The Black Shipbuilders of the Chesapeake Bay

The Black Shipbuilders of the Chesapeake Bay. Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park and Museum. . A national heritage site, the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park celebrates African-American who worked on Baltimore’s maritime trades in the 1800s. It also tells the stories of Frederick Douglass and Isaac Myers, who worked as chandlers in the Fell’s Point shipyards of their city, and who each gained fame later in life as prominent leaders and reformers. The Park’s indoor galleries also bring to light a vibrant 19th century African-American community that banded together and carved out institutions and businesses for themselves in the park, you’ll see a working re-creation of the first black-owned marine railway and shipyard in the U.S. founded in 1868 by 15-black entrepreneurs, including Isaac Myers. The Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, located just west of the Park, employed both blacks and whites without discrimination. The museum’s interactive exhibits let you try your hand at caulking and hoisting a barrel or designing a ship, and you can watch the repair or building of an actual Chesapeake Bay watercraft at the nearby boatbuilding workshop.

(Inscription below the image in the upper left center) . Above: For more than 200 years, African American and whites shipwrights have built and repaired ships in Fell’s Point shipyards. Witness them working on this specialized craft.

(Inscription below the images in the upper right center) . Isaac Myers and Frederick Douglass.

(Inscription below the image in the lower right center) . Above; The Douglass-Myers Maritime Park and Museum boast one of Fell’s Point’s oldest industrial buildings and one the largest. These buildings house galleries, a gift shop, offices, a waterfront bistro, and a ship building workshop.

(Inscription in the upper right) . Frederick Douglass . Along his path from slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, to his time in prominence as America’s first black leader to speak against slavery, Frederick Douglass, spent several years in the shipbuilding trade in Baltimore. Here he worked at the Asa Price shipyard where he learned to be a caulker on ships being built in Fell’s Point. While living in Fell’s Point, he purchased his first book and learned to read and write. He also met his wife in Fell’s Point and with the community’s help, escaped from slavery to New York and became a renowned orator, author, abolitionist, and statesman.

Chesapeake Connection . During the era of sail, all sailing ships needed to be hauled out of the water periodically onto dry dock to have their wooden hulls repaired. To show how this was done, the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, and Museum has a working model on a 19th century marine railroad that carried boats onto dry land for repairs.