Tangier Island MD USA

Bill and Lydia and Doug Selden had all recommended that we take the opportunity to visit Tangier Island, an isolated fishing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay so on Saturday 9 June we boarded The Chesapeake Breezewith Anne and Jonathon (Sofia) and Andrew and Julia (Hullabaloo) – a tourist day out by ferry – it felt rather odd!  Though the cruise blurb had said that the ferry departs from Reedville, and indeed it does, it doesn’t depart from a conveniently close location to the quay and the creek where all the OCC yachts were anchored. Happily, Walter Keith & Mary Frazier, the Port Officers for Reedville for the Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA) had been introduced to the OCC through Australian members Neil and Ley Langford (Crystal Blues).  They had kindly offered us all the use of their dock for getting ashore and, even more generously, offered to drive us to the ferry dock and, later, to the nearest store where we could buy all those bits and pieces that we had forgotten in our provisioning runs before the rally started.

The trip down river showed us the creeks from a different perspective and included a close-up view of an osprey’s nest, built on top of one of the navigation beacons.  Unfortunately, getting a photo of said nest was nigh on impossible as the entire passenger contingent of the ferry moved to a position to see it, blocking our view somewhat.

It took about an hour and a half to get to Tangier Island, which is incredibly low-lying [Ed: the highest point of land is just over 4ft above sea-level!] and marshy as the pictures above suggest.  Since 1850, the island's landmass has been reduced by about two-thirds.  Over the next 50 years, even if the sea-level only rises in the mid-range of that predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change,much of the remainder of the island is expected to be lost and the town will likely need to be abandoned.  However, in some circles this is being portrayed as ‘erosion’ so a vast sum of money has been spent building large stone seawall along the western shore of the island, with similar work soon to be started on the eastern side.  Sadly the part of the island now submerged includes the old fort that was used in the war of 1812 by the British to train slaves they had freed to fight in the British Colonial Marines.  It was also the staging post for the attack on Washington DC in which the President’s House was burned requiring it to be painted, and hence it is now called the White House.

Views of the main settlement on the island.  Note the garden fences, an oddity in Virginia and commented on by our tour guide.  The reason why people have fences around their land is, apparently, to properly define where one person’s garden/land ends and another’s begins.  Really? We’d never have guessed!

It was very odd to land on an island in company with 150 other people; we more normally arrive just the 2 of us, though sometimes in company with another dinghy or yacht.  Following the herd off the ferry, we looked around and wondered where to head next and how to see most of what the island had to offer in the short (2½hr) stop that we had available.  Almost immediately Anne found us with the news that she had bagged a golf-cart tour for the 6 of us, so we set off around the main part of the island in the care of Margaret, one of the several female tour guides, rattling through her ‘this is Tangier Island’ spiel with an odd non-inflective intonation.  We stopped a little short of the Volunteer Fire Service’s station whilst the emergency vehicle manned-up and headed out at some speed (for the island, about 10mph).  Only a couple of minutes into the tour we already had lots of questions about life on the island, some of which Margaret said she would answer as the tour progressed, some of which she answered then and there.  With the emergency vehicle clear and the and the tour recommencing, Margaret’s strange ‘this is the spiel’ intonation returned….

Tangier Island views.  Not many hills and it’s all about 4ft above sea level. Despite the marshy outlook, the island is ‘dry’ – no alcohol may be served in any of the restaurants.  Note the Christian cross on one side of the water tower.  The other side sports a Blue Crab (soft-shelled crab) for which the island is renown

Margaret pointed out the route down to the 1½ mile long beach that runs from the southern end of the west coast, along to the southern coast of the island.  Nicky and I returned there after the tour and ate our picnic lunch at the top of the beach, backed by dunes (and more marsh) marvelling at the bleakness of the place, with the grey waters of the Chesapeake lapping on the yellow sands but with nothing in sight out across the waters bar the occasional ship or yacht.

Picket fences were the norm until, in the mid 20^thcentury, the vicar put up a ‘modern’ chain link fence around the vicarage.  Most of the other islanders followed suit over time but more recently the ugly tide of wire fencing has been gradually pushed back by more attractive wooden railings again

The golf-buggy tour continued in a big circle around the main town.  Margaret pointed out various large lapboard houses, most of which are hotels or guesthouses.  She also mentioned the school and a full-time policeman (yes, really!).  The island has a standing population of about 700 people and, even so, has a school catering for all grades from pre-school through to 12^thgrade with, apparently, 13 teachers employed there. Quite amazing!  We had fully expected to hear that the older children had to attend schools on the mainland.  Nicky’s curiosity was piqued by the ramps outside many of the island’s homes. All became clear eventually – they are parking spaces for the home owner’s golf buggy, keeping it clear of the groundwater which rises up through so many of the gardens.

Tangier Island crabbing shacks – sea water is piped up from the bay and through the shallow tanks inside the shacks to keep the crabs in a suitable environment

The economy of Tangier Island is based on the soft-shell crab and, more recently, oyster-farming industries with tourism providing the other primary income-earner.  Indeed, Tangier Island is frequently referred to as the ‘soft-shell crab capital of the world’.  As we understand it, the fishermen catch Blue Crabs using pots set around the Chesapeake Bay in the usual way.  The crabs are brought to the island and kept in tanks (see picture above) where they are closely monitored.  When they are close to moulting their shells, they are moved to other enclosures where they are inspected every 3 hours and, as soon as they have shed their shells, they are packaged on ice and sent off to restaurants around the world where they are deep fried and served whole as a delicacy.

All in all we found Tangier Island a slightly odd place.  The community there is relatively inaccessible but is not remote from the outside world: there is cable TV, internet access etc etc.  The local accent is also unusual because it is the closest to the Elizabethan English used when the land was originally settled that is still spoken.  Perhaps understandably, the islanders are clinging on to their way of life whilst campaigning to draw attention to their plight in the face of rising sea-levels‘erosion’.  But across the town the only political posters in sight were all pro-Trump, both for the last Presidential election and the one in 2020.  Perhaps that’s just because in 2017 he called the town’s mayor to assure him that the town will survive – but then as an environmental protection and climate change nay-sayer the King Canute of the White House probably believes that is true, for the time being.  And, it’s likely the rest of his politics/rhetoric ring very true for the majority of the human residents of Tangier Island.  What the huge avian population, nesting on the wetlands, would have to say is, perhaps, another thing entirely.

Left:  Dragon Runon the wharf at Reedville (note the Reedville water tower with the image of the menhaden fish). Right (top and bottom):  images of Reedville

We returned to Reedville (with a bag of crab cakes) really after too short a time on the island to get to grips with it properly but, in other ways, more than enough time spent there.  One of the other couples on the rally later told us ‘the best way to see the island is by taking your own boat there’ and we agreed that that is so often the case.  Arriving as part of a hoard of visitors on a ferry often fails to bring out the best in a place.  But with a 2m draft BV is right on the very limit of being able to get onto some of the outer quays at Tangier Island.  Perhaps, however, when we return to the Chesapeake Bay in the autumn we might attempt a visit on BV and see how the island grabs us when it’s not ‘on show’ for the ferry passengers.  For the meantime, we had the first of several social gatherings to look forward to, the first one was drinks on the wharf alongside Dragon Run.

Tangier Island, MD, USA