Maryland
I don't usually write about the big oyster-dredging skipjacks here. But my friend Charley Humphrey connected the dots on the "oyster pirate" Champion Girl. I couldn't find the story online anywhere else, so here it is:
In my compendium of crabbing bateaux and their descendants, I told how Howard Chapelle was especially fond of the small crabbing bateau, Teddy, built near Deal's Island around 1900. Teddy was the inspiration for a "cruising bateau", Blue Crab, which Chapelle designed for a client. Blue Crab was built in 1946 and is still alive at Blackwater Adventures.
Chapelle modified his Blue Crab plan and commissioned the renowned boatbuilder Jim Richardson to build Sweepstakes for him in 1964.
While Richardson was building Sweepstakes, journalist Robert Keith visited his boatyard and commissioned a longer version of Sweepstakes. Keith's cruising bateau was launched in 1965. According to Keith, "At Jim's suggestion, we named her Champion Girl, after an oyster pirate boat that once roamed the lower Potomac River."
[ Robert Keith's Champion Girl, The Jim Richardson Boat Book, p. 88. ]
Chapelle and Richardson were neighbors and friends. Richardson joked about how Chapelle tried to micro-manage the construction of Sweepstakes. Chapelle groused to Keith that it didn't matter if Champion Girl sailed well, because Richardson had built her without blueprints, so he could never build another just like her. Nevertheless, Chapelle and Richardson respected one another's professional knowledge and experience. They shared ideas and swapped stories about traditional sailing workboat design and construction.
One of those stories, apparently, was about an oyster dredger whose lines Chapelle had drawn 30 years before Richardson built Keith's Champion Girl - plans that Chapelle never published but which found their way into the Smithsonian collection.
Champion Girl.
Smithsonian Ship Plan List BA 89-15.
CBMM Cat. No. 1994.0027.0108.00
Large-format ship plans are here.
No build date for Champion Girl is provided in the plan. But here are some of the details:
Plan by H.I. Chapelle, Cambridge Md.
Taken off by Victor Mindeleff.
Length on Deck: 35' 5-1/2"
Beam on Deck: 10' 1"
Draft at Post: 2' 2"
Original carved trailboards had been removed, with billet, only latter seen.
Note: Said to have been an "oyster pirate".
Bateau owned at Morgantown Md. in 1937.
More about Small Boats
I also write about volunteer work in small boat conservation at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum: Small Boat Shed Volunteers
And about sail-and-oar cruising in small open boats on the Chesapeake and its tributaries: Sail+Oar – Chesapeake Log.