Empires of the Crab

© 2008 Dale Cathell. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 7/15/2008

ISBN: 978-1-4670-9633-1 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4259-1320-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4259-1321-2 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006902188

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Acknowledgments

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY- NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY - ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY - ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Author’s note

In the summer of 2004 I developed the idea of writing a book based upon what I perceived was a great love story - the relationship of Brice and Shirley Phillips of Hoopers Island and Ocean City, Maryland. I was inspired by what I knew about their contributions to the communities and my original plan was that it would be a limited edition type of book that I could create just as a memory for the Phillips and their friends.

I met with Shirley and Brice in their office at the Crab House in Ocean City. They were surprised and initially made light of the idea that anyone might want to write a book about them or their family, and if it was written, that anyone would want to read it. But, after considerable effort on my part to convince them, they finally authorized me to undertake the writing of their family’s story. Once they agreed to allow me to try to put together this project they cooperated in every way, except for one area. Shirley and Brice steadfastly declined to furnish me with any information about the family’s charitable and civic contributions, on the basis that the issue is between them and God. In other words, God knows and that’s enough for them. Steve, their son, later expressed similar feelings. Accordingly, almost all of the information included in the book about the Phillips’ charitable and civic contributions to their communities was obtained from other sources, including my own personal knowledge. None was obtained directly or first from Phillips family members, although, on occasion, one of them might confirm what I discovered from other sources.

From that first meeting, the project grew in scope as I uncovered more and more about the Phillips and Flowers families (Shirley was a Flowers.)

Early in the project, Shirley remembered that she had saved every letter that Brice had written her when they were engaged and first married - and he wrote several letters a week. There were literally hundreds of letters dated in the mid-1940s. She very graciously made them available to me and, among those letters, I discovered a series that Brice wrote Shirley from various countries in Europe when he was stationed with a combat unit during World War II.

I knew that, in addition to a great love story between Brice and Shirley, there was much more - a story of how the enlisted G. I. s in that War felt about it, about VE day, about the upcoming invasion of the home islands of Japan, about what the American fighting men who were going to be involved in that invasion thought about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were books out there that had included letters from different soldiers about the war, but I couldn’t (and still don’t) recall reading any books that contained chronologically ordered letter after letter containing one intelligent soldier’s musings on the progress and outcome of World War II.

I had more than a love story on my hands. An odyssey had begun to tell itself, to tell me what to write.

I began to do research on the early days on Hoopers Island, Maryland, and in the process discovered a unique place and was able to feel how it was, in the days of the Great Depression, to grow up on one of the islands at the center of the Chesapeake Bay’s crabbing industry. One thing led to another, and eventually the book took my mind to that other Empire of the Crab halfway around the world.

In the process I have gone from the aft-cabin of the Schooner McCready in 1920, to outrigger boats in the Visayan Sea in the Philippine Islands in the present decade. That trip through time with the Phillips family and their friends, has enabled me to address some of the practices and problems within the seafood industry, past and present. It has also allowed the sharing with me, and through me to the public, thoughts of very learned people on possible solutions to the consistent problems of shortages within the Chesapeake Basin. Ultimately this book became the story of an American family and its century-long relationship with a complex creature - the crab.

Most of all, it allowed me to paint a picture of an extraordinary American family. The Phillips of Hoopers Island.

Acknowledgments 

The book is based largely on numerous interviews with many people. I acknowledge the persons who have not asked to remain anonymous. Of course, of primary importance were Brice and Shirley Phillips and their two sons, Steve and Jeffrey. My interview with the various members of the immediate family consisted of more than 35 hours of taped sessions. An extensive interview with the late Dr. Tom Flowers of Cambridge was especially helpful not only in respect to the immediate Phillips and Flowers families but also in respect to the culture of Hoopers Island in the early days. Likewise, his book, Shore Folklore, helped me to immerse myself into that culture and hopefully write a better book. Semore Dofflemyer, Paul Wall, Jay Newcomb, and Dr. Geoffrey Robbins provided important insights into the Phillips family from very different viewpoints. Bernice and Harry Murphy (her son,) Jane Groff, and Joyce Flowers all provided hours and hours of information I could not have obtained elsewhere. Lil Townsend and Ann Showell were especially helpful in developing the Ocean City years. The Nabb Center at Salisbury University was very useful in developing some of the early history of the families, especially Shirley’s family - the Flowers. Additionally, I was able to draw extensively from numerous newspaper articles over the years that were kept by Mrs. Jane Groff, Brice’s sister, who graciously gave them to me, along with the picture of Miss Leone and Captain Ellie on their wedding night in 1919. The newspaper articles kept by Mrs. Groff contained information dating back to the sale of the schooner McCready in 1920.

I used several volumes of the Phillips Crab House yearbook and certain biographical information contained in a forward to a cook book that Shirley had contemplated writing several years ago. Steve Phillips and Phillips Foods made numerous papers and documents available, especially those relating to the overseas operations. There were numerous articles in various publications about members of the family or their businesses, or their history, or the history of Hoopers Island, that were made available from the collections of various family members.

I was able to extract much information on the status of the crab and rockfish populations in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay throughout the years from various records maintained by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. From them, and from the expertise of the Phillips family, and from Jay Newcomb, I was able to extrapolate the average Maryland commercial production of picked crab meat and compare the State’s production with the Phillips’ needs as they moved into the present century.

A short description of the way in which I have structured the book may be helpful to the reader in identifying the speaker at any particular part of the book. All statements of persons other than the writer that are contained within paragraphs are book-ended by quotation marks. When a quotation by one of the persons I have interviewed comprises fifty words or more, it is generally set off in a separate paragraph, indented additional spaces, and the speaker is identified just before the beginning of the quoted material or just after the ending. On occasion, the speaker may not be identified specifically, but the identity is clear from the context. On some occasions there may be no attribution to the source of a quote. In most such cases the speaker has declined to be identified about that particular quote. However, those particular comments should be contained in tapes that I have maintained.

Generally, unless a different speaker is clearly identified, italicized material at the very beginning of a section or chapter of the book is a result of the writer taking literary license with the known facts. As an example, at the very beginning of the first part of the book there is an italicized narrative of a voyage of the McCready. No one now alive knows whether that particular voyage took place or whether Captain Augustus Elsworth Phillips Jr., ever raced to Cape Hatteras against his uncle, Captain Warren Simmon’s ‘pines’¹ and banana bugeye schooner, the Morning Star. But, considering the Phillips family’s genes, had the two captains met off Charleston, South Carolina, on the same course which, considering that they sailed the same limited areas of the sea, they very likely did, it would probably have resulted in the race I describe. So I created how it might have been. There are several other such instances throughout the book.

In some parts of the book there will be what might appear to landlubbers to be serious grammatical mistakes. The grammar may be wrong, but, generally, it is not a mistake. I have, on occasion, used the language of the water. I grew up around it, as did the Phillips. For instance, in many places in the the book I refer to fisherman or watermen ‘catching crab.’ Crab is in the singular when most people might think the correct phrase is ‘catching crabs,’ with the plural use of the word. But commercial watermen catch crab, perch (not perches) rock (not rocks), or to use the other term for that great Maryland fish, watermen catch striped bass not striped basses.

Additionally, throughout the book I often refer to the efforts of watermen to catch crab, as ‘fishing’. When so used, it is a generic term for harvesting creatures of all kinds, including crab, from the sea (a term, itself, which often also includes bays and creeks that are attached to the seas and oceans.) Other similar uses of language may appear throughout the book. I make no apologies. It is the way it really is. Also, Hoopers Island is spelled without an apostrophe in official documents and is spelled that way by Hoopers Islanders (in spite of the fact that it is named after the Hooper family.) And that is how it is spelled throughout the book.

The reader should also keep in mind that some of the people to whom I attribute happenings have been dead for half a century or more, and at least seven of the persons interviewed were in their eighties or nineties. The longer one lives the more there is to remember and, thus, the more there is to forget. The saying that memories dim with time is accurate. I have filled in the blanks in the various memories as best I can. I have created for those that were not available to interview, what I think they might have said or done, based upon what my research and interviews with others indicate would probably have happened or been said had they been here to talk to me. In all such instances, I’ve tried to be kind.

I want to acknowledge the assistance of four women: Gail Whaley, Janet Cherrix, Phyllis Mitchell and Nancy McElgunn. They have taken the time to read a preliminary draft of the book and have proffered several changes and suggested many corrections. Without their advice the book would be of lesser literary and grammatical quality.

As always, my wife, Charlotte, has supported my efforts as a writer and I am very grateful for that support. I also want to especially thank all the members of the Phillips family and their friends for helping to make this book possible.

Dedication  

The Empires of the Crab is dedicated, as all of the Phillips would want it to be, to two wonderful islands, Hoopers Island and Ocean City, and to island people everywhere.

The Crab

The Crab, the Crab with its pointy little body six little legs and two powerful claws.

Its beady marble eyes, stereo-typically red,

Sebastian, Chadwick, and the Great Captain Phil.

The Crab, the Crab not just a crustacean living its simple life in the wondrous Chesapeake.

To me it is a symbol of family and home, good, happy times on the old Eastern Shore.

The Crab, the Crab on which we feast in summer.

More crackers! More vinegar!

In the backyard at dusk.

The pounding of mallets accompanied with laughter, with family, with love, just soaking up good feeling.

The Crab, the Honorable Crab, for where would my family be, if nothing of your sort inhabited the salty waters?

You’ve brought us fame and fortune.

Ha! It makes me laugh that a tiny creature like you has given me so much.

Carmen Phillips at age 12. Reprinted with permission of the poet.

BOOK ONE

Hoopers Island

The boy - Brice

The schooner McCready was beating to windward on a starboard tack out of Charleston Harbor, trying to head due east to catch the engine of the Gulf Stream and its four knots of push to the north’ard. The wind was blowing ten to fifteen knots out of the northeast and Captain Ellie knew that when he made the turn to the north he would have to work her hard to maintain enough sea room to round Cape Hatteras. They’d then head for the Chesapeake, and on to Baltimore with the cargo of cypress shingles he’d loaded at the docks in Charleston. Next would be a side trip home to the islands of the crab that themselves hung below Taylors and Dunnock Islands. The three islands, Honga/Fishing Creek, Hoopersville, and Applegarth, collectively called Hoopers Island. The year was 1920.

He had bought the schooner several years before, when he was only 18, and manned her with a crew of three. She was one of the largest remaining Maryland cargo schooners, boats working under sail. Vessels that hauled cargo up and down the east coast. He’d been young when he’d managed to borrow enough money to buy her. Too young, some thought. But on the islands of the crab, boyhood was but a brief interlude. Work began no later than age twelve, sometimes as early as their fourth year, as the boys followed their fathers on the water. Not where he was sailing now with the McCready, but big enough water - the Honga River, Tar Bay, and the Chesapeake.

As the sea began to take on the deep blue of the stream, he noticed another schooner offshore on a converging course, a schooner with masts raked aft, a bugeye rig. She was heading inshore some, but still northing, working the stream. She was familiar as she got closer. It was his uncle, Captain Warren Simmons, heading to New York from the islands on the pineapple and banana run, hauling the fruit to the city in his schooner, the Morning Star.

She was closing fast; the combined speed of two of the fastest working schooners still in service making short work of the distance between them. Captain Ellie turned the wheel to port, bringing the McCready more into the wind, still keeping as much way on her as he could, and his uncle did likewise, turning to port also. Jibing down the wind the Morning Star kept her speed better. Soon the boats were passing, port to port, and Captain Ellie yelled over:

Race you to Hatteras Light.

Done.

Captain Simmons put his wheel over to starboard, bringing the Morning Star’s head to starboard, up into the wind, then crossing the point of the wind, with the main boom crossing to starboard, and she began to regain her speed some, now heading east on a parallel course with, but now a quarter-mile north and west of the McCready. To the east Captain Ellie had kept the head of the McCready close to the wind to slow her until his uncle could come up with him.

Soon Captain Simmons was close abeam and with a wave to his uncle, Captain Ellie let the McCready fall off to the wind, just a little though, just to get her up to enough speed to avoid the covering efforts of his uncle, his uncle’s attempt to steal the wind by placing his sails between it and the McCready. They continued offshore, almost side by side, but with the McCready gradually inching forward as Captain Ellie knew she would. She was the faster ship; but barely so. After several miles on an easterly course, the McCready was ten boat lengths east of Captain Simmons’ schooner when Captain Ellie quickly brought the McCready’s head into the wind, then put her on a tack to the north-west. His crew working vigorously to switch the lines. Soon he crossed his uncle’s bow.

As his uncle passed, now hard astern, Captain Ellie saw him shaking his fist at the McCready, good- naturely though, and then over the whoshing of the wind and the sound of the schooners’ passages through the water, Captain Ellie heard his uncle yell over, Tell my mom , tell ‘Ringie’, I plan to be home by Thanksgiving. I’ll tell her, Captain Ellie responded as the vessels passed.

As the Morning Star became smaller, Captain Ellie felt hands around his waist, and a forehead pressed gently into the small place between his shoulder blades. They had gotten married just a year before, in 1919. Leone Elizabeth Simmons was the most beautiful woman on an island of beautiful women. From a family that had been on the islands since the 1600s.

Their honeymoon had been a trip to Baltimore for cargo and a voyage to Savannah. The only home he had to offer her then was the aft cabin on the McCready.And she’d come aboard, willingly. They had made their home in the year since on the schooner. She had agreed to the arrangement before she’d married him. She loved him as he loved her. Home was where they were. But, she’d asked only one thing, that their family, when it started, would begin ashore. He had agreed.

He didn’t turn to face her right away. Where he came from, public displays of affection weren’t frequent. They were saved for the quiet times when lovers were alone. That was more so at sea. Especially when the Captain brought his wife aboard to live. On the islands of the crab, a women aboard a vessel was considered bad luck. But he’d had nothing but good luck since they’d married. He’d gotten top money for the cargos they’d carried. Been able to save a considerable sum in the small chest he kept hidden in their cabin. At first he’d thought it was the generosity of the shippers-a wedding present so to speak. But the luck had held past the honeymoon, or what normally passed for a honeymoon period.

The crew was on deck, the three of them sprucing up the lines now that she was heading northwest. They’d stay on deck as he tacked back and forth to beat north into the wind and they’d stay there at least until after he rounded Hatteras sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning.In heavy weather, she would come on deck to help with the lines, with the bow plunging into the seas throwing spray down the length of the vessel, sometimes seas mounting and washing over the beam of the boat, putting his wife up to her waist in the sea. He’d been frightened then, when she’d go on the deck, especially when the coming seas were hidden in the darkness of the night. But, when he’d told her to stay below, she’d refused. Said the schooner was her home, all of it. Besides she liked it. The excitement of it. Now though, it was different.

She moved to his side, placed her hand on his right arm as he kept the McCready on the line he had chosen. As tight to the wind as she could make way to the north. His wife said then, Remember what we agreed upon when we married? He remembered immediately. There had only been the one agreement. He looked at her with a question in his blue eyes. We’re going to have a baby , she answered. It would be a boy.

They would name him Brice.

CHAPTER ONE 

Captain Augustus Elsworth Phillips, Jr. (Captain ‘Ellie’)

The story of our particular Phillips family began almost a hundred years ago on Hoopers Island, with the two Captains, Augustus Elsworth Phillips, Senior, and Augustus Elsworth Phillips, Junior, Brice’s father, both of whom at one time or another were apparently called Captain Ellie. Although early records of Hoopers Island contain references to Phillips living there as long ago as the mid-1860s, not much more than their presence appears in the available records. As relevant to the present story, not much is recorded, or now remembered of this particular Phillips family prior to the time of the two Captains Augustus Phillips. Brice’s sister, Mrs. Dunbar (Jane) Groff, states that it wasn’t known where our Phillips family came from before my grandfather. They were just there on Hoopers Island at the turn of the 20th Century or a little before.

Augustus Elsworth Phillips, Sr. is remembered by most chroniclers of the time as a former waterman (or schooner captain - or both) and later the operator of a country store at Honga²/Fishing Creek. Early sailing records indicate that there was a Captain Ellie Phillips who was the captain of the schooner, Annie Hodges, that sailed in Chesapeake waters as early as 1901. She was a cargo schooner, but, according to the records at the Nabb Center,³ she was also used in oystering on the Chesapeake. Mr. William Hooper in his memoirs My Years Before the Mast,⁴ recalled that he had worked on the Annie Hodges in that time period and that two of Captain Phillips’ sons, Amos and Goldsborough worked on that schooner with him. In Captain Augustus Ellsworth Phillips Jr.’s obituary it was noted that he was survived by several brothers, one of whom was named Goldsborough. Augustus Ellsworth Phillips, Sr. was also known on Hoopers Island as Capt. Ellie, so the Captain Ellie Phillips of the Annie Hodges was very probably the grandfather of Brice Phillips, and Brice’s father probably inherited the nickname, Captain Ellie, from his father.⁵

Additionally, Jane Groff remembers that when she was a young girl, she was told that her grandfather had been the captain of some type of vessel in the past, but she doesn’t remember what type of boat or what exactly it was that her grandfather did. There are also remembrances that the elder Captain Augustus Phillips had interests on, or in relation to, the water prior to his son’s return from the sea in 1920. Moreover, it is universally agreed that the grandfather was also referred to as a Captain. That title is reserved on Hoopers Island for those who made their living on the water, or from the water, at some point in their lives. Mrs Groff also remembers being told that her grandmother Phillips would run the store while her grandfather was on the water. So it is fairly certain that Captain Augustus Phillips, Sr. was the captain of the Annie Hodges sailing from Hoopers Island at certain points during his lifetime. If so, both Brice’s father and grandfather (and perhaps his great grand-father) were captains of schooners.

There was also another Captain Phillips, Charles A. Phillips, who was the master of the schooner George May. There may be a connection between him and our Phillips family. I have been unable to find out his complete middle name. It may have been, Augustus. If so, there might be a connection.

Senior’s wife was Dorinda Travers Simmons, whose nickname was ‘Ringie’. Her father had been the operator of a store at Hoopersville. Her brother was believed to be Captain Warren Simmons, of the large bugeye schooner, Morning Star.

There is some confusion about when the A. E. Phillips and Son packing plant on Hoopers Island actually began. Dates as early as 1914 and as late as 1921 are mentioned in various published materials. The explanation that appears most accurate may be that Captain Phillips, Sr., in addition to operating the country store, had begun some activity with processing crab or oysters at least as early as 1914,⁶ but that the ‘and Son’ part was added in 1921 shortly after Captain Phillips Jr., ‘Captain Ellie’, left the sea and became involved in the business.

Mrs. Dunbar (Jane) Groff recalls her mother telling her that she and Brice’s father had come ashore because her mother did not believe that a family should be raised on a schooner. According to Mrs. Groff, when her father sold the schooner, McCready, he was in the process of building a home at Fishing Creek, but it was not yet finished. As she was told, her father and mother lived with a brother of Captain Phillips, Sr., Arthur Phillips, for no more than two months, before moving into the house in very early 1921. Later, Arthur Phillips would work for the Phillips and was in the original packing plant when it was destroyed during the 1933 hurricane.

It was upon this move ashore in early 1921 that Captain Augustus Elsworth Phillips, Jr. probably began to work in the crabbing business started by his father. Mrs Groff vaguely remembers hearing that Senior had begun some business relating to the water several years before her father sold the schooner and came ashore on Hoopers Island. It seems reasonable to speculate that Senior, a former waterman, had begun a crab and/or oystering processing business of some type prior to 1921, in 1914, and that it became A. E. Phillips and Son when Junior left the schooner in late 1920 and joined his father in early 1921. Until that time available records do not indicate that there was a son involved in the business. Mrs Bernice Murphy, Shirley’s sister, who was born in 1914 and is over 91 years old, and by the mid-1920s was working in the Phillips’ plant, recalls that the plant was started by Captain Phillips, Sr., which supports, to some degree, that the packing plant was started before Brice’s father joined the operation (probably in 1921.)

Brice Phillips was born in the house at Fishing Creek on Hoopers Island on January 15th, 1921, very shortly after the house was finished. I have read newspaper articles that state that Captain Augustus Elsworth Phillips, Jr. sold the McCready in 1920 to a Hollywood film studio where for years it was used in the filming of pirate movies.⁷ If the move ashore was occasioned by the knowledge that a child was coming, as indicated by Mrs. Groff’s recollections of conversations with her mother, and the move was made at the time of the schooner’s sale, and Brice was born in the house in very early 1921, on January 15th, as the records indicate, Brice was very probably conceived in the aft cabin of the schooner, McCready. A fitting beginning for the future patriarch of a family bound to the sea.

CHAPTER TWO 

The early business

A. E. Phillips and Son entered a seafood processing industry that, in relative terms, was still in its infancy. Most observers and historians generally set the beginning of the organized industry on Hoopers Island at around 1890 to 1900. Of course, the islanders had always crabbed, fished and ‘oystered’; but, for the most part, it had been for local subsistence and on a smaller unorganized scale.

They were relatively isolated. The nearest town of any size was Cambridge, 25 miles or more away over dirt, oyster shell, and punch-log roads (trees felled across the course of the road, then split and left there as the road foundation.) There were no governmentally maintained roads down the islands until the late 1930s and no macadam or paved roads to the islands or down the island chain until almost the 1950s.

As late as 1921, when Captain ‘Ellie’ joined his father’s business, there were still memories, or rumors at least, of the practice of shanghaiing pickers and shuckers that had existed ten years or more before. Then, as now, it was difficult to find sufficient pickers in the summer and shuckers in the winter to process the oysters and crab. It was particularly critical in respect to crab because in the heat of summer crab could not be held over for very long.

The packers, when delivering oysters or crab meat to the markets in Baltimore, would sometimes solve their labor problems by frequenting bars in the harbor area, and, to put it kindly, actively encourage persons that were wasting away their lives drinking and having fun to come work in the plants on Hoopers Island. Often, the new employees would not remember their commitments to the packers upon awakening aboard a boat out on the bay in route to the packing houses. Once at Hoopers Island, they were vigorously aided in maintaining gainful employment by new found acquaintances. They were housed in special buildings in a compound on House Point where their activities could be observed. House Point was at the very ‘beginning’ of a narrow neck between Back Creek and the Honga River (Hoopers Islanders do not consider the point of land nearest the water to be the end of the land, but the beginning, pointing out accurately that the settlement of the land began, not ended, where water and land met.) House Point was almost surrounded by water. From old maps in the Nabb Center, it appears that there was only one road off the small peninsula, and that one easily watched. From time to time, the new employees were actively encouraged not to leave before the picking or the shucking seasons were over. The matter of the shanghaiing practice of the early time is not often discussed in the present time. William Hooper in his memoirs discounts the rumors of shanghaied watermen, saying . . . .much folklore has been built up about. . . how they shanghaied their crewman, worked them all season, then paid them off by having them knocked overboard by the boom to drown. I’m inclined to believe these tales were fabrications.

While Brice can remember the compound, House Point, being at the end (or beginning) of a neck of land to the east across Back Creek from his childhood home and remembers hearing stories of the practice, if it had ever existed, it had long disappeared before he became active in the packing plant. If it had existed, it probably was occurring in the days of Captain Phillips Sr., and perhaps even in the early days of Captain Ellie, although there is no record of A. .E. Phillips and Son having participated in that method of recruitment.

The advent of bay travel on steamship routes opened up the increasingly urban markets in Baltimore and along the coast. As the demand for oysters and crab meat increased, local entrepreneurs throughout the Chesapeake began to build packing plants and to develop the beginnings of the industry as we know it today. It was not less so, and perhaps even more so, on Hoopers Island.

Even before World War I, packing plants began to be established on the island. In addition to the Phillips’ operation, there were operations by Rollie Creighton, the Ruarks, Nelson, Tolly, Applegarth, and others. The seafood processing industry transformed the area from a subsistence to a manufacturing (albeit on a small scale) economy. At the same time, it created something of a class division in the local society. Because no one had much, there was little resentment of those that had just a little bit more. Generally it came to be believed, probably accurately, that the packers had just a little more than the watermen, were just a little better off. But, any resentment of those days was mellowed by the coming of the depression when everyone learned to survive together. In the society of Hoopers Island of the 20s and the 30s, to the extent there was a difference, Brice’s family was less poor than some. Less poor, certainly, than the family of his future wife.

CHAPTER THREE 

Trot-lining

The early days of the industry, particularly the crabbing operations, were much different