By Reed Hellman

  Baltimore's maritime industries have historically been inter-racial. The harbor was packed with myriad watercraft ranging from small scows carrying produce and seafood to large ocean going steamships. The burgeoning oyster fishery required hundreds of boats and thousands of sailors to dredge, transport, and process the harvest. Many captains and companies pragmatically hired crews with little regard to a sailor's skin color, and some Blacks sailed their own boats.
  To commemorate this rich African-American maritime heritage, the Living Classrooms Foundation and National Historic Seaport of Baltimore have joined with the City of Baltimore to construct the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park at the historic Chase's Wharf site in Fells Point. An ongoing project, parts of the park are already in use and full completion is scheduled for April 2005. Envisioned as a gateway to Fells Point, the park will form an integral part of the Baltimore Waterfront Promenade, and the waterfront's first multicultural, African American heritage attraction.


The renovated Bond Street Wharf at the western end of historic Fells Point

  Ultimately, the park will feature a museum in a restored 19th Century warehouse, a promenade along the harbor, exhibits where visitors and students will watch artisans restore 19th century sailing vessels, and a range of educational facilities including a charter middle school. The Park's centerpiece will be a working recreation of the first Black-owned marine railway and shipyard in the U.S., founded in 1868, by 15 Black entrepreneurs.
  The Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, originally located just west of the new Park, set a new standard by employing both Blacks and Whites, without discrimination. The recreated shipyard will have a 1912 vintage marine railway that can handle up to 100-ton wooden and historic ships.
  The park is named for two men who symbolize the diversity of circumstances and achievements of Baltimore's Black maritime community. Frederick Douglass and Isaac Myers were both products of the Fells Point waterfront.

Railroad stationmaster
  For 11 years Frederick Douglass saw the worst of city. Born a slave in February 1817, in Tuckahoe on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he was sent to serve as a houseboy for Hugh and Sophia Auld in Baltimore.
Mrs. Auld grew fond of him and taught him the rudiments of reading and writing, but that was a rare kindness in Frederick Douglass' early life. When Hugh Auld died, his son, Thomas, took possession of the teen-age slave. Douglass' defiant spirit and thwarted escape attempt earned him a return to the Eastern Shore and the brutal discipline of a professional "slave breaker." Thomas Auld returned him to Fells Point in 1836, where Douglass learned the caulking trade.
  Until the late nineteenth century, ship caulkers were hired to apply pitch and gum to boats' wooden hulls, sealing the cracks between planks and beams. Caulkers were essential to shipbuilding, and in many instances, Blacks worked alongside Whites. Despite this relative tolerance in the shipyards, a white fellow apprentice savagely beat Douglass.
Douglass' romance with Anna Murray, a free Black woman, encouraged his quest for freedom. On September 3, 1838, Douglass dressed in a sailor's uniform and boarded a train going north from Baltimore. He carried identification papers provided by a free Black seaman and reached New York City.
  Douglass became a major stationmaster on the Underground Railroad, helping hundreds of escaping slaves travel through his adopted home city of Rochester, NY. His eloquent writing and speeches in the cause of liberty, before and after the war, brought him international renown and went on to hold several national government and diplomatic positions.

Baltimore businessman
  In contrast to Douglass' upbringing as a slave, Isaac Myers was a free Black man. Myers is the man most frequently identified with the founding of the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. He was born in Baltimore in 1835, the only son of freeborn parents. At that time, Baltimore did not provide public schools for free Black children; Myers received his early education from a local minister, Rev. John Fortie. As a teen-ager, with some basic schooling behind him, he became an apprentice caulker for James Jackson, a well-known ship caulker working on the clipper ships coming into Baltimore harbor. The job paid well, about $1.75 per day.
  By the time Myers was 20, he had mastered the trade and supervised caulking on Baltimore's biggest clippers. Also at 20, he married Emma and began a family. They would eventually have three children. Just before the War broke out, Myers went to work as a shipping clerk and chief porter for Woods, Bridges and Company, the largest wholesale grocery firm south of the Mason-Dixon line. He returned to the boatyards in 1865 with an understanding of finance and the business world beyond the shipyards.
  When Myers joined with 14 other successful businessmen to found their shipyard, they represented the social, religious, and political leadership of Baltimore's African-American community. All were respected members of the Bethel and Sharp Street AME Churches. They were very concerned that an influx of White skilled laborers, resentful about competition from Black workers, was trying to remove the Blacks from their jobs. Among the piers and shipyards, Black caulkers and longshoremen faced an organized effort to have them dismissed.
  In 1866, Myers and his group formed a cooperative company to purchase a shipyard, and continue to do business. However, no White shipyard owner was willing to sell or lease a shipyard directly to a Black group. One of Myers' associates, John Smith, contacted William Applegarth, a well-known White businessman and friend of the Black community, to act as an intermediary. Applegarth arranged for the group to obtain lot 42 on Philpot Street, two parcels with water frontage. They raised $40,000 and leased the property, but the actual provisions of the transaction were clouded and would ultimately lead to a lawsuit and contribute to the company's dissolution.
  Within 6 months of its opening, the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company employed 300 Black workers at $3 a day wages. They had been able to obtain a number of government contracts and paid off their debts in five years. Myers had become primarily a public relations man for the company. His interests had been expanding elsewhere along with his commitments to the Republican Party, Baltimore's religious community, and the Black labor movement.
Black caulkers had organized as early as 1838 and, because of the importance of their trade, had successfully bargained with shipyard owners for decent wages and working conditions. Most Black caulkers were members of The Colored Caulkers Association that functioned as both a union and beneficial society and was a forerunner of the Colored National Labor Society. As a result of Myers' work, the all-White National Labor Union opened its conference to persons of all color in 1869. Myers was invited to speak at that convention, and was one of nine Blacks attending. He was also elected president of the Colored National Labor Union, the first national organization of its kind.
Isaac Myers died in 1891 and, despite the significance of his contributions, he is little remembered today. Baltimore's new maritime park will correct that oversight. Located near the corner of Thames and Caroline Streets, the park will encompass the tip of Fells Point and serve as an entrance to one of the Nation's oldest surviving maritime communities, with 350 original structures.

Another link
  The park will add another link to the nearly seven miles of public promenades circling Baltimore's harbor. Work has already begun on the park's $3 million bulkhead, pier, and waterfront walkway. The park will also preserve and renovate the Sugar House, one of Baltimore's most historic waterfront properties, built in the first decade of the 19th Century. The first floor will house a working boat shop, complete with blacksmith, woodworkers, and shipwrights. The second floor will present exhibits on Black maritime history, while the third floor Founders Room, with its sweeping view of the waterfront, will honor the 15 founders of the marine railway.
  The maritime park will form a part of the chain of attractions circling Baltimore's waterfront. "We hope that people from across the region and country will visit this site that commemorates Black maritime history," says James Piper Bond, Living Classrooms' president and CEO.
The park has recently received support for securing funding from Congressman Ben Cardin. But, more than an engaging maritime history stop and working shipyard, the park will provide a multitude of other educational and vocational programs. The planned campus will include the Weinberg Education Pavilion with a café run by students and job training for students working in the shipyard.
  For more information, contact the Living Classrooms Foundation at 410-685-0295, or www.livingclassrooms.org.
National Historic Seaport of Baltimore, 410-783-1490, www.nathistoricseaport.org 

Reed Hellman is a freelance writer living in Alberton, Maryland. E-mail your questions and comments to RHWay2Go@yahoo.com