This Is the Secret Destination for Soft-Shell Crabs
The Chesapeake Bay’s Smith Island is fighting for survival
Smith Island in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay is a secret — of history and time, and lives lived on the water. My whole family was born and raised in Maryland, grandparents included, yet we had never heard of Smith Island until my mother went with friends five years ago.
The drive is three hours south from Baltimore — without traffic, no odd feat in the summer months — to Crisfield, Maryland. Park your car on a strip of grass on the side of the hardware store for overnight visits. Put an envelope with $2 and your license plate scribbled on the outside in the mailbox. Or you could scribble a pleading note, something like, “Going to Smith Island for the night. Please don’t tow me!” with your cell number, place it on the dashboard of your car, and hope for the best.
Catch a boat from the marina or the pier — most leave at 12:30 p.m. — to Smith Island, 12 miles off the coast of Crisfield. To call them ferries would make them seem like they are regulated by a local agency. They are not. Bring cash.
The island’s claim to fame is twofold: the Smith Island cake (a layer cake knighted the official state cake in 2008) and crabs. Allegedly, Captain John Smith established it on his first exploration of the Chesapeake in 1608 after reaching Jamestown in 1606.
Much has been made of Smith Island’s dialect, how years of isolation has preserved its similarities to the original English settlers. If you’re a linguist, you probably notice the moments that harken back to Cornwall. Otherwise, it mostly sounds Southern and country, not that different from the lilting accent at the Cow Palace at the Maryland State Fair. The island is also home to the Martin National Wildlife Refuge, a nesting and migratory habitat for many species necessary to maintain the marine life of the bay.
Three villages comprise the island: Ewell, Rhodes Point, and Tylerton. Ewell is the commercial and tourist center, with a few inns and B&Bs, a gas station, a library, the school, and the Smith Island Cultural Center. Rhodes Point is connected to Ewell by bridges and roads, most vulnerable to the bay’s winds and water. Tylerton, home to the Smith Island Crabmeat Co-Op, comes in second for most fraught from an erosion perspective. Thirty-two people live on Tylerton full-time. Tylerton is separated from the other villages by water and has one store, the Drum Point Market.
There is no law enforcement or official government on Smith Island. There are few cars, no hospitals, no school beyond sixth grade. Alcohol is not sold on the island, and cell service is unreliable.
Golf carts and bicycles are the primary modes of transportation. Initially, a golf cart seems a bit luxurious and lazy, until you spend a day walking around in the sun at the widest part of the bay. Bring sunscreen and avoid wearing black.
The few vehicles on Tylerton seem to sink into the marshy quicksand; one truck with a Romney/Ryan bumper sticker fared as well as that political campaign.
Another truck with a “No He Can’t” sticker has no tags, a common sight. The town feels like it is closing in on itself, heading for higher ground around the church in the center. Overnight, the tide rises, surrounding homes on the perimeter with bay water. Most houses have walkways from the paved road to the front door — a wheelchair ramp, cinderblocks, or particleboard — for this reason.
Religion is the governing force for everyone on the island. They are Methodists, a religion that offers the faith to live and work on the water. The Tylerton village sign states “Life is Much, When God is in It.” Each village has its own church, but the one on Tylerton is the biggest building in the village, with beautiful stained glass and its cemetery of caskets encased in concrete that push up from the graves, lined by American flags. The villages share a pastor, performing three services every Sunday, traveling by boat to church.
The island’s residents live off of the bay, crabbing in the spring and summer and harvesting oysters and fishing in the winter. The majority are 60 or older, and almost the entire population, less than 200 people, is white. The wives of watermen steamed and picked crabs caught by their husbands in their own kitchens, selling the Smith Island-specific mixture of both lump and claw meat to tourists and restaurants, until Maryland’s Department of Health put an end to this practice. The women raised money and formed the Smith Island Crab Co-Op in 1996, an accredited facility for processing crabs.
It’s difficult to tell how busy the co-op is, or how many active crabbers work full-time. Crabbing is tough work, long hours on the water from when the sun rises to past its setting, a physical, time-consuming task that has not been advanced or automated. People don’t retire, but there’s a limit to what the body can do.
These days, there are more regulations, fewer, more expensive licenses, and less seafood. Young people left the island for different work, for jobs with health insurance and security. Along the docks for the boats are shedding shacks, perfectly aligned behind them. Shedding shacks organize the crabs, as they need to be separated according to when they molt. The body grows and literally cracks out of the shell, and the crab backs out of it.
A freshly molted crab — a soft-shell crab — is incredibly vulnerable to other crabs with harder shells. The watermen can tell if a crab is a “peeler” — a red line along the back fin indicates the crab will molt in a few days. The crabs must be constantly supervised to quell any massacre. Most of these shedding shacks were non-operational during our visit. A few of them are falling into the bay, unusable.
After Hurricane Sandy, state officials tried to buy out 10 Smith Island residents, to lure them to the mainland. It’s easy to see the island’s erosion and human mortality as neck-and-neck for claims against the future. Smith Island has been losing land at a rate of two feet annually. No one accepted; instead, the residents formed Smith Island United to represent their concerns that the government would rather buy people out than preserve their home.
Since then, the Army Corps of Engineers has been brought in for major projects, including jetties at Rhodes Point, a new bulkhead on Tylerton, and a dredging project that will create habitat for the wildlife refuge and restore dunes to provide a natural breakwater for Ewell.
There are more part-timers on the island now, people who own homes and visit but are not permanent residents. As the residents age, more homes are up for sale. Smith Island United is focused on increasing tourism: There are more listings on Airbnb, more tours popping up, and a vegan coffee roaster on Ewell along with a bakery and an art fair. A man named Eddie Corbin, who used to crab, will take you on his pontoon boat to the pelican rookery, a pristine stretch of beach. It’s an incredible boat ride, with osprey nests and herons. Again, bring cash.
Watermen are stubborn as all get out. To live a life on the water, to suffer the elements and call it home and love it and want nothing from the outside, none of that makes sense anymore. But without that stubbornness, we don’t get to eat crabs or oysters. We don’t get to visit a beautiful, weird, archaic place where people pride themselves on their way of life, their connection to the past, their sacrifices and faith. Life may be simple here, but it’s not easy. It’s a beautiful and decrepit place. I’m betting it will find a way to stay.
Millicent Souris is a cook and writer working in New York City. She is the Rescue Food Coordinator at St. John’s Bread & Life, Brooklyn’s largest emergency food provider. She is an editor-at-large for Diner Journal and published “How to Build a Better Pie: Sweet and Savory Recipes for Flaky Crusts, Toppers, and the Things in Between” (Quarry Books, 2012). Her work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Diner Journal, The Rumpus, and Brooklyn Based.
Photographer Julia Gillard is a New York street photographer with a Midwesterner’s eye for observing open spaces. Her photographs have been published in The New York Times, Mother Jones, Photograph Magazine and The Financial Times. She is the photo editor of the Diner Journal, an independent magazine featuring original art, literature, and recipes.
