Curator's Corner: New Insights Into an Old Boat

CBMM takes a fresh look at Alverta’s history ahead of Welcome Center move

By Pete Lesher

Black oysterman Fillmore King lived in a community of watermen, both Black and white, on Kent Island in the early 1900s. By 1910, when he was in his mid-40s, King worked for himself six months of the year harvesting oysters, earning enough to purchase a home for himself and his wife with a mortgage. He later acquired a secondhand, five-log canoe—the sort of boat everyone had used for oystering when he was young—but this one was built with an engine, a new variation for a traditional style.

King named the boat Alverta for his wife, who added to the income by taking in washing at their home. Fillmore King worked on the water into his 70s, despite having lost one arm earlier in life. By 1930, he was likely assisted on the water by his nephew, Isaac Bailey, who lived with the Kings.

In his declining years, King left work on the water and became a lodger in another home on Kent Island. Gleaned from census records, these details shed light on the life of one Black waterman in a community of many. Though about one in three oystermen were Black in King’s youth, the proportion dwindled in the late 20th century.

Fillmore King was not the first waterman to own and use Alverta. According to a March 1977 Bay Times interview with boatbuilder Lem Thompson Jr., who was also grandson of the canoe’s builder, Kent Island waterman Jacob W. “Pete” Baxter was the first owner and named the canoe Isabel for his daughter.

The old log canoe came to King after a string of owners that included Grasonville, Md., waterman Leroy W. Smith and drug store proprietor John A. Gardner. Delbert Baker purchased Alverta from King and worked the boat out of the harbor in Cambridge, Md. Baker’s sister and brother-in-law, Joyce and Douglas Ferris, ultimately donated the boat to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, where it survives today.

Previously, CBMM interpreted this transitional log canoe—unusual in that it was built for power, not sail—as an example of the boatbuilder’s art. The canoe was begun in 1908 by Queenstown, Md., oysterman Walter M. Gardener, who severely injured himself with an adze in the process, before it was completed by Joseph A. Thompson, one of a multigenerational family of Kent Island boatbuilders. It would become Thompson’s last log canoe and the last log canoe built on Kent Island.

In many respects, Alverta is a traditional log canoe, hewn from five loblolly pine logs and joined side-byside with iron drifts. Like log canoes from decades prior, Alverta is sharp in the stern, like the bow—hence the term canoe. But unlike canoes built just a few years earlier, such as the 1902 Silver Heel (ex-Maud) constructed by Thompson’s brother, Eugene, Alverta never carried a sailing rig. From the day it was built, Alverta was engine powered. When donated to CBMM, the canoe carried a 1951 Jeep engine complete with an automotive transmission and radiator.

After spending more than a decade in CBMM storage, Alverta will move into the exhibition Water Lines: Chesapeake Watercraft Traditions in the new Welcome Center opening this fall. CBMM is uncovering new insights into its historic small craft collection, centering on stories of diverse people like Fillmore King to interpret Alverta and the 28 other boats in the exhibition, some of which will be exhibited for the first time. ★