Skipjack Articles

Keep up to date with author Christopher White at ChristopherWhiteBooks.com

Op-Ed From the Baltimore Sun, February 7, 2010:

Oysters vs. oystermen?: Maryland should try harder to preserve both a healthy bay and a way of life

by Christopher White

A watershed moment in Maryland history unfolded last month when Chesapeake Bay watermen marched on Annapolis to protest Gov. Martin O'Malley's Oyster Restoration and Aquaculture Development Plan. At stake was whether the bay's shellfish beds will continue to be in the public domain - a public fishery - or whether they will be reassigned, in whole or in part, as private leases available for aquaculture.

Unfortunately, this issue is typically...

A guest post by author Christopher White

Last treasure of the Chesapeake

By Ken Ringle, Sunday, December 13, 2009, The Washington Post

"For those of us who love the Chesapeake -- and others merely curious -- the ultimate Bay sourcebook remains the late William W. Warner's wonderfully readable "Beautiful Swimmers," which chronicles the biology of the blue crab and the culture of the watermen who pursue them. Surprisingly, little has been written about the Bay's other edible treasure -- the Chesapeake oyster -- or about the sail-powered wooden workboats that harvested them for more than a century.

The skipjacks are all but vanished today. Last winter only a single one hoisted its sails, and its captain was 88 years old. But 10 years ago as the 20th century drew to a close, author Christopher White moved to Tilghman Island for two years to document the twilight of oystering under sail...

Chris White's "Skipjack: Tracking the Last Sailing Oystermen" a book that explores the last days of the Chesapeake Bay's oyster industry and the men who ply the waters in a boat known as a "skipjack" to Michael Flamini in a nice deal for World by Lauren MacLeod at The Strothman Agency.