Tag Archives: Smith Island
Smith Island Holds “Boat-in” Easter Service
On Easter Sunday, six boats from the three Smith Island, Maryland communities gathered around Pastor Everett Landon aboard the Miss Maxine, his father’s wooden workboat, in the sheltered waters off Easter Point. Pastor Landon addressed the floating congregation over channel 78 on VHF marine radio as the sun came up over Tangier Sound. Families who were not able to attend the ‘boat-in’ service tuned in through their at-home VHF radios. >Click through the gallery below to see images of the Easter boat-in< 10:20
On Smith Island, Crab Is Everything. What happens when no one’s around to catch Maryland’s prized blue crab?
It’s the hottest day of the summer on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and at a tiki bar that doesn’t serve alcohol on a windless island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, two teenage boys appear, one holding up a small, live blue crab. “Hey Steve, will you cook this for me?” the boy holding the crab asks Steve Dunlap, who’s behind the bar. “Aw, put it back, Robert,” Dunlap says. Robert sulkily obliges, letting the crab scuttle off into the bay, but makes it clear that he wasn’t going to kill it. Here, on Smith Island, Maryland, there is an overpowering respect, almost a reverence, for the blue crab. At the dead center of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, 12 miles from Maryland’s shore, Smith is a central part of the Maryland crabbing industry, and has been for generations. Here, crab is everything: Food, money, work, family, tradition, history. Crab is life. But it might not be for very much longer. click here to read the story 09:36
