Pocomoke Shipbuilding • Vane Brothers - Chesapeake Bay ...

E. James Tull
6
Shipbuilding Power
on the Banks of the Pocomoke
By Pete Lesher, Curator of Collections
E. James Tull transformed
Pocomoke City from a small timber
town to a major shipbuilding center,
becoming the leading citizen of the
community, its longtime mayor,
and perhaps the most prolific
builder of wooden ships on the
Chesapeake.
Although he was located
far from the conveniences of
an urban center, Tull adapted to
changing technologies to build
steamers and early gasoline-powered
boats, as well as the last large
sailing vessel on the Chesapeake.
Beginning in the mid 19th century,
a lumber industry grew up in
and around Pocomoke City, then called
Newtown, near the mouth of the Pocomoke
River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore,
taking advantage in particular of the nearby stands
of rot-resistant cypress.
By 1880, five steam sawmills in and near the town were
feeding not only a lumber trade along the East Coast, but a
local shipbuilding industry that boasted three shipyards and
two marine railways. The same year, the railroad built a
bridge across the river at the town, initiating daily service
to Philadelphia, which supplemented a steamboat connection
to Baltimore. Although it had just 1,500 residents and 225
houses, Pocomoke City was growing rapidly.
In the midst of this civic and economic growth, a young
Tull trained as a ship carpenter at the yard of W. J. S. Clarke,
a timber merchant who had expanded into shipbuilding in
1864. 1 Tull’s career choice was not uncommon in this town;
by 1883, there were 54 current or former ship carpenters in
Pocomoke City. 2
Tull was born on a farm near Westover, Maryland, in
neighboring Somerset County, on January 19, 1850, and
moved to Newtown, at age 18. After six years at the Clarke
shipyard, he had learned enough of the business to go into
partnership with the adjacent Hall Brothers yard. By 1882, he
was supervising the construction of new vessels and certifying
them at the Crisfield customs house. In 1884, Tull severed
his 10-year partnership with Hall Brothers, rented the Clarke
shipyard and became a sole proprietor at age 34. 3 After Clarke
died in 1893, Tull purchased the yard.
Tull’s first vessels were the standard bugeyes, schooners,
and sloops of the day, destined for the oyster trade or freighting
around the Chesapeake. Bugeyes, the quintessential oyster
dredging boats of the region, were likely products for a
lower Eastern Shore boatbuilder in this period. The oyster
trade was near its peak and demand for these boats soared.
Earlier bugeyes were built with logs, and others were still
building log bugeyes into the 1890s, but Tull appears to have
built plank-on-frame bugeyes, from the start.
At the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Tull exhibited
a model of his 1885 bugeye Lillie Sterling with the
U.S. Bureau of Fisheries in the Transportation Building,
and won a medal for the design. The model is now at the
Smithsonian along with Tull’s own half-hull model for the
same boat. Lillie Sterling was a relatively small bugeye, but
typical of the type in almost every way, with a shoal draft,