And among this workingman's regatta was his father's boat, a wooden vessel known then as the Clyde A. Phillips, which would someday be reincarnated as the 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.
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 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 and renamed it after their patriarch.
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.
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
