Everyone has heard of Nessie, the Monster of Loch Ness. Less well known – although perhaps a distant relative – is Chessie, the mysterious serpentine resident of the Chesapeake Bay. Sighted in 1943, recorded on video in 1983, and spotted again more recently in 1997, theories about what Chessie might be range from mutant eels to anacondas that escaped from a merchant ship in the 17th century. There was even a reputed sighting in 1994 that turned out to be a Florida manatee who likes to visit northern waters. But sea monsters aren’t the only forgotten things that live off of the Chesapeake Bay.
Captain Herbie Sadler was a waterman like no other. Working six days a week on the crab and oyster boats Little HES and Big HES from 3 AM to 9 PM, it’s difficult to imagine a man with a life more involved with the water. Everybody in town got their crabs from Sadler’s, the seafood market known affectionately by family as “the crab shack”. Everyone in that family loved the water; Herbie’s wife Gladys would take a boat out fishing whenever the chance came by, and often when it didn’t. In fact, everyone in that whole town had some connection to the murky green Bay water that sustained it. The town was Eastport, just a quick jaunt over the bridge from Annapolis, Maryland. More than just that short distance separated the two towns, however: Annapolis was the prim former US capital, home of the US Navy, of history, and of culture – Eastport was a strange land. There are many stories about the more working-class town, and some realities. Every year on the first day of spring, all the boaters gather on the docks and proceed to very unceremoniously burn every one of the socks they wore all winter, and go barefoot inside their deck shoes from then until well into the fall. A poem by the 1995 poet laureate of Eastport called “Ode to the Sock Burners” explains that the socks being burned are the same ones the boaters put on the previous fall, that they have not been washed even once in that whole time, and that “Some think incineration is the only solution / Cause washin’ ‘em contributes to the Chesapeake’s pollution”. In the old days, when families grew up and moved on to start three or four more families of their own, those new families would all live on the same street as the first one. It was never easy to know which house any of the children might be in at any given time, but there was an old-time sense of community that is difficult to find in towns nowadays. Herbie Sadler’s family was just like that – all of Gladys’s sisters lived right on Second Street.
Herbie’s faithful companion on the boats was Lady, the Chesapeake Retriever. She was adored by everyone who knew her, and spent her days out on the boats, or trotting through the crab shack wagging her tail and leaving little droplets of the Bay water she swam in behind her. Often Captain Herbie would take hands out with him, and he was known for teaching many a young man the way of the boats and the water itself. They would sometimes spend the night on the Sadler’s floor, and anticipated a good breakfast in the morning preceding a long day of hard work and learning about the water. Some boys even slept in the bow of Herbie’s boat and waited for him to come in the morning. Herbie loved to teach about the water, and always encouraged children to be interested in it. None of those many helping hands would ever be his own son, however, as he and Gladys had only daughters.
Those daughters grew up and married Eastport or Annapolis men, several of whom had worked at the crab shack, and continue to live in Annapolis now – they will until the day they die. The youngest daughter, Dorothy (nicknamed Punky for some arbitrary, yet comical, reason), is the exception, for she married a tall young man from the mountains of Pennsylvania whom she met in Annapolis while he was training at the Naval Academy. He remembers fondly now the times Midshipmen (or Midie’s as they are locally known) were assigned to stand courtesy guard over the crypt of John Paul Jones beneath the Academy’s chapel. Jones is known as the Father of the American Navy, and here even in this northern man could be found traces of the water.
Once the daughters were all married off there came grandsons, and many of them possess fond memories of early morning wake up calls and long days at work on the water in Pop Pop’s boats. Dorothy’s oldest son, David, not only worked at the crab shack and on the boats but lived with his grandparents during the week while he was going to school and only went home to his own parents on the weekends. He also worked for a good while at McNasby’s oyster business – another prominent Eastport seafood company.
Life went on and was good. Grandchildren slowly moved on and away from the crab shack with their own families. Then one day Captain Sadler died, at the age of 72. Gladys said afterwards, “He died at our seafood market, waiting for crabs to cook. I haven’t had a decent crab since he died.” In his whole life, he had never driven a car, traveling only by means of his own two boats on the great road of the water. Riding in a car getting back to Eastport he once commented to his daughter Betty, “You can go anywhere you want to go, but this is the best place. You don’t need to go anywhere else.”
Some years later the grandson David, now a preacher, was stunned to be informed by a congregant before service one Sunday that the empty crab shack had been torn down – demolished. Memories flooded in, and the sermon that followed was rather difficult to preach.
Despite the loss of a building that a community had loved, the legacy of Herbie Sadler lived on. In June 2001, Sadler was officially recognized as a local historical figure in many ways. The Annapolis Maritime Museum opened the Herbie Sadler Park on Back Creek at the end of Second Street, and opened a museum soon after in a small building on the edge of the grassy lawn. Across the lawn is a landside boat house that protects the hull of the Little HES, Herbie’s crab boat, from the elements and preserves it for future visitors. The Big HES is also sheltered at the Capt. Salem Avery House museum in Shady Side, a bit south of Annapolis, and June 10th is celebrated by residents of Eastport and Annapolis each year as Captain Herbie Sadler Day. For remaining family, this day is the perfect excuse to fry some homemade crabcakes, or shell out the extra cash and sit down to a delightful summer hard crab feast. Since then, Sadler has also been inducted into the Annapolis Maritime Hall of fame.
Everyone knows what H²O is. But not everyone knows the water. People who have come from or were a part of this Eastport-Annapolis legacy know the water. With the simple addition of a small three letter word, “water” goes from meaning a refreshing drink to becoming something other, a great body, a being – the water. This being is separate from backyard swimming pools and bathtubs and sinks. In a way, it is also separate from beaches and ocean waves. The water is murky and dark, hiding many unknown things from old tires to the year’s crab harvest to Chessie the sea monster. It also holds the memory of a way of life that has all but died out with advancements in gear and commercial fishing. But that memory also lives in those still living who were a part of it, and even in their children who weren’t. Newspaper articles and announcement posters rest framed with care inside their houses, and are treasured as beloved, priceless heirlooms. They’ll be passed down from those grandkids to their kids, and to their kids after that. The memory of a waterman’s legacy will live on as long as his family does, rising to the surface from time to time just like Chessie’s long dark neck.