WYPR News in Maryland
(2008-08-08)
CHOPTANK RIVER, MD
(wypr) -
Before the American Revolution, the British sent the schooner Sultana to the Chesapeake Bay to enforce the hated taxes on paint, glass and tea. In today's edition of Chesapeake Summer, WYPR's Joel McCord boards a replica of that vessel, which has become a floating classroom.It's Thursday. The middle schoolers have been trawling for fish every day this week and come up empty. Now, as they head out from Oxford, they'll try anything for better luck.
Kiss the net, kiss the net, kiss the net. Kiss the net for luck.
Sarah Ward, an 11-year-old from New Market, steels herself to the task and puckers up.
Yo, she touched it!
The net hits the water and Captain Bob Brittain steers a wide circle in the Choptank River.
Sultana, built in Chestertown by John Swain and a crowd of volunteers from copies of the original plans, was launched in 2001. Brittain says the ship has carried close to 5,000 students every season since on history and ecology trips. Many of those are one-day affairs, but during the summer, there are week-long trips.
As we've been progressing south down the bay the students have been seeing how the salinity of the bay increases as you go south; they've been checking for oxygen, nitrates. We've been trying to catch fish to see how that changes as you go south down the bay.
While the ecology lessons come from the bay, the history lessons come straight out of the Royal Navy's records of the sailors who were aboard Sultana in 1769. Each camper was assigned a crew member to report on.
Alex Frye, from Huntingtown, researched Lieutenant Inglis, the skipper. He says the lieutenant was pretty hard on his men.
He would give the orders for like two dozen lashes with a cat o nine tails whip. I think he was just harsh because the conditions were really tight.
And there are lessons in seamanship as well.
Are you ready on the throat? (Ready on the throat!) Are you ready on the peak? (Ready on the Peak!) Okay, on your throat and peak; haul away together.
First Mate Tanya Banks-Christensen calls the orders as the kids begin raising the sails. The mainsail goes up first, then the forward stay sail and topsail.
Brittain says they have the kids take part as much as possible in operating the boat.
Our crew here, we try to just facilitate everything. We find if we start doing everything they become passengers and not members of the crew. And our goal for the week is to make them feel like they have been part of our crew. So when they get off the boat, we're their best crewmates, we're not just, aw, that's the crew, we're the passengers.
He even puts two of the boys, Alex and Tyler Niblett, of Salisbury, on the helm.
Okay, so let's straighten out now. Do you see there's a big farmhouse, like down through there? (Oh yeah, I see it) If you two can just keep on course for that, that would be perfect.
Tyler said it was hard to get used to using the tiller.
It was kind of confusing cause, one, I got mixed up with, you pull that way and you go the other way and stuff and I get confused with all that stuff.
But the important thing on this day is to catch a fish. The kids, led by education director Leona Dalton, try the fishy dance, the trawl dance and whatever other good luck ceremony they can dream up. Maybe if they chant the right incantation as they haul in the net.
Ready, guys? Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish
But only jelly fish dangle from the net as it comes on board. Then Dalton gasps.
Did we catch a fish? (Screaming) We caught a fish! (Screaming and cheers).
There was a tiny spot, a fish named for the black spot behind its gills, and a lone crab. Dalton scooped them into an aquarium and started her biology lesson.
They do filter the water. In there, did you see that white thing in the gills? That's actually called like a rake or a comb
The campers would meet their parents in Cambridge the next day, happy to at last have caught a fish.
I'm Joel McCord, reporting aboard the schooner Sultana for 88.1, WYPR
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