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Virginia Symbols, Boat: Deadrise
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Chesapeake Bay Deadrise
Adopted on March 25, 1988
Virginia shares Chesapeake Bay with Maryland. Like Maryland, it also has an official state boat—the Chesapeake Bay Deadrise.) The Chesapeake Bay deadrise is a wooden boat with a sharp bow, a tiny cabin, and a long cockpit. It can operate nearly everywhere on the bay for crabbing, oystering, and fishing.
Delegate George Grayson and other tidewater legislators conferred to come up with a boat that could readily be identified with Virginia. Watermen and Bay scholars at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News and the Waterman's Museum in Yorktown agreed: the Deadrise. Grayson's bill was signed into law on March 25, 1988.
The M/V Miss Clare above is an authentic Chesapeake Bay "deadrise." Built in Cambridge, Maryland in 1979, the Miss Clare was a charter sports-fishing vessel in the Atlantic Ocean for seven years. It is certified by the United States Coast Guard to carry 27 passengers for hire.
The deadrise design was developed around the 1880s. "Deadrise" refers to the V-shaped bottom at the bow and the angle formed from the keel as it levels off to a horizontal line with the rise from the keel upward to the chine (or sideboards). The sum of the dihedral angles always equals 180 degrees. A V-bottom is easier to build than a round bottom. It also has a shallow draft of two to three feet, making it ideal for the shallows of the Bay. The average deadrise workboat is 35 to 45 feet long with a beam of nine to twelve feet. The deadrise can use almost any engine, from an Olds 455 to a John Deere 6-cylinder, but diesel engines are preferred over regular gasoline because of their reliability.
The deadrise workboat is used by most watermen on the Chesapeake Bay. The deadrise accommodates the heavy, bulky equipment used for a variety of tasks. A culling board, and tongs or dredge are used in oystering in the winter months. Crab pots, bushel baskets, and trash cans are used during the summer crabbing season. Nets, stakes, and net tubes are used in setting gill nets year-round. The deadrise's size and capacity allow the waterman to travel farther across the Bay and carry more seafood back to market.
The deadrise has also become popular with pleasure boaters. These heavy-duty boats withstand long days of fishing and can carry large groups. The romance of the watermen's profession and nostalgia for the traditions of the Chesapeake Bay have created a market for these workhorses of the water.
Fleets of deadrises were a common sight in the late 1800s along the Chesapeake Bay. Sometimes more than three-hundred boats would be moored together at one landing. These fleets would leave early in the morning for oyster beds or crab pots and return late in the evening.
§ 7.1-40.3. Official boat.
The "Chesapeake Bay Deadrise" is hereby designated as the official boat of the Commonwealth.
(1988, c. 317.) Commonwealth
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