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Tne Nellie Crockett is one of two buy-boats to be designated a National Historic Landmark.

In many places, such as the upper Chesapeake, Ted Parish says, that heritage is getting lost. But he suggests those bits of history can still be found in small towns — he gestures to the harbor in Oriental — where there had been local boats going out on the water. “You go in and find the old guys who worked the boats and they’ll tell you what engine was in it when they were running it and how it sounded.”

Ted Parish in the pilot house, backing the Nellie Crockett around in the Oriental harbor.

Bow of the 88 year old boat. On deck, Mimi Parish works on the departure.

The crew of “Nellie Crockett” and the “Thomas J” planned to stay just a night at the trawler dock in Oriental, but ended up staying two, which gave that many more people a chance to tap in to the history.

Just after sunrise Sunday morning the “Nellie Crockett” pulled away from the docks, and using that rope and pulley technology, backed up and then around in the harbor. Like the “Thomas J” which had left just before it, the “Nellie Crockett” blasted its boat horn. (each boat’s horn, sounded a few minutes apart, got more than a few people wondering if a part of Oriental’s history – the train through town – had returned.)

Surf, one of the two dogs on board, stands watch as Ted Parish maneuvers the 62 foot long Nellie Crockett in Oriental’s harbor.

Heading north, the “Nellie Crockett” crew aims to stop in the town of Urbanna, Virginia for that town’s 56th Oyster Festival the first weekend of November. It’ll be the first time the “Nellie Crockett” attends, even though, as Ted Parish noted, when the first festival started, “this boat was carrying those oysters” in the lower Chesapeake. That, he says, is “kind of magic.”

Heading out of Oriental’s harbor and to points north.

Description of the “Nellie Crockett” in the 1993 nomination to become a National Historic Landmark.

Nellie Crockett, a classic plank-on-frame Chesapeake deadrise design oyster buy-boat (a vessel which traveled to the oysters beds and bought oysters directly from the oyster boats working the oyster beds), official number 225369, is homeported on the Sassafras River at Georgetown, Kent County, Maryland. Crockett was built in 1926 for Andrew A. Crockett of Tangier, Virginia. She is 61 feet, 7 inches long on deck, has a 20-foot, 4-inch beam, and has a draft of 6 feet, 5 inches. Throughout her career she has been listed as 52 tons gross and 35 tons net. Her wide beam and moderate draft is typical of buy-boats which must carry large loads in the shallow waters characteristic of Chesapeake Bay. Crockett maintains her original physical appearance.

To read more about the Nellie Crockett in that nomination, click here.

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Posted Tuesday October 29, 2013 by Melinda Penkava

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