She could handle a boat before she could read.Ĭarol Moore is an eighth generation Tangier Islander, she could handle a boat before she could read. But like most of her neighbors, Carol Moore had been born into a seafaring family: She was the eighth generation of her kin born on Tangier Island, sixteen open-water miles from the nearest mainland town in Virginia. This time of year, she was running afoul of the prevailing winds, and if they were blowing against the tide, the journey would not be smooth. Out past the last of the shanties, the channel opened into the Chesapeake Bay, and most every day she threw the boat into a banking turn to the north. A watery little business district, home to the greatest fishery of its kind in the world. One hand on the tiller, ball cap pulled low to cheat the wind, she would speed past the county dock and twenty-odd workboats parked off to port and, to starboard, a ragged line of crab shanties-weather-scoured sheds perched on stilts a few feet over the drink, surrounding decks stacked high with wire-mesh crab pots. She'd throw open the throttle and crouch forward as the boat's nose came up and its stern dug deep, her six-foot frame rocking against swells that thudded the fiberglass hull. It was her habit to strike west from the harbor, into the channel that split her island in two. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.Ī day after the storm passed, Carol Pruitt Moore climbed into her skiff and set off for the ruins of Canaan.

In eager anticipation of this evening discussion, we’re offering a bit of a preview below of the powerful story courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.įrom CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, by Earl Swift, published by Dey Street. Joined by prominent lifetime Tangier residents and watermen, Cook Cannon and Ooker Eskridge, Swift will discuss with the group Tangier's past, present, and tenuous future. But the very water that has long sustained Tangier now erases the island day by day, wave by wave, as the island sinks and the Chesapeake rises.

Often called the softshell crab capital of the world, Tangier's surrounding waters are integral to its way of life.

On Thursday, November 15, CBF is thrilled to host author Earl Swift as he discusses his recent book Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island. Swift spent roughly two years living in the watermen community on Tangier Island, a 1.3-square-mile spit of land in the center of the Chesapeake Bay.

Chesapeake requiem