During the mid-nineteenth century, oystermen began battling one another over the Chesapeake Bay's richest oyster beds or "white gold" as they were called at the time. By state law, the shallow waters were reserved for one and two-man log canoes operated by oystermen called "tongers", for the tong-like poles they used to harvest the white gold. Larger, more powerful dredge boats, boasted crews of six to eight men and were capable of dragging heavy iron cages through deep water beds. Many ruthless dredge boat captains flouted the law and poached the shallow beds in direct conflict with the tongers. Many watermen were killed in the resulting battles.
This is also a time in our history when young men were shanghaied from Baltimore's waterfront, taken to Maryland's Eastern Shore and imprisoned in "paddy shacks", before being sold to as slave labor on a dredge boat.
The Oyster Wars is a fictional account of the historic events occurring during those years. It is the story of a young man of means, shanghaied from the Baltimore waterfront and Haynie McKenna, the Eastern Shore lawman who searches for him.
In 1868, Maryland created a state maritime law enforcement agency, the State Oyster Police, which set out on its mission to enforce the state's laws on Maryland waters.The force, quickly dubbed "The Oyster Navy", met stubborn and often violent resistance to its efforts to quell the violence and conserve the state's natural resources.
The author's second novel, The Oyster Navy, unfolds as Haynie McKenna, now the agency's Deputy Commander, continues his fight to bring law and order to the Chesapeake Bay.
