Lady Maryland Under Sail
Seen today on our cruise to Baltimore harbor with friends.
About the Ship
Lady Maryland is a Chesapeake Bay pungy schooner. Pungy schooners, designed to carry perishable cargo, such as produce from the Eastern Shore west across the Bay or pineapples from Bermuda to Baltimore, evolved from the fast, maneuverable Chesapeake pilot schooners of the 1700s. The first pungies were built in the mid-1800s and plied the Bay until the early 1900s. By the 1950s, there were no pungies on the Bay or in the world. When Lady Maryland was built in 1986, she became the first and only pungy schooner in existence since the 1950s, and she remains the only pungy in the world today. She is painted in the traditional pungy paint scheme of pink and green. The origins of this paint scheme are unknown, but one theory is that since the pungies transported produce, they were painted the colors of a watermelon as an advertising scheme.
My maternal grandfather's family were Chesapeake Bay watermen from St George Island and owned a pungy that was used as a "buy boat" that would buy the catch from local oyster tongers and take it to Baltimore to market. The pungy could hold 1,000 bushels of oysters. Sadly, the oysters have all but disappeared from the bay due to over-fishing, pollution and disease.
Read more about her here
livingclassrooms.org/lady_maryland_facts.php
Lady Maryland Under Sail
Seen today on our cruise to Baltimore harbor with friends.
About the Ship
Lady Maryland is a Chesapeake Bay pungy schooner. Pungy schooners, designed to carry perishable cargo, such as produce from the Eastern Shore west across the Bay or pineapples from Bermuda to Baltimore, evolved from the fast, maneuverable Chesapeake pilot schooners of the 1700s. The first pungies were built in the mid-1800s and plied the Bay until the early 1900s. By the 1950s, there were no pungies on the Bay or in the world. When Lady Maryland was built in 1986, she became the first and only pungy schooner in existence since the 1950s, and she remains the only pungy in the world today. She is painted in the traditional pungy paint scheme of pink and green. The origins of this paint scheme are unknown, but one theory is that since the pungies transported produce, they were painted the colors of a watermelon as an advertising scheme.
My maternal grandfather's family were Chesapeake Bay watermen from St George Island and owned a pungy that was used as a "buy boat" that would buy the catch from local oyster tongers and take it to Baltimore to market. The pungy could hold 1,000 bushels of oysters. Sadly, the oysters have all but disappeared from the bay due to over-fishing, pollution and disease.
Read more about her here
livingclassrooms.org/lady_maryland_facts.php