Back to Dock
Dock · History

Stories from these waters

The Chesapeake has fed, carried, divided and joined the people on its shores. We tell those stories as they happened.

History · Work and enterprise · Baltimore, 1866 Isaac Myers and the shipyard Black Baltimore built Fells Point, 1865. As the war ended, the shipyards became a fight over who would get the work. White caulkers and ship carpenters struck until the yards fired their Black coworkers. Isaac Myers answered by building. He and a group of Black investors raised $10,000, leased a waterfront yard and opened their own. Within months it employed 300 caulkers, and in time it hired white workers too. It ran for eighteen years. Read the story

History · People and arrivals · a series in three parts

Part 1 · The Chesapeake, 1619–1864 Brought here. For more than two centuries, the Chesapeake was a route for the slave trade. Ships first carried captive Africans into its rivers. Then, after 1808, Baltimore's harbor sent thousands of enslaved Marylanders south to New Orleans. Read the story Part 2 · Locust Point, 1868–1914 Came here. Ships from Bremen tied up at a railroad pier on Locust Point, and more than a million people walked off them into a new country. Most rode on by train to the Midwest. The ones who stayed built neighborhoods that still stand around the harbor. Read the story Part 3 · The Chesapeake, since before 1608 Already here. Before the first English ship reached the Chesapeake, tens of thousands of people lived on its rivers. They fished it, farmed its shores and named its waters. Many of their nations are still here. Read the story

The first story on the Bay itself is coming.

The first story on gathering places is coming.

Why we tell these stories

Dock gathers people at the water. Before we invite anyone to it, we want to know whose water it has been. The people who fished it and worked it. The people carried across it against their will. The people who landed with one ticket, and the nations who were already here. Every gathering on this shore stands on their stories. We tell them so everyone who comes here knows where they are standing.

The stories on one line, from 1600 to today. Already here spans the whole line. Brought here covers 1619 to 1864. Isaac Myers's yard opened in 1866. Came here covers 1868 to 1914.Already here.Since before 1608Brought here.1619–1864Isaac Myers1866–1884Came here.1868–19141600170018001900Today
The series on one line. The navy line is the nations of "Already here.": on these waters before the first date, and still here today. Tap a story to read it.

How we tell these stories

Every story is checked against more than one source, with archives and scholarship ahead of opinion. We show our sources at the end of each story, so you can read them yourself.

Where accounts disagree, we say so, and we explain what we chose and why.

We name people by who they were, where they came from and what they did. The people of this water came from everywhere: the nations who were here first, the enslaved and the free, the immigrants who landed at its piers, the watermen who worked it, and the families who still gather on its shores.

We tell the whole story. The water brings people together. It has also been used to keep people apart. Both happened here, and both are worth knowing.

Come to the water. Know its story. Stay a while.

Join the guest list