Evening Star Newspaper, November 17, 1929, Page 95

Fiction 1’:\RT <l'\'] '\' Hrmzstzce e Oyster | he Suntay Starf Magasine \V\\IHN x'l()‘\ ]). s SUND: \Y I\()\LMBPR 17 ]"") Features 24 Y \(}l;'. ar In the Chesapeake Bay Country, the Oyster’s Home, Sweet Home, Arbitration Has Replaced the Romantic—But in Bloody Warfare of Yesteryear, When Murder and Mutiny Reigned, Many Lives Were Lost Resisting Regulation of This Peculiar Industry. EACEFUL, seemingly, as the clam, the oyster of the Virginia and Mary- land waters now enters a new phase of that war to which for a genera- tion it has given its name—a war fought with rifles. with machine guns, with cannon. This new campalgn proceeds under the generalship of such brilliant and public- spirited young men as Dr. Reginald V. Truitt of the University of Maryland, with ammuni- tion of ballots, political combinations, legisla- tive action. Now, as the oyster season officially opens and you reach your fork down for the numer- ously and platitudinously denominated “succu=- lent bivalve,” reach for him lovingly, for who knows how soon he may be disappearing utterly from your table? And who but those who have sailed these waters of the Chesapeake, th: Potomac, the York know the infinite romance of place and personality which sur- rounds his capture? Still hangs the crimson and gold upon the late-leafed trees under the soft winds of these Southern shores when in the dark before the early dawn the first dredgeboats put out from Monroe Bay, from Solomons, from Old Point Comfort and the many other harbors of this land of half salt water which the oysters love. By their swift going you may know it is No- vember, for what thess men call “drudgin’” cannot begin before. For two weeks the tongers have been at work thrusting down their iron rakes with wooden handles 20 to 40 feet long, and they will go on tonging, these little boats, with their crews of two or three men. But it is the “drudgers” who have made and make the romance, the adventure, the characters who have made and threaten to kill this industry, which involves a value of nearly $14,000,000 and gives employment to nearly 40,000 men and women in Maryland and Virginia alone. By Anne Hard. O waters in the world are more suitable to the curiosities of the oyster’s home life than these. Biologists have proved that cysters breed best in a fluctuating temperature which carries them back and forth across an “optimum” of 72 degrees. They find this temperature range in these waters, and they require for their curious lives water only partly salt, as waters are here, Sailing vessels all rush out to get them— sloops, skip-jacks, schocners, bugeyes, fishing smacks. Pungies, painted a curious pink, used to be there, but are no more. Here is the great- est sailing and the hardest life known to our coastal waters, save that of the Gloucester men on the fishing banks. Put out with me from ‘Winkiedoodle Point and Monroe Bay to Kettle Bottom Shoals. The wind is right and there is no fog. Scarcely a faint gold light beyond the Mary- land shore tells where the sun will climb. Capn Harry in the bugeye James O. Wright is routing the men from their bunks and the strong smell of coffee from the iron cook stove—‘“drudger’s coffee” from a pot historically never washed-— the smell of “drudger’s coffee” and salt bacon and beans—a gorgeous breakfast—cuts across the tang of the salty water and the frost-tinged trees as we tack out into the widening waters and race for the “oyster lumps.” Oyster lumps in Kettle Bottom Shoals—masses the size of a city bleck in shallower waters, rising from the “oyster rock,” irregularly in deep water. By dawn we are there, and other ships are with us—ships so many, so crowding, that maneuvering for position becomes the high art of sailing, ships missing each other by hair’s breadths—but missing, turning by inches, lying on®their sides under soaring canvas while the sing of the halyards, the swap cf the canvas, the put-put of the men’s feet on decks awash with water, the call of the cap'n’s voice, the whirr of the winding tackle and the wash of the spitting seas orchestrate the age-old music of the men who “follow the water.” The James O. Wright is a beauty, decked ou* in fresh paint, Cap'n Harry says, “like a lady for a party.” She is 60 feet long. She carries a little gas-powered yawl hoisted to the davits. Her spar colors show tan and white on bowsprit, fore-boom and main boom made of native pine, her logs are white and her rail is tan. She is a “log boat,” with no false bottom, bolted together with iron rods and calked with oakum. Now, her decks are sheathed with planking to receive the oyster catch, and two “drudges” are run over her graceful sides as she tilts like a race hcrse rounding a curve. The captain stands aft at the wheel, his blue sea eyes watching canvas, dredges, winders, men, take, weather. Slightly turned toward his right he stands, with his right hand behind him on the wheel. “Let her go,” he says. He doesn't shout it. He just says it quietly, but the men hear. Instantly the great ‘‘drudge” goes over one side—a curious, basket-like thing whose bot- tom is made of iron bars ending in points, from which hand-knotted lines of heavy cord rise up like a sailor’s hammock to tie into the hoisting ropes. These iron rods scrape the oyster-rock as the ship sails by, the netting bellies out to re- ceive the take, the cap'n seizes the exact mo- ment to throw in the clutch on the gas-powered winch, sailing the ship and running the dredges himself, the windlass whirrs as it winds the rope up to the deck, the men empiy the dredge onto the sheathing—mud, pebbles, stones, oyster shells—anything the river holds gushes and oozes as the ship runs on and the “cullers™ quickly, with their little cull hammers, separate the masses of oysters, throw back those undde the legal size and shovel back the mud and sand while the sailors rush to end jib at the Cap'n’s order. ARD a lece,” and the James O. Wright goes about “to make another lick.” We fill the dredge about every hundred and fifty yards and here, off Swains Point, we can make about five “licks” without going about. With sleuth-like quiet a police boat runs by. You know her by her black water line, just as you know the “buy boats” by their single mast and afterhouse and the little flag ‘in the rige ging. These police boats, State-owned by Mary- land and Virginia, are watching for law viola- tions, especially of two kinds; keeping oysters under the legal size and using steam or gas for power, At 11 o'clock there is more food—bread and meat and modern things from cans. And the day is over by 3 in the afternoon. A single day is often enough to exhaust the oysters on a rich lump. But there are many days when the ships must lie in harbor. The weather must be right for ticklish work like this—but especially the wind must ba right. The little yawl-boat with its gas engine can kick the bugeye out of the oyster rock at three or five miles an hour, but when she is there she will need a strong wind to furnish power to pull the heavy weight of the dredges. And if the wind is too high, the ship’s rising and falling, the men's “tarpalyuns” and rubber boots mailed with frozen spray, the deck a sheet of ice, no man can keep his footing. Gentle though the wind is on shore thess first November days in this Southern oyster