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Our Bay:
Cannon from Chesapeake 'oyster wars' on display in Annapolis
By Pamela Wood, Staff Writer Published in The Capital 12/17/11
A cannon once owned by the Maryland Oyster Police Force — which was bought by the Natural Resources Police a year ago — is on display at the Annapolis Maritime Museum. The cannon is the oldest relic of the oyster police and was used to attempt to keep the peace on the Chesapeake Bay during “oyster wars.” |
A relic of Chesapeake Bay history recently rolled off a trailer and into the Annapolis Maritime Museum.
It's a 12 pound Dahlgren light boat howitzer - a cannon that was used by Maryland's Oyster Police force during the famed "oyster wars" of the 1800s.
That's right - oysters were once so plentiful and valuable in the bay, that watermen and police regularly engaged in skirmishes. That's a far cry from today's bay, where the oyster population is depleted and hanging on for survival.
"It was pretty much wholesale slaughter on the bay," said Lt. Greg Bartles of the Natural Resources Police.
Bartles led an effort for the state to buy the cannon and share its story with Marylanders.
"This is a unique gun. One of a kind, really," Bartles said.
Long history
The cannon was built in 1868 after state lawmakers created the Maryland Oyster Police - sometimes called the oyster navy - to battle lawless poachers on the Chesapeake Bay.
For years, lawmakers had worked to protect the oyster population. Oyster dredgers from New England had made their way south to the Chesapeake after they depleted oyster beds in their home states, Bartles said.
There also were skirmishes between local watermen who used hand tongs in shallow waters and the dredgers who were supposed to stay in the deeper waters, Bartles said.
The oyster police were created to put a stop to all that.
"By far keeping the peace and keeping (dredgers) out of the shallow waters was the big thing," Bartles said.
Once the oyster police force was created, Confederate Civil War veteran and Naval Academy graduate Hunter Davidson was selected as the first commander.
He ordered the cannon, which was made at the Tredeger Iron Works in Richmond, a foundry that made more than 1,000 cannons for the Confederates during the Civil War.
"This cannon is really unique because it appears to be the very first cannon acquired by the oyster police," Bartles said.
The oyster police got more cannons later, but many wereborrowed from the Navy and their whereabouts have been lost to time.
At first, the cannon was installed on the deck of the steam-powered police ship Leila. Later, it may have been on the steamer Governor R.M. McLane, which engaged in a famous and successful battle against a dozen dredgers who hooked their boats together and blocked the Choptank River in 1888.
At the Annapolis Maritime Museum, posters alongside the cannon show period drawings of the McLane, with a cannon barely visible on the deck.
"It represents a fascinating part of the whole big story of oysters and their importance to the bay," said Jeff Holland, director of the museum.
Back in state hands
Over time, the oyster wars abated and the oyster police evolved into the modern-day Natural Resources Police.
Eventually, the oyster police cannon ended up as a lawn decoration at the Baltimore County home of Isaac Emerson, who invented Bromo-Seltzer.
A state worker rediscovered the cannon while plowing snow near the Emerson family home in 1938, according to news accounts. The cannon was in good shape, but the wheels and gun carriage were rotting away.
The state worker later turned it over to the American Legion when it opened a post in Reisterstown in the 1950s.
The cannon became a fixture at the Legion, but few knew of the gun's long history.
When cleaning out a closet about four years ago, a Legion officer found an old newspaper clipping about the cannon. He got in touch with the Natural Resources Police and eventually they struck a deal to sell the cannon, Bartles said.
Half of the $40,000 purchase price came from private donors, half came from state tax dollars - although Bartles said the cannon "is priceless in my mind for the Natural Resources Police and the Department of Natural Resources as a whole."
Annapolis visit
The cannon fits right in with the permanent oyster-themed exhibit at the Annapolis Maritime Museum, said Holland, the museum's director.
The museum is housed in a former oyster packing house and has a large room devoted to the ecological significance of oysters and their role in the economy and heritage of the bay region.
It sits alongside displays of oyster tongs, a deconstructed skipjack and a tank of live oysters.
Holland said he'd been hoping for a long time that the cannon would make a stop at the maritime museum. He'd like to keep it permanently, if possible.
"Here is a natural resource that is so valuable people are shooting each other over it, and the state needed this kind of firepower to enforce it," Holland said.
The cannon, he added, "brings to life the cultural history we need to tell, in addition to the natural history."
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Annapolis Maritime Museum |
PO Box 3088 |
Annapolis, MD 21403
410 295-0104
office@amaritime.org
