City - Baltimore MD - So shellfish 1905

Colorized photo from 1905 Original Title: Unloading oyster luggers Photographer: Detroit publishing Location: Pratt St & Light St, Baltimore MD For hundreds of years people enjoyed the oysters from the Chesapeake bay. They were found to be larger and had a higher quality than other places. For a while they used long tongs to pull them from the bottom, then rakes, then dredging. Over the years they pulled millions of bushels out of the sea. They were once so popular that they had oyster pirates. If right now your imagining an oyster in a pirate hat, that would be accurate, if they were a cartoon. But it was a real thing, pirates would stake out their own areas. There were night raids and theft. This was known as the oyster wars and it was during the mid 1800's. Shown in this picture, the oysters were in a decline, they were over fished, the want was there, but not the oysters, it seems that you need to put the old shells back into the water. Shells attract shells, and without things to attach to, they don't. When they put it back the oysters came back. Working conditions in general were terrible however. Oysters went for $1 a bushel, the bay had around 30,000 bushels. The People were known as oyster luggers. The boats however are a combination of skipjacks and bugeyes, the skip jacks have the masts leaning forward. The boats with the vertical masts were called buy boats, and they would buy the catch from the watermen, and then resell them to the people on shore. The boy is a telegram boy, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.