Since before Captain John Smith showed up in 1607, fishermen on the Chesapeake Bay have been hand-crafting boats designed specifically for these waters, first from hollowed-out logs, then from pinning shaped logs together to form hulls, then screwing sawed planks onto hand-hewn frames, and most recently by creating hulls out of fiberglass and high-tech composites. Still, the tradition of underlying craftsmanship of the Chesapeake boatwright has held true over the generations.

Now in the 21st century, you can count on this tradition to produce the custom-crafted boat of your dreams from any one of a number of builders on either shore of the Bay. Some start with a basic fiberglass hull, either a Down East style typical of the lobster boats of the Maine coast, or a Bay-built style based on the traditional deadrise hull indigenous to the Chesapeake.

The term deadrise refers to the angle of the hull from the keel to the chine. The earliest boats built by Chesapeake boatwrights for operation under power rather than sail boasted a sharp angle at the bow to cut through the short, choppy waves of the Bay. This angle flattened out toward the stern to provide stability while at rest or at a slow speed so the watermen could hand-tong for oysters or tend trotlines or crab pots. Modern Bay-built boats are an evolution of this original design, providing greater beam and more flare at the bow, but what made a boat great for the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay also makes it great for Bay boaters today.