Waterman's Child
by Barbara Mitchell
Looking back at the field trip ideas in my LGHI Booklist for Southern Maryland, I chose St. Clement's Island Museum in Coltons Point MD for "Waterman."
Note: Later this summer we will also visit the Calvert Marine Museum and J.C. Lore Oyster House as well as Annmarie Sculpture Garden when we are down in Solomons MD. I remember when the Tonger was the first sculpture installed at Annmarie Garden, and it remains one of my favorite pieces!
Several pieces at Annmarie, actually, are about the life of a waterman:
“A Surveyor’s Map”
Just as they intended, the quotes carved in “A Surveyor’s Map” are wearing away over time as people walk on the boards... I know it's part of the art concept, but it still makes me sad to see. I remember when the art was new.
Anyway, to keep things fresh for me as well as for Zac, on Saturday we went to a museum we had never been to before: St. Clement's Island Museum.
As it turns out, this museum is much more about the founding of Maryland (St. Clement's Island was first landing, St. Mary's City was first capital).
We did take the water taxi out to the island itself, which I recommend. It's significantly smaller now (from approx. 400 acres when Leonard Calvert arrived down to 13 acres today). The $7.00 per person fee for the water taxi also includes admission to the museum before or after you see the island.
Happily, Zac was reading Leonard Calvert and the Maryland Adventure by Ann Jensen while we were in the car, so he was all caught up on the history of the place, and recognized a lot of the quotes on the island's signage.
The person at the Admissions Desk freely admitted that a better museum for what I had in mind was Piney Point Lighthouse Museum & Historic Park, so we will have to go there in the future. Although this museum was billed as having an exhibit on watermen, it was only one display case.
Pros: The island is small and would be a very sweet place to bring a picnic. It takes only a few minutes to walk from one end to the other. Zac absolutely loved going inside the lighthouse! The water taxi ride is short and quite pleasant. And even though we didn't learn much about oysters, the water was full of crab pots, and the island was filled with people fishing on the shores and crabbing on the boardwalk. When we stepped off the boat, the first thing Zac saw was someone bringing up a crab net with a lively Maryland blue crab in it! So, in a way, we actually did learn about watermen!
Cons: We didn't learn much from the museum.
Note that when you are on your way to St. Clement's Island Museum you will pass a tiny building with a hand-drawn "United States Post Office" sign. Next you will pass a sign that says "End State Maintenance." It'll be a strictly residential area, and you'll think you're about to drive straight off the end of the road into the water. Don't worry. You are in the right place!
UPDATE: While doing research for our Annapolis Tea Party field trip, I found the Annapolis Maritime Museum (723 2nd St, Annapolis MD). It has three signs with quite a bit about oysters that will be really helpful for Zac's MLB:
UPDATE: Well, I don't know about Piney Point, because we never visited it, but I think that the Annapolis Maritime Museum is PERFECT for learning about watermen and oysters. The museum is quite small and only consists of one room, but that's because it's housed in a former oyster packing plant.
The exhibits are very well done. I especially loved that they made a bar graph, to represent how many oysters were harvested from the bay over time, with oyster shells. What a clever idea! The museum was filled with artifacts. I would hands-down go to this museum again if I were studying the Chesapeake Bay and local industry. And it is part of Museums for All!
When we left the museum we stopped at Wild Country Seafood and had some fried oysters. Delicious!
Note that driving and parking in Annapolis can be quite tricky. To visit the Maritime Museum, you do have to know the exact width of your vehicle because you will be navigating a tight squeeze between two rows of parked cars (and watching out for oncoming vehicles as well). Welcome to Eastport! We parked at Horn Point Harbor at 105 Eastern Avenue, and walked through the space in the fence. For the Hammond-Harwood House, we parked out on King George Street alongside St. John's College (free 9 hour parking).
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