The Annapolis Maritime Museum (AMM) is located just down the street from the PropTalk headquarters in Eastport, Annapolis (723 Second Street). So, when we heard one of its historic vessels, the Hoopers Island Draketail Peg Wallace, was going to be restored, we had to learn more. The information on the history of the boat is courtesy of AMM.
Peg Wallace is a Hoopers Island Draketail, and this specific design was influenced by many styles before it. One of the first Chesapeake Bay workboats was the log canoe, a direct descendant of the Native American dugout canoe. It inspired a number of subsequent vessel designs and was the first motorized workboat on the Bay. However, log canoes were originally designed as sailing craft, so they did not always adapt well to engine power.
The Hoopers Island Draketail is considered the first Chesapeake Bay craft built specifically for engine rather than sail power. It also represents the Chesapeake Bay’s last indigenous workboat design. They are so named because the design originated at Hoopers Island in Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in the years leading up to World War I. “Draketail” refers to the boat’s reverse-rake stern profile, which resembles the aft end of a duck. These vessels were used for crabbing and oystering until the mid-1950s.
Draketails were quite popular with watermen because they combined both speed and beauty at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, while aesthetically pleasing, these raked-transom boats were slower than some later designs and at times inefficient. They were also more difficult to maintain and prone to leaking. By the 1940s, watermen had begun to favor the more practical broad-beamed, high-sided, box-stern design. Because of this, there are fewer than 20 known surviving Hoopers Island Draketails today, which is why the preservation of the Peg Wallace is so important.
Peg Wallace measures 37 and a half feet long, drafts two to four feet, and has a beam of six feet, eight inches. Powered by a 10-15 horsepower gas engine, she is built of loblolly pine and white cedar planking on oak frames. She was launched in 1925 and donated to AMM by Reid Bandy in 2002, after he completed a full restoration.
For the past several years Peg Wallace has been a fixture of AMM’s waterside campus, but she has begun to show signs of wear once again. Currently she is back in Reid’s shop, where he is planning another full-scale restoration. We recently caught up with Reid to talk about his history with the boat and how the donation initially came about.
“I was interested in restoring an old workboat and I went on the hunt for a victim,” says Reid. “I found the boat on Town Creek in Oxford, MD. It was owned by a fellow who was well known in the community, and at the time he was using it to run a trot line recreationally. I knocked on his door, we talked for a few minutes, and then he sold it to me. That was 30-some odd years ago.”
When asked about the condition of the boat, Reid says it was in pretty bad shape. “It had been well used and not necessarily lovingly cared for,” he says. “It had a lot of rotten boards and a lot of intricate original construction materials that were failing with time—specifically the iron fasteners were corroding which split the panels.
“The boat just kind of turned into a patchwork quilt of what she used to be; patched up and broken but still being used.”
Regarding the original restoration, Reid says he got really lucky. He was able to hire a fellow who was a shipwright for the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, and this guy got him going for about a month and a half before he had to return up north. He says, “He showed me a lot of the basics and helped me carve some of the more intricate pieces out of locust and oak.” That first time around it was a four-month restoration period.
Reid owned the boat for 10 years. He had a routine where he would pull the boat every other year, leaving it in the water for two years at a time. But over time he noticed that it had begun to degrade and would become quite cumbersome through the winters with heavy snow and ice. It was around this time that the maritime museum began “cajoling” Reid to make his Draketail a permanent fixture at AMM, and he agreed. The museum named her the Peg Wallace, after the co-founder of the museum and the then-director.
This was about six or seven years after Reid completed the restoration. He put a new motor in the boat and did a bunch of work to make the Peg Wallace a running, on-the-water exhibit.
Prior to the museum naming the boat, Reid explained how he never knew the vessel’s original name. The original title of the boat listed the name “Pace” under builder, but it was not a boatbuilder name that Reid was familiar with, and no vessel name was ever stated on the paperwork. He says, “I never found a maker’s mark of any kind, never found a name of any kind. But I knew her value through her pedigree.”
When asked to elaborate, he shared how the Peg Wallace is remarkably well-made compared to other vessels of the time. “It was made by shipwrights,” he says, “and I know that because of some of the special pieces that were installed. She has stopwaters, which keep water from migrating down a seam. It has exquisite carpentry. That’s what kept this boat alive through several generations, its craftsmanship.”
So, what’s next for the Peg Wallace? Reid says that he’s currently working on “evaluating what has to be done and how it’s to be done.” He’s having a naval architect from Chesapeake Light Craft in Annapolis record the lines of the boat so there will be an electronic file should anything ever happen to it. This would also make it possible to build a replica of the boat if there was interest in that in the future.
“I got her in the building, so I look at her every day, I evaluate her every day,” says Reid. “The wet and moistened wood that is degraded and rotten has begun to shrink, which is very apparent. But that happens when you get a wooden boat inside.
“I replaced 30 frame sets and a big section on her chine. She needs to be re-planked with a new bottom and more than likely a new keel. The skeleton is decent, but all the exterior needs to go. And you can’t get old growth wood like you used to,” he added.
Regarding the future of the vessel, Reid says he just wants his efforts to go into the best interest of the boat.
Once restored, AMM plans to explore building a lean-to or covered structure to house her in the future.
To learn more about the Annapolis Maritime Museum, visit amaritime.org. If you would like to get involved, AMM is looking for volunteers with wooden boat experience for two other projects: a deadrise named Lil Hess and the Lydia Dee skipjack. Contact [email protected] if you are interested in volunteering.
By Kaylie Jasinski