More than a dozen oyster houses ringed the waterfront by the 1870s, some built out into the harbor on pilings. Throughout the winter, local watermen harvested shellfish from the Bay and sold their catch to the packing houses. Shuckers, many of whom lived nearby the dock, skillfully removed the oysters from their shells, filling thousands of buckets for the cannery. The Annapolis Canning Company, once located across the dock from where you are standing, shipped its processed oysters to markets througout the United States. When McNasby's Oyster Company, which started its business on Compromise Street moved to Eastport in 1918, it employed 32 workers whose pay averaged $28 a week.
"The watermen were early risers every day. Long hours of the day, until nightfall, they would be on the water, whether it was fishing or oystering. They went out there under any weather conditions...If the market was gutted, they would only get a few cents a pound for fish or, say, oysters. Practically you couldn't give them away at certain times of the year." - Lester R Trott, Then Again...Annapolis, 1900-1965
During the winter, from September to April, when oysters could legally be harvested, the oyster fleet made the dock and harbor its home port. At times there would be so many boats that it was possible for watermen to walk across their decks from one side of the dock to the other. Oyster dredging took place in deeper water on sailboats of several types including skipjacks, bugeyes, pungys, and schooners. Many watermen worked from the decks of powered workboats, using long shafted tongs to scoop up oyster from the the reefs in shallow waters.
Annapolis continued to be a working harbor in the nineteenth century but with a difference role. A century earlier, the city's merchants shipped tobacco, flour, beef, and corn to Europe and the West Indies. Now boats brought produce, fish, oysters, crabs, and lumber to Annapolis for sale to residents of the city and nearby rural areas. Food and livestock went to the market house; seafood was sold from fish market stalls built on pilings at the head of the dock and at local restaurants; and lumber went to Johnson's Lumber Company, located just north of here in the Hell Point neighborhood. Local families also supplied their own food by fishing, oystering, and crabbing.
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