to "investigate my ancestry," and, finding no trace of his
roots, proffers instead some island lore and some la-di-da
apotheosizing. More profitably, he works on a skipjack - Bart
Murphy's old tub - dredging oysters from November to Easter (come
the winter freeze, Murphy builds an iceboat - "He had seen a
picture" - and the men dredge through holes in the ice); takes a
hand at "snakin' " eels in May ("Eels," says one burly waterman,
"is proper spring business. Something sexy about it"); sets
trotlines for crabs and goes clamming in the summer; and, betimes,
signs on Bob Marshall's sport-fishing boat - where Peffer, always
the greenhorn, learns to make lures, gall the edgy customers'
catches, and appreciate Marshall's savvy about men and fish. He
also acquires - and, in a race, mercifully sheds - the reputation
of being a "Jonah," or bad luck; and finds men who bad shunned him
greeting him on the street. "Clammers, driftnetters, crab potters,
sport fishermen, and seafood buyers said they could find work for
someone who could cast off a Jonah with such a flourish." That's
the logic-defying, legend-spawning crux of it - which Peffer
effectively pins down. (Kirkus Reviews)
For three hundred years, generations of Tilghman Islanders have
lived by harvesting the waters of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. They
are watermen, an old English term for commercial fishermen, and
their lives today retain much of the spirit and simplicity that
characterized their land's first Anglo-Saxon settlers. Watermen is
the story of their lives told by Randy Peffer, a young writer who
came to Tilghman Island to search for his ancestral roots and left
a year later with the makings of this book. Watermen is a singular
work, a book that will touch anyone who has ever glimpsed the peope
of the Chesapeake, whether in literature or in life.
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