NDR Sort of ......

[Dave Church]

Just spent a weekend in St. Michaels, Md for my 20th wedding anniversary and was very pleased with the area. My wife and I took a ride on the oldest active skipjack (Rebecca T Ruarck) and thoroughly enjoyed the time on the water but especially the history of the Chesapeake bay and the 1864 skipjack. The Captain, Wade Murphy, was quite a character and told us a wealth of history in only 2 hours. The part I found very interesting was when the skipjack sank during a bad storm several years ago and the main mast had been snapped by winds in excess of 60 mph. The cost to raise and repair the boat was around $60k and he found this money mostly by having the historical main mast carved into 82 canvasback decoys by Charlie Jobes. These have been sold over the years with letters of authenticity from $500 to $10,000 dollars and make quite a decoy for a collector. Numerous write ups are on the internet about this boat, this captain, and these unique decoys. Excellent way to spend the afternoon if you are ever in that neck of the woods.

dc

 

[Tyler Hill]

I actually have one of those cans. My parents gave it to me as a gift when I graduated college a few years ago. Ill try to get some pictures of the decoy and letter. Pretty cool little piece of history. I have spent my whole life here and I'm sure I take a lot of the history for granted. When I was in college in Salisbury I would visit the Ward museum whenever I needed a little motivation to work on decoys, draw up a new pattern, or figure out new ways to paint...every few weeks or so. Definitely a great place to be from and live.

 

[Dave Church]

Tyler, for me being on the "other" side of Maryland, it is always surpising just how much there is to do on the Eastern Shore. The Ward museum is one of my favorite spots and the carving there always makes me realize just how bad a carver I really am. My favorite is the pheasant running thru the cornfield with an eagle clutching his tail feathers with one talon. The interesting things are that 1) it looks more like taxidermy than carving, 2) everything is carved...even the corn stalks, 3) only the eagle's one talon clutching the frail tail feathers are all that is suspending the eagle in flight.


dc