Log Canoe Races on the Eastern Shore
If you are a resident of the Eastern Shore, chances are reasonable that you’ve at least heard of log canoe racing. One hopes that Eastern Shore school education includes enough Native American history to include the log canoes the Europeans encountered when they arrived in the 1600s.
Without the technology of metal tools and materials, the Native people made their canoes out of large trees harvested in the forests. To fell these trees, the early boatwrights built fires at the base of a selected tree and chipped the burnt wood away until the tree could no longer stand.
These dugout canoe makers then used more fire and stone tools to round off the ends of the logs and remove unneeded branches and limbs. Finished canoe lengths ran from 24 to 36 feet. Once launched, the canoes were used for hunting, fishing, and transporting people.
The European colonists adopted the Native vessel. They had the technological advantages of metal tools and materials and of sails and rigging.
The colonial canoe hulls improved on the Native ones by narrowing one log to serve as the keel. And added to the sides of that central log were as many as five, seven, or more logs to make up the full hull. Tall pines were cut, dressed, and fitted as masts for sails, eliminating paddles.
These colonial vessels were used as fishing and oystering boats, and as transports to carry raw materials to Annapolis and Baltimore. The sooner a colonial waterman delivered his seafood to a market buyer, the higher the price he was paid. Consequently, well before the sport of canoe racing began, log canoe owners and operators were accustomed to fast sailing.
In the latter part of the 19th century, some 6,300 sailing canoes worked the Bay. But the eventual take-over by the internal combustion engine rendered sailing vessels obsolete.
But well before the internal combustion engine eliminated the use of wind power, watermen began racing their log canoes. Some crews even used two sets of riggings. One set of shorter masts and smaller sails worked for dredging for oysters. A second set of much higher masts and larger sails drove the canoes in races. To balance and stabilize the racing boats, springboards or hiking boards on stuck out on the leeward side and were weighted by agile crew members.
These purpose-built racing boats have long, narrow hulls and low drafts. The stem-to-stern lengths of 35 or so feet are extended by a bowsprit half the hull length. The much higher racing speeds and the scramble from one side of the boat to the other while racing made these vessels impractical for dredging and fishing.
Today’s races are scheduled in the summer at various courses up and down the Bay. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels offers private charters to watch some of the races. Maryland Public Television and others offer videos for armchair race watchers.
In 1984, an application went to the National Park Service’s Registry of Historic Places to recognize a group of 18 Chesapeake Bay log canoes. This group of boats is “the last active representations of the oldest indigenous vessel type on the bay … which was developed in the 17th century by early European settlers from the original dugout canoe.” Log canoes and their history are unique to the Eastern Shore and tie us to our past.
Jim Block taught English at Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in Western Mass. He coached cross-country and advised the newspaper and the debate society there. He taught at Marlborough College in England and Robert College in Istanbul. He and his wife retired to Chestertown, Md., in 2014.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
