That's Our Clyde

[Clyde A. Phillips]

(The following will show "Clyde" as the contributor of this article, but I just put it here. Bob Mitchell, creator of this site, put it on but it was jumbled.  He, Bob, asked me, Clyde, to do what I could to correct it. Corrected or not, here it is, with corrections and additions in bold:  

 

            Schooner recalls N.J. town's days when the world was their oysters             (ED HILLE / Staff Photographer)

Clyde Phillips, son of an oysterman (and an oysterman since 17 years of age and an oyster researcher as a field marine biologist and captain of Rutgers' oyster research vessel from the late 70's and into the early 90's) with Rachel Dolhanczyk, the Bayshore Discovery Project museum curator, on the facility's Maurice River dock. (a common mistake: a 'dock' is a body of water within the space between two piers--does that help you understand the term 'dry dock?')

By Jacqueline L. Urgo, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer, (written in 2012)

BIVALVE, N.J. - Clyde Phillips, 78, looked past the docks and the old oyster shipping sheds that are now the Bayshore Discovery Project and past its showpiece, the floating museum A.J. Meerwald, covered in plastic for the winter, and fixed his blue-eyed gaze on the only thing unchanged in all the years he has taken in this scene: the Maurice River emptying into Delaware Bay (in fact, the mouth of the river is entirely changed by erosion).

In his mind's eye, the resident of nearby Mauricetown could see what others couldn't: dozens of schooners (more than 40 dozen) tacking through this narrow strait on a sunny Sunday afternoon some 70 years ago (which is three years to the end of those "glorious days" of sail), all racing to a week's worth of harvesting oysters a few miles offshore.  (The week long dredging was 25 miles up the bay for seed oysters that were planted on the oysterman's grounds "down the bay."  Harvesting (for sale) was a day by day procedure.)

And among this workingman's regatta was his father's boat, a wooden vessel known then as the Clyde A. Phillips, (This oysterboat was built as the A. J. Meerwald.  She became the Clyde A. (as we called her) about 1950 after we rebuilt her and added a new wheel house) which would someday be reincarnated as the  A. J. Meerwald, New Jersey's official tall ship and the centerpiece of the fledgling museum project here.

"Anybody in any trade forgets the past and moves on as soon as a new innovation comes along, and an entire lifestyle is lost to the ages, forgotten . . . and this place makes you remember," said Phillips, standing where it was now so quiet you could hear the light wind whistling through the phragmites.

It was boom time back then for the oyster industry on New Jersey's Delaware Bay. Millions of pounds of the delicacy were pulled from the bottom of the bay and loaded onto boxcars and shipped across the United States.

Phillips now is among a dwindling cadre of those who were there when the oyster was king and made millionaires overnight. He also has seen the ensuing years when fortunes were lost as the revered bivalve was dethroned by a series of unfortunate diseases that decimated the industry, including MSX in the late 1950s and the parasite Dermo in the 1990s.  (In the '90's, when I was back in the wheelhouses of oystersboats, my cousin told us that in these days of low to no income in the business that he knew how to become a millionaire in the business: start out as a billionaire.)

Rutgers University scientists in recent years may have finally developed a disease-resistant oyster that is being seeded and farmed along the bay in Cape May County and is being sold as a boutique crop to high-end East Coast restaurant raw bars.

Phillips and his surviving contemporaries are often asked to recall those golden days in this remote section of Commercial Township named Bivalve to honor the revered oyster, said Rachel Dolhanczyk.  She is curator of the Bayshore Discovery Project museum, which she says is drawing growing numbers of visitors. They are enticed in part by a raw bar that for a fee provides oysters and other delicacies.

"Without the oral history of people like Clyde (some of whom are many years my junior) we would never be able to tell the incredible story of this industry and a culture and tradition that is so important to Cumberland County and this entire region," Dolhanczyk said.

War duty

By 1989 the Meerwald had lived an interesting life of its own.

It began as a sailing schooner built for oystering in 1928 for the Meerwald family of South Dennis, in an "oak on oak" tradition unique to the nearby Dorchester shipyards.

It was commandeered in 1942 under the War Powers Act for use as a fireboat in the Delaware River. By 1947, after World War II was over and the boat was returned to the Meerwalds, it was sold to the Phillips family, who motorized it (in reality the AJ was built in the 20's with an engine installed and always had "mechanical wind" available)  and renamed it after their patriarch.  (She was without masts, engine, oyster gear, sunk and full of mud when the government took her over.  They rebuilt her and equipped her as a flush deck (without toptimbers or their caprail) fireboat.  She was so rigged when we bought her.)

Twelve years later, after MSX had crashed the industry, the Phillips family sold the vessel to Cornelius Campbell, who used it for his clamming enterprise until the late 1970s.  (Actually Dad had borrowed a lot of money for the business, with the boat as collateral.  He died at 52, just after MSX killed most of the oysters in the bay and basically also killed the business.  Another clam business bought her from Nicky (Cornelius) and basically used her up.  She was then sold to a man whose reputation was, and is, to use boats until the end and put them on the bank.  Then Meghan got her for $5.)

The schooner was nearly sunk in the mud in a Mauricetown harbor when Meghan Wren, a student of environmental studies, founded the Delaware Bay Schooner Project in 1989 to raise funds to salvage and restore it.

On Earth Day 1998, the A.J. Meerwald was christened as New Jersey's official tall ship by then-Gov. Christie Whitman. It had been added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

Each year, from spring through fall, the A.J. Meerwald plies the waters of the region offering sailing adventures to everyone from schoolchildren to senior citizens.

From November to mid-April, the tall masts are removed and the wooden ship is encased in protective plastic and docked at the Bayshore Discovery Project, where crews spend the winter making repairs and performing other maintenance.

By 2002, the Delaware Bay Schooner Project had evolved into the Bayshore Discovery Project, as a means to further Wren's vision of studying, preserving, and educating the public about the bay's maritime traditions and industry, said Dolhanczyk. Wren now serves as the group's executive director.

Friday fests

The oyster shipping shed complex that houses the Meerwald's waterfront dockage and a series of late-19th-century buildings are themselves artifacts of the once-thriving industry.

"It's like the first strip mall," remarked Dolhanczyk of the landward side of the complex, which has been restored to look as it did around the turn of the 20th century, complete with a rail line and awaiting boxcar.

Lining the boardwalk complex are ersatz shipping offices, butcher shop, barbershop, and post office. But inside the re-created storefronts, visitors now find various exhibits, photographs, and artifacts of the museum interpreted through interactive displays.

Visitors are drawn to this remote section of Cumberland County, near Port Norris, by the museum as well as events such as the annual Bay Day Festival, being held June 2 this year, and monthly Second Fridays events. Held year-round between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. on the second Friday of each month, the event entertains visitors with folk music by (local artists).