Chesapeake Bay Lifeline

Despite his repetitive schedule, Larry Laird's daily routine is seldom that.

The ferry captain's crossing this morning from Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay to Crisfield on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore is gripping testimony. He has spent the past hour and twenty minutes cajoling his Capt. Jason II into the broadside of a significant nor'easter, calmly piloting his full, flailing passenger ferry over a stretch of water that is normally a less than forty-minute breeze.

"There's no extra charge for the adventure ride," the barrel-chested Laird calls out with a good-natured snort as he approaches the Crisfield dock.

A gaggle of paled visitors and island locals alike smile wanly at the crack as they loosen their grips on cushions or railings. An untethered full drum set in the center of the cabin rests motionless for the first time during the journey, amazingly unscathed.

During an uneventful crossing just a few days earlier, Laird's words that "there's never a crossing that's exactly the same" had seemed a lot less plausible.

Smith Island, Maryland's only inhabited island in the Chesapeake Bay, is home to three towns: Ewell, Tylerton and Rhodes Point. As the captain of the Capt. Jason II, Laird provides a lifeline from Tylerton, the least populated of these towns, to other two towns and the mainland. Tylerton residents rely on Laird to ferry themselves, their products, and supplies to and fro no matter what the conditions.

"We carry anything we can get on here that is legal," the captain chuckles during a daily stop lull. "Crabs, freight, passengers.  I had a golf cart on here earlier today. The first year I done this I even carried a zoo - monkey and several snakes, big boa constrictors, the works - over one time to the elementary school."

Smith Island's history tracks back to English settlers of the 1600s, who grazed their livestock on its grasses. Although Captain John Smith first charted the area in 1608, its name refers back to a 1679 land grant to Henry Smith of Jamestown. The island played host to its first Methodist camp meeting in 1887; the religious influence runs deep here, as the church or volunteers perform many of the functions ordinarily handled by town governments.

Residents speak with a quirky dialect descended from their English roots -linguists refer to it as "Tidewater English," an amalgam of old English, American Southern and Coastal accents. Instead of "at night," a visitor may hear "a night." Vowels can experience slightly different takes - the word brown may sound more like brain, for example, while side may sound like sad.

By the mid-1800s, oystering and crabbing - and watermen, those who harvested them - dominated local labor. From May through September, island men focused on catching them and women on processing them. Demand for the product was significant.

But pressures along the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which stretches across more than 64,000 square miles, encompassing parts of six states - Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia and the entire District of Columbia -- has had significant impact on Smith Island. Runoff from more than 100,000 tributaries eventually flows into the Bay, which has led to a marked decline in the native oyster population due to pollution and disease. A dwindling number of watermen are now primarily dependent on crabbing, which the government has regulated to protect against over-harvesting. The island has a few restaurants and shops that are open in the summer when the tourists come, but there aren't many other economic opportunities.