Annapolis Maritime Museum

Robert Fulton launched the first commercially viable steamboat on the Hudson River in 1807, although a Marylander named James Rumsey demonstrated a working steamboat on the Potomac River as early as 1784. Steamboats started running on the Chesapeake Bay in 1813, and by the Civil War regular packets connected ports of call on both sides of the Bay with railroad lines to transport people, seafood, farm produce, lumber, and other goods at a time when roads were poor and bridges were few.

In the days before air conditioning and summer beach traffic, people seeking relief from muggy urban centers could take a pleasant ride aboard steamboats like the Emma Giles to resorts around the Bay like the one at nearby Bay Ridge. Known as the 'Queen Resort of the Chesapeake," Bay Ridge attracted thousands of heat-weary city dwellers between 1886 and 1903. They enjoyed swimming, fishing, boating, the hotel, dining and dancing pavilions, all-day band concerts, picnic grounds, and a two-mile electric trolley ride that wound along the river and the lake shore.

Key
1. The steamboat Emma Giles ran excursions out of Baltimore from 1887 to 1936. She could carry as many as 1,500 passengers.
2. After the Civil War, the sloop-of-war U.S.S. Constellation served as a training ship for the



midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, which was founded in Annapolis in 1845. The Constellation was launched in 1855 in Norfolk and can now be seen in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.
3. Fleets of log canoes and schooners known as bugeyes" and "pungies" scoured the Bay bottom for oysters. Watermen harvested a record 18 million bushels of oysters the winter of 1887. When not used for dredging oysters, these boats carried cargo, including loads of watermelon from the Eastern Shore.
4. Boating, fishing and crabbing were as popular in the 1880s as they are now. Small boats were available for rent for an afternoon's outing.
5. The Maryland diamondback terrapin is the state's official reptile.
6. The first Greenbury Point Lighthouse was built on shore in 1849.

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Show me all markers in:  Annapolis, MD  |  Anne Arundel County  |  21403  |  Maryland  |  United States of America

From this spot, you can see 1608 - Captain John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages
From this spot, you can see 1672 - Providence: Settlement on the Severn
From this spot, you can see 1774 - The "Annapolis Tea Party"
From this spot, you can see 1919 - Oysters: The Bay's "White Gold"
Oysters: Vital to Nature. Vital to Our Future.
Oysters: Vital to Commerce. Vital to Culture.
Oysters: Vital to the Lifeline of the Chesapeake
From this spot, you can see 1998 - Annapolis: America's Sailing Capital
Welcome to Eastport
Harvesting the Bay

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