Possibly a man is dead, perhaps a boat is taken, but the oyster war will go on the next night and the next.”įor residents of Colonial Beach, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, cat-and-mouse chases between the oyster-patrol boats and invading dredgers became a spectator sport. “The night is quiet until suddenly shots snap through the air. “Only 50 miles from Washington men are shooting at one another,” reported The Washington Post in 1947 during the post-war oyster boom.
![oyster dredge oyster dredge](https://d3d00swyhr67nd.cloudfront.net/w1200h1200/collection/MER/WGM/MER_WGM_674-001.jpg)
Their mission: to restore peace following a night of violence when tongers from Gloucester – allegedly harvesting illegally – fired seven shots at a state patrol boat. “NORFOLK TROOPS ORDERED OUT IN OYSTER WAR” blazed the front page of The Virginian-Pilot in January 1928, when three National Guard units were dispatched to Mobjack Bay – complete with tents and a field kitchen, and armed with rifles and automatic weapons. This Wild West, maritime mayhem continued well into the 20th century. When the captain spotted a Maryland dredge, he rammed the schooner at midships, and then he rammed it again, sinking the vessel. In 1889, an Onancock oyster dealer hired a tugboat to rout poachers from his leased grounds. Wennersten in his book, The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay. “Plainly put, Maryland and Virginia watermen despised one another,” wrote John R. But by 1870, as oyster stocks dwindled because of massive demand, dredgers from both states began poaching the shallows, often crossing the state line. Dredging, which can be destructive to oyster colonies, was restricted to deeper parts of the bay at first. Later came dredgers, dragging metal baskets behind vastly larger vessels and raising their bounty with mighty winches. They plied inlets and creeks aboard shallow-draft skiffs, prying oysters by hand with scissor-like rakes. As the industry exploded, so did the ire. Laws governing who can harvest oysters, where and how, predate the U.S. In Norfolk alone, workers packed more than 1.3 million bushels, according to an account in The Norfolk Virginian newspaper in 1879. By the 1800s, millions of bushels were being shipped as far as California, Paris and China. The catalyst was something ostreaphiles know well: the rich, sensuous flavor of a Chesapeake Bay bivalve. On and around the Chesapeake Bay, real “oyster wars” raged for a century, complete with cannons, machine-gun fire and Maryland and Virginia “oyster navies” attempting to keep the peace.
![oyster dredge oyster dredge](http://intheboatshed.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/softwing.jpg)
Raw or roasted? Seaside or bayside? Who slurps the last one? By Lorraine Eaton Illustration by Trisha IrvingĪt the apex of oyster season there’s much to dispute.