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HAER Documentation of Edna E. Lockwood

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, St. Michaels, Maryland


The Edna E. Lockwood is the last working oyster boat of its kind. The vessel is now part of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994.

In 1889, at the age of 24, John B. Harrison of Tilghman Island, Maryland, built the Edna E. Lockwood, the seventh of eighteen bugeyes he was to build. Harrison also built the log canoes Flying Cloud and Jay Dee. Similar to how dugout canoes are formed by carving out of one log, the bugeye's hull is constructed of a series of pinned logs shaped and hollowed out as a unit.

Built for Daniel W. Haddaway of Tilghman Island, the Edna E. Lockwood dredged the Chesapeake Bay for oysters through winter, and carried freight—such as lumber, grain, and produce—after the dredging season ended. The vessel worked faithfully for many owners, mainly out of Cambridge, Maryland, until the end of its "drudging" career in 1967. In 1973, John R. Kimberly donated Edna to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

The Historic American Engineering Record and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum documented the Edna E. Lockwood prior to a restoration project. The nine logs making up the historic bugeye's hull were in need of replacement. In 2015, HAER staff members collected LIDAR and photogrammetric data to document the different parts of the hull and how they come together as a greater whole. They used that data to produce measured drawings for inclusion in the HABS/HAER/HALS Collection at the Library of Congress. They also created a 3-D model to aid shipwrights and apprentices in the Edna E. Lockwood's restoration. The Edna E. Lockwood was re-launched in October 2018.

Field team members Paul Davidson, Daniel De Sousa, Dana Lockett, Jeremy Mauro, Ryan Pierce, and John Wachtel undertook the LIDAR and photogrammetry surveys. Jeremy Mauro and John Wachtel created the computer models and the animation below. Todd Croteau, HAER Maritime Program Coordinator, was the project leader.