"The name Weems, and the Weems line," writes David C. Holly, "symbolized nearly the entire epoch of the steamboat on the Chesapeake." The Weems line began in Baltimore in 1819, as steamboats first appeared on the Chesapeake and its rivers. It was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1905, at the height of the steamboat's "Golden Age," though its boats continued to serve the Bay until the 1930s. Illustrated with maps, drawings, and rare photographs, Tidewater by Steamboat is the vivid portrait of life on the Patuxent, the Potomac, and the Rappahannock, where Weems boats sailed and the course of the American republic was set.

In the golden age of the steamer, the rich bounty of the Eastern Shore was transported down the Chester River and across the Chesapeake Bay to the port of Baltimore. For over one hundred years, vessels like the Maryland, the Chester and the B.S. Ford traversed these winding waters laden with fruit, grains, crabs and oysters. For a dollar, passengers could enjoy the novelty of a ride and the slow panorama of the shoreline. Through freeze and fog, skilled captains plied the waterways until the last of the steamers--the Bay Belle--made its final passage in the 1950s. Author and historian Jack Shaum journeys back to the bygone days of the Chester River's steamboats.

Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakestraces the evolution of the Great Lakes shipping industry over the last three centuries. The Great Lakes shipping industry can trace its lineage to 1679 with the launching on Lake Erie of the Griffon, a sixty-foot galley weighing nearly fifty tons. Built by LaSalle, a French explorer who had been commissioned to search for a passage through North America to China, it was the first sailing ship to operate on the upper lakes, signaling the dawn of the Great Lakes shipping industry as we know it today. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes is the most thorough and factual study of the Great Lakes shipping industry written this century. Author Mark L. Thompson tells the fascinating story of the world's most efficient bulk transportation system, describing the Great Lakes freighters, the cargoes of the great ships ,and the men and women who have served as crew. He documents the dramatic changes that have taken places in the industry and looks at the critical role that Great Lakes shipping plays in the economic well-being of the U.S. and Canada, despite the fact tat the size of the fleet and the amount of cargo carried have declined dramatically in recent years. Spanning more than three centuries, from LaSalle's voyage in 1679, through 1975 with the mysterious sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, to life aboard today's thousand-foot behemoths, this important volume documents the evolution of the industry through its "Golden Age" at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, with a downsized U.S. fleet that numbers fewer than seventy vessels.

Over 300 postcards and engaging text present Maryland's beach resorts of yesteryear. Before the completion of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and improved highways, the Chesapeake Bay was dotted with many beach resorts. By the 1890s, the two most popular beaches in Maryland were Betterton and Tolchester Beach. It was a time when going to the beach meant an excursion boat ride across the bay. Betterton's heyday was from the 1890s to the 1940s, when Betterton's Victorian wooden hotels were booked solid and served home cooked meals all summer. From its beginnings as a small picnic ground in the 1870s, Tolchester Beach grew to become the Chesapeake Bay's biggest and best-known amusement park and bathing beach until 1962. This book is a must read for beach lovers, historians, and postcard collectors alike.

Richly detailed definitive account covers every aspect of steamboat's development — from construction, equipment, and operation to races, collisions, rise of competition, and ultimate decline of steamboat transportation.