Tangier and Smith

In the middle of the Lower Chesapeake lie two seemingly remote islands, Tangier and Smith. Brio had hoped to spend a day in each, but there are very few places to anchor or tie up that are protected. These are self-contained microcosms of what life was like as skipjack skippers fishing the oyster beds and crabs of the shallow waters off these islands. One of the goals of visiting these islands was to hear the distinct spoken dialect of these islands. By not stopping at Tangier, we feared we would miss sampling this. But fear not! Ice cream intervened and gave us the opportunity!

Here's a chart of Tangier Island. Only the buff-colored areas of land are truly inhabitable. The green areas are prone to flooding.

We transected Tangier by following the narrow channel with a red "1" pointing to a dock. Here's a sampling of photos along our passage. This was sort of like traveling down Main Street.

Life here is "thin." Many have left and the population continues to shrink, sort of like how the land area erodes. But for those who remain, they are stubborn and reportedly friendly and gracious.

After passing through, we exited the land.

We went across the passage to a long-winding river and traveled about five miles up the river to Onancock. We tied up at the Onancock Wharf.

We were given a friendly welcome, including being given use of the courtesy car, a former police car with Virginia government-use plates! Off we went to Scoops, a great ice cream store.

There we happened to run into a fellow who used to live on Tangier Island. When he grew up on Tangier, he said there were 150 kids in his school. Today it's less than a third that size and is shrinking every year. Young people leave as soon as they can. There is no future seen on Tangier, even though it is a beautiful place to live. The youngest skip jack skipper in in his 50s.

We did hear the Tangier dialect at Scoops. It was easily understood and then would sort of break off into a kind of English-sounding language and then come back to our current English. You had to keep on your toes while listening!

Back to Brio we wnt after ice cream to enjoy a good meal at The Mallard, just about 50 feet from Brio's stern. Fish and crab. Yum.

Cheers,

Brio