talk of the bay
Clam House Revival
Rock Hall’s venerable clam house takes on a new mission.
O
n the outside, the Rock Hall Clam House on Rock Hall Harbor sports a spiffy new mural where watermen once backed workboats into its slips to unload their catch. Inside, the cinder block building has been scrubbed of the messy processing that once took place here. With a carpeted conference room, a class/display room and workshops, it now smells vaguely of wood shavings and salt-soaked lapboards with hardly a whiff of the mud and marine harvest that once permeated the place. The clam house, threatened with destruction by a proposed waterfront hotel, was preserved thanks to a community effort initiated by Waterman’s Association president, the late Larry Simns. “He was instrumental in getting the Maryland Seafood Authority involved, when the building was up for sale in the late 1980s,” says Robin Wood Kurowski, Rock Hall native and board member of the nonprofit Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area. “Larry was concerned that the building remain something of what it once was, possibly a museum.” For 300 years Rock Hall was a close-knit waterman’s community. But in the past 30 years it has undergone a development boom. What was once a usual sight—crab traps in backyards, nets drying in the sun, bateaus moored throughout the harbor—is now the stuff of museums.
Rock Hall Marine Restoration & Heritage Center 21083 Chesapeake Avenue Rock Hall, Md. 410-725-0443
22 Chesapeake Bay Magazine May 2016
“We’re the last generation who did this,” says Rock Haller William “Scratch” Ashley. “We wanted to educate people, especially the kids, about the boats that had been built here, and the people who worked so hard for so many years.” From the almostashes of the clam house, the Rock Hall Marine Restoration and Heritage Center is rising to do that. The center, which displays beautiful models of traditional workboats, also teaches some of the hands-on skills that former generations relied on. A pegboard hung with scrapers, hand saws, chisels and planes displays the old tools volunteers will use to teach school children how to restore old boats, including the center’s 15 ½-foot
Top: A mural by local artist Ken Castelli decorates the recently remodeled Rock Hall Marine Restoration and Heritage Center. A bove : Center volunteer “Scratch” Wilson shows Trent Vansant, boatbuilder Stanley Vansant’s great-grandson, how to caulk.
ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
Michael C. Wootton
ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
Clockwise from top left : “Scratch” Ashley fries up some fish for lunch; and 5th-grade students from the Rock Hall Elementary School work on various aspects of rebuilding Cricket, a 151/2 -foot daysailer (left) built by Rock Hall boatbuilder Stanley Vansant.
Steve Atkinson photos
daysailer, Cricket, built by local boatbuilder Stanley Vansant, which currently looks like the skeletal remains of a small whale. A row of table saws shares space with the 150-year-old log canoe, Glide, which also awaits restoration. The center has just graduated students who earned their licenses in this winter’s charter captain’s course. Founders hope to expand the ways in which they can connect future generations to the community’s skilled, hardworking past. “I’d like to have one of each kind of working boat on display and that we can take people out on,” says Ashley. “I want to tell the kids about those generations, so it’s not lost.” Of course, money is always an issue. The working-man and -woman’s life doesn’t look as glamorous or sexy (until you look much closer) as other higher-profile projects, but its heritage commands respect. The new museum officially opened at the end of April. —Nancy Taylor Robson
Chesapeake Bay Magazine May 2016
23