Maritime Maryland ─ A History

Harvested for food, harnessed for power, and home to more than 3,600 species of plants, fish, and animals, Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries have long been essential to the sustainability and survival of the region's populations. Historian William S. Dudley explores that history in an engaging and comprehensive account of Maryland's storied maritime heritage.

Dudley paints a vivid picture of Maryland's maritime past in its broadest scope, exploring the complex and nuanced interactions of humans, land, and water through descriptions of shipbuilding, steam technology, agricultural pollution, commercial and passenger transportation, naval campaigns, watermen, crabbing, and oystering. He also discusses the evolution of recreational boating---yachting, cruising, and racing---and the role of underwater archaeology in uncovering the bay's shipwrecks. These interactions become chapters in the larger story of Maryland's waterways, a story that Dudley tells through insightful prose and stunning illustrations.

This rich history of Maryland's waterways reveals how human enterprise has affected---and been affected by---Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

William S. Dudley has long been associated with the naval and maritime history of Maryland and currently serves in positions with the Maryland Historical Society, the Naval Historical Foundation, and Sea History magazine. He is the historian general of the Naval Order of the United States and is author and editor of numerous works, including Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, James Fenimore Cooper's Ned Myers, or A Life before the Mast, and The Early Republic and the Sea: Essays on the Naval and Maritime History of the Early United States. Dr. Dudley was director of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., from 1995 to 2004.