Watermen Behind Razor Wire

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."