Becoming something of a scarcity many of these boats have gone out of service, but they are an important part of history.
The Chesapeake Deadrise Workboat is the official boat of the state of Virginia. They are beautiful old boats built for utility in fishing for oysters and similar seafood products in shallow waters. The full story of the deadrise goes back to when the Indians waded or took small canoes to the oyster beds where they could often get out and walk in the shallow water harvesting a bounty of oysters with their bare hands.
When Englishmen came to Virginia they also valued the oyster as food. They copied the Indians, and built long wooden canoes for the shallow waters where oysters could be found. They also introduced the use of oyster tongs which allowed them to stand in their canoes and pull up oysters with a device resembling two garden rakes with a scissor like hinge at the middle of their handles. The use of tongs saved wading, and made some beds more accessible than previously, but was very hard work.
As Virginia became more and more settled good wood for long canoes became scarce and expensive. Eventually it was too expensive for the workboats of the fishermen. Looking around for a solution they discovered a boat building technique invented by the French known as deadrise construction. Short pieces of wood turned vertically to the waterline made a nice V-hull that was appropriate for the shallow waters in which the oyster fishers needed to work. The wood was cheap enough, and many of these boats were built, both by professional boat builders and by the fishermen themselves.
Another innovation was a round stern or transom built from short wooden blocks. This round stern became a distinctive feature of the classic Chesapeake Deadrise. As time progressed, oysters became somewhat more scarce, and the beds suffered severely towards the end of the 20th Century from chemical contamination by tributin and other previously popular antifouling paint recipes. The EPA passed a law against tributin and made copper oxide the primary antifouling paint ingredient by default. This is actually a much older formula, and somewhat less effective for keeping boat hulls free of barnacles, but it is much safer to most marine life although recent studies are saying it may be bad for salmon populations . Irregardless, the decline in oyster populations led to a decline in the number of workboats on the water. This distinctive craft which once populated the waters of the Chesapeake Bay in large numbers has become a scarce sight, and so the fact that it transported fishermen to and from their work for almost a century, and its remembrance as Virginia’s State boat makes it a suitable topic for the Transportation Historian.
