Exploring Tangier Island

One hundred years ago, when Harper’s Magazine writer J.W. Church wanted to visit Tangier Island, he presented a letter asking for transport to a Crisfield oysterman.

The oysterman agreed to have one of his captains ferry the writer and his photographer to Capt. Peter Crockett’s island store, but counseled caution. Tangiermen, the Crisfielder said, “sure are a strange lot.”

The island instantly enchanted the journalists. It reminded them of Holland, with well-kept cottages lining narrow streets and a vast harbor. They loved the captain’s store and trying to decipher the Tangiermen’s accent, which is reminiscent of Cornish English mixed with a Southern twang. They enjoyed talking with the children, who came of age in a one-room schoolhouse. They marveled at an island with so little high ground that most families buried their dead in their front yards, next to children’s toys and gardens.

Visitors will have an easier time arriving today, but will find Tangier Island just as charming. It is a beautiful place, and all the more so when you realize how fragile and threatened it is. Just 12 miles from Crisfield, MD, and 14 from Reedville, VA, Tangier has lost land and people since Church’s visit. This island once included eight villages and 1,200 residents; three villages and 450 people remain, and they are all on the main island. Today, Tangier Island is one mile wide and three miles long. Marsh intersperses the few open fields, and yards take on water at high tide.

When Church wrote his article, Tangier island licensed 91 oyster tongers, 62 dredgers, 3 patent tongers, 75 crab netters and 40 crab scrapers. In 2007, 35 boats remained in the crab fleet, and 20 in the oyster fleet.

Young men often leave the island for work on the mainland. Some captain tugboats and must leave their families for weeks. Between the tightening restrictions on commercial crabbing and the rising costs of fuel, bait and equipment, it’s getting harder to make a living on the water.

Tourism isn’t going to supplant crabbing soon, but Tangier likes its visitors and knows it needs them. Islanders wave hello, offer helpful suggestions and keep the ice cream shops open late.

American Indians lived on Tangier Island for centuries before John Smith discovered the cluster of islands in 1608 and named them Russell Isles, after the doctor on board his shallop. In 1707, a man named Post traded two overcoats to a local Indian chief for the islands. To settle them, Post brought three families and livestock from England. The livestock are long gone, but the descendants of those families remain. On Tangier Island, it’s hard to find someone not named Crockett, Pruitt or Parks. There are plenty of Eskridges, too, though they came a bit later, as well as Dises/Dizes, Marshalls and Charnocks.

The island had a major moment in the War of 1812. The British had a base here with a camp for 12,000 troops. Tangierman Joshua Thomas, a Methodist minister who was known as the “parson of the islands,” took the British to task as they headed for Baltimore. Thomas said they would lose in Baltimore and make widows and orphans of their wives and children. His prophecy came true, and the survivors passed back through Tangier to tell him so.

In 1821, a hurricane destroyed the fort where the British had encamped during the war. Subsequent storms have destroyed other parts of Tangier. A seawall built in 1989 has protected the island, and residents have been promised another one to gird the land from more onslaughts.

When J.W. Church departed 100 years ago, he pronounced the islanders a “quaint and sturdy clan…to whom life is serious, and the world beyond their island a vague speculation, and like all things vague and speculative, to be eyed with distrust. There is much dignity in their stern attitude toward life; much sweetness in the clean simplicity of their women and their homes, and the island is a treasure trove of rare delight to a lover of the quaint and quiet charms that Tangier may justly claim.”

Today, there is not much vague speculation about the outside world when the Wal-Mart is 90 minutes away. But there is no doubt about the dignity of the islanders’ hard work, the charms of their way of life or the sweet pleasure of a visit.

This is an abridged article originally published in the Bay Journal.