This is the bell from the St. Mary’s College Memorial Carillon

He’s watching you.

Our friend today comes from just outside the St. Clement’s Island Museum in St. Mary’s.

While the name Dory can be used for a lot of different boats, this boat from the St. Clements Island Museum is a member of the specific type of boat known as the potomac dory.  Most dory boats are made of long wide planks of wood with a relatively flat bottom.  The potomac Dory was unique partially because it’s planks ran from bow to stern rather than across the beam.  This boat, named the Doris C, was refurbished with the help of prison labor and it can be viewed by anyone who wishes to make the trip to Colton’s point.

For more information, you can view the historic marker about the boat. Or see the planking of the boat in the pictures below.

More about this boat to come.

Taken at the same cemetery as yesterday’s shot, I thought that this monument stood out and interested me, though I can’t say why.   This is also a teaser shot as tomorrow we’ll discuss the significance of the building behind the monument.

We’re going to take a break from the cherry blossoms to go back to St Mary’s College.  This building, as is a trend on campus, is named after a former governor.  The buildings architecture seems to be purposefully made to resemble the older buildings of the area.

Today’s “Frieze Frame” comes from the fine arts ceter in St Mary’s College.  St Mary’s College is located in and throughout wat was formerly the first city and the capitol of Maryland.  

On March 25, 1634 the first colonists in Maryland, led by Leonard Calvert, brother of the second lord Baltimore and Governor of Maryland, arrived in the Potomac river and disembarked on this island.  To mark this occasion, this day, the 25th of March,  is an official state holiday, Maryland Day.

Though the  colonists would end up spending most of the next few days living aboard their ships, when they arrived on the 25th they moved onto this island to celebrate a religious ceremony, the feast of the annunciation.   As the sign pictured reads, this was a Catholic ceremony and this event is  today commemorated by the large cross on the island. (placed there in the 20th century)

The colonists arrived aboard two ships, one large one called, The Ark of London, and a smaller ship called the Dove.  The trip was full of misfortunes, which I’ll let you read about here. The island was named St. Clements island,in honor of St Clement, who watches over mariners, and whose feast day was the same day that the Ark and the Dove left England.

There is no official count of how many colonists were aboard the two boats, but experts put it between 95 and 150.   This group would eventually move just a few miles south of the island and found St. Mary’s City, which would serve as the capitol of Maryland.

St. Clement’s is literally an island.   In the winter months there is no ferry service, and it actually starts this weekend as part of a celebration of Maryland day.   In the mean time, I have only these pictures from the shoreline.

This schoolhouse from the early 18th century stands on the banks of the Potomac in St. Mary’s county.  It was moved to its current location in the early 90′s and restored for visitors.  It is very close to a point of significance in Maryland history.  That point, which has nothing to do with the schoolhouse other than a shared geographic location, is the reason why we are dedicating this week’s posts to southern Maryland and it will be revealed tomorrow.

In every county of Maryland citizens display the state flag.  In St Mary’s county, the county flag is almost more of a common site than the state flag.   The flag displays the county seal in the center with the date of its incorporation, 1637, which is three years after the first colonists in Maryland arrived in what would become St. Mary’s county.  The colonists who arrived in the state were certainly religiously minded.  The Lords Baltimore were Catholic and sought to make Maryland a place of religious toleration. (at least for all christian sects)  The county’s name is given to Mary, mother of Jesus, not the same Mary for whom the state is named.

This week’s posts are going to come from Southern Maryland.  This is for a good reason, which will be revealed later this week.  However, to help soften the defeat of Maryland and of Morgan State in the NCAA tournament over the last few days, I figured we could all use a bit of a light hearted post today.  I’ve seen people in this state try to pull crabs out of some unlikely spots.  I’ve also seen people try to pull crabs out of spots where I would be reluctant to call the water clean.  This sign, located on a pier in the Potomac, entertained me greatly as half of the pier is used for a ferry and that wasn’t enough to stop people from crabbing there until the sign was up.

Don’t forget that if you have nothing to do this weekend, the Oyster festival will be taking place in St. Mary’s County at the fairgrounds.  

You can get your fill of fried oysters, raw oysters, scalded oysters, oyster soup, and even these grilled oysters.   Yes, if you are wondering I did get quite a few of each kind of oyster and they were all fantastic.  

You all are probably pretty tired of hearing about Oysters, so this will be the last one for a while.   I’ve been posting a lot about the festival but haven’t shown a single oyster. I also haven’t said much about them.  So this post will be about the shellfish itself.  

Oysters were once the most plentiful thing in the Bay.   In fact, before Maryland was known for crabs, it was known for oysters.   Why shouldn’t it be.  When MD was settled you couldn’t go 10 feet into the bay without finding an oyster bed.  Not only have they been plentiful,  but they are delicious and easy to eat.  MD oysters are a good, middle of the road oyster.  Not too sweet or buttery like the upper west coast oysters and not too salty like the upper east coast oysters, our oysters are a great middle ground.  Our oyster beds also used to also be huge, growing oysters up to 10 inches.  

Like the crabs, Oysters are quickly disappearing from the bay.  Unlike Crabs, they are disappearing at a much faster rate.   Here’s a quick link to help understand the problem.  If you go to the section titled Oyster Landings, you can see that the harvest which used to be in the order of Millions of bushells is now down to less than 45,000. 

For further reading: here’s a recent study from the DNR webpage.  Read the whole thing if you are interested in the statistical methods behind oyster population estimates, but if you aren’t that interested, you can just go to page 13, which shows the oyster populations between the mid 90′s which was estimated in the 700,000 range and in the mid ’00′s when the population was estimated in the 350K range.   

So what happened?  Well a few things happened.  Most recently, the lower areas of the bay have been afflicted with Oyster killing parasites.   There is also a clear problem with over-harvesting.  

Not that this is the full cause of over-harvesting, but here’s an anecdote I picked up this weekend.  The government began to allow people to lease space at the bottom of the bay to grow oysters for themselves at the beginning of the 20th century.  Apparently this worked well for some, but for others, instead of using this as a space to grow oysters, which consumes energy and time, they would use their leased space to hold oysters they took from public beds until they were ready to sell them.   I like this story just because its an example of a government policy that was sort of intended to protect harvest areas and to promote oyster growth, but which was used for just the opposite purpose.

So, when I’ve told these things to people over the last few days I’ve gotten some interesting responses.  Everything from “what can you do” to “did you sign a petition.”  The strange thing is that there are few petitions to sign and it seemed like the most common way to help the bay was to spread the word.  So that’s what I’m doing here.  

 …

For those who would like to help more:  there are plenty of ways.  There’s an active discourse on the desirability of introducing foreign oysters to the bay.  If you care and if you can help, let a legislator (state or federal) know about it.   There are also studies being done regarding the parasite populations and the regrowth of plant life in the bay.   These studies and the organizations doing them can always use extra funding and maybe extra help.  You can even volunteer to help ”garden” new oysters.  The easiest things for any of us to do are not pollute the bay (remember that means the inner harbor too) and buy a bay plate if you are an MD citizen who is about to get a new car/truck/or van.  

Of course every oyster festival needs a leader.  This one has King Oyster, seen here talking with one of his citizens.  The orb at the top of his scepter seems to be made of a combination of many different shells. That’s ok, I’m not going to judge the king.

These men are not under arrest.  They are competitors in the National Oyster Shucking Competition held this past Saturday as part of the St. Mary’s Oyster Festival.  Before you compete in shucking 24 oysters as fast as you can, after inspecting your oysters, and after prepping your area, you must raise your hands to signal that you’re ready to shuck.