BUYBOAT HISTORY

The classic Chesapeake Bay buyboat or deck boat as called by some grew out of the invention of the internal combustion engine. The engine took the place of sail and wind around the turn of the 20th century and the deck boat became the tractor and trailer of the Chesapeake region. The boats were used to haul passengers, freight, grain, fertilizer, oysters and shells. The boats hauled just about everything that trucks haul today and for a while in the 1920s and 1930s the boats were as common throughout the creeks and rivers of the bay as trucks are now on our highways.

As engines became more efficient, the use of the boats spread throughout the seafood industry. Chesapeake Bay deck boats were used in the finfish fishery for dredging and patent-dip trotlining; and in the oyster business for dredging. The boats were also used to buy seafood throughout the entire bay region.

As trucks and refrigerated vehicles took over the freight and overland seafood hauling business and the bay’s fisheries became more and more depressed, there was less need for large commercial boats to work the waters of the bay. The last bay deck boat was built around 1970.

J. H. Miles and Company of Norfolk, Virginia stated in business in the late 1800s. At its peak the firm had over eight thousand acres of oyster grounds leased from Ocean View to Mobjack Bay and was one of the largest oyster packers in the bay region. Miles’ location on the bay played a major role in the companies success over the years. Its Norfolk location was extremely good in that Virginia’s main seafood markets were in the Hampton and Norfolk areas. Also, the introduction of the railroad had given the are an advantage for delivering perishable seafood to inland communities. Miles and other companies in the Norfolk and Hampton areas grew and profited from this. Also, the company was located near the mouth of the James River. The James River is the Mother of the Chesapeake Bay oyster fisher and most of the seed throughout the bay region comes for that area. See could be harvested and loaded aboard Miles’ many boats and hauled and planted on the firm’s oyster beds.

BUYBOAT
The Mobjack was used by Miles to buy seed and market oysters from hand tongers who worked from smaller deadrise workboats. The term buyboat came from the use of the boats to purchase oysters, crabs and fish from bay watermen and then to haul the seafood back to processing houses throughout the bay region. The Mobjack was also used to purchase seed oysters from James River had tongers and was used to plant the seed on oyster beds on the York River and Mobjack Bay. So many of the boats were used as buyboats that it became a generic name for all of the boats, even though some were not used to purchase seafood.

DECK BOAT
The Mobjack is a deck boat. Virginia watermen called the boats deck boats because early pound net boats with the same hull style were open boats, like a skiff, and the house sat on the floorboards. When decks are laid across the boat from the washboards over and the house is raised up to set on the deck this led waterman to call the boats deck boats.

MAST BOATS
Some called boats like the Mobjack a mast boat. This began when watermen started using smaller deadrise workboats to dredge for crabs. Those in the smaller boats called the deck boats, mast boats because of the single mast.

DREDGE BOATS
The Mobjack is a classic oyster dredge boat. She is low sided to allow the dredge full of oysters to be easily hauled up on deck and she is nearly flat-bottomed which allows her to be worked on inshore oyster beds. The oyster dredge was brought to the Chesapeake Bay region in the early 1800s by Yankee oystermen who had depleted the grounds in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. Once here, bay watermen began to use the very efficient gear to harvest oysters. Virginia’s legislature in the 1890s played a major role in the evolution of motor-powered dredge boats by allowing them to be used on private oyster grounds. The legislator hired Lt. James Bowen Baylor of the United State Coast an Geodetic Survey to survey 143,000 acres of public oyster grounds and 110,000 acres of private grounds. This established a very large private industry that could use boats like the Mobjack to work a dredge. The Mobjack is large enough that it could have hauled four dredges at one time–two on each side. To this day, the state of Maryland does not allow an oyster dredge to be hauled with anything but a sail powered vessel.

PLANTER
The Mobjack was used to plant seed oysters up until 2001. The low sides are beneficial in planting because when men broadcast seed with shovels over a bed the lower sides put them closer to the water. The defining style that speaks to the fact the boat was built to plant seed is its relatively shallow draft. The nearly flat bottom of the Mobjack was built into the boat so it could go into fairly shallow oyster beds for planting and harvesting. When planting seed the boat should not touch the bottom because if it does it stirs the mud and silt up and covers seed, this causes the seed to die.

ABOUT THE BUILDER
The builder Lin Price started building boats in the Deltaville area around the turn of the 20th century and over time became one of the most productive wooden deck boatbuilders in the bay region. Price specialized in building staved-bottom, cross-planked deadrise workboats. At a point in the 1920s, Price’s yard had a 30-man crew and could build three 65-foot wooden buyboats a year. Price was known throughout the bay region for building the boat with the “prettiest house”. When the Mobjack was being built, Lin had his son Milford working alongside him and many considered the father/son team the best builders of bay buyboats.