Watermen

by Randall S. Peffer

Book Overview

For three hundred years, generations of Tilghman Islanders have lived by harvesting the waters of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. They are watermen, an old English term for commercial fishermen, and their... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801821770
• ISBN13: 9780801821776
• Release Date: August 1979
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Poignant Images of a Dying Lifestyle

The watermen of the eastern shore of the Chesapeake are a breed apart. In the late 1970's Randall Peffer went to Tilghman Island in search of family ties. There, he lived the life of a waterman for a full year, during which he dredged for oysters aboard wind-powered skipjacks, went eeling, tonged for oysters, hunted clams and longlined for fin fish. The result is this treatise which although a bit contrived at times (filled with exposition framed as dialogue), still manages to capture these independent and hardy individuals as they were; fearful for the future of their lifestyle, but clinging to traditions dating back more than three hundred years. Filled with fascinating detail, poignant and honest, Watermen is a recommended read.

really good

this was a book that anybody can read and understand. it is also a book that is kind of relaxing. "Beautiful Swimmers" is a book about the Chesapeake Bay way of life that got/gets a lot of praise, deservedly so. But I do think that "Watermen" is better. Anybody that is interested in the Chesapeake should give "Watermen" a read.