Watermen Behind Razor Wire
Many Crabbers And Their Families Adopt a Most Landlocked Job
SOURCE: | By Richard Furno - The Washington Post - December 29, 2007 TOOLBOX   Resize Text
 Save/Share +
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
|
Sunday, December 30, 2007; Page C01
WESTOVER, Md.
Everybody knows that the Chesapeake Bay's watermen are vanishing. This is where some of them went.
At Eastern Correctional Institution, a state prison here on the Eastern Shore, the water is so close that gulls sometimes fly in and waddle around the yard. But the birds aren't the only bay creatures here. At least 30 of the prison's correctional officers used to have full-time jobs in the region's seafood industry.
They were brought to the prison by an outgoing demographic tide around the Chesapeake: a diaspora of watermen and their relatives, dispersed to new jobs by failing shellfish harvests.
Some have chosen trucks, tugboats or taxis. And some have chosen this job, gaining steady pay by immersing themselves in a sometimes violent, vulgar world.
One of them is Janice Marshall, 62, a waterman's wife from Smith Island. Her previous jobs include picking the meat out of cooked blue crabs. Now, three generations of her family work behind razor wire.
"This time of the day, I'd probably be fishing up my crabs, if I had any -- if I was lucky enough to have any -- and I'd be getting ready to start supper," Marshall said as she started one recent evening shift at the jail. "Fishing up" means plucking crabs in mid-molt out of a holding tank, before their soft shells harden.
"Whoever thought, in your lifetime, you'd be here working?" Marshall said.
Correctional Officer-2
Janice Marshall
Marshall had spent almost her entire life on Smith Island, a spot of marshy ground, slowly sinking, 12 miles out in the bay. She founded a crab-picking cooperative there. She sang parodies at the watermen's association fundraiser: "To All the Crabs I've Caught Before" and "Hey, We Got Crabs, Babe."
