A.J. MEERWALD

One of the things we loved about the A.J. MEERWALD right from the start was how original she was,” Tim Clark said after he and fellow shipwright, Garett Eisele, embarked on a major restoration of the iconic oyster schooner in 2021. “There was so much about her that was like a time capsule from the 1920s and her oystering days. She’s a rare survivor in this respect, since Coast Guard regulations and repurposing have required so many changes on older workboats.”

Before the Great Depression, as many as 600 oyster-dredging schooners such as the MEERWALD sailed from the New Jersey side of Delaware Bay. Mostly they hailed from the Maurice River, and its settlements of Mauricetown, Dorchester, Port Norris, Shellpile, and Bivalve. The area called itself the “Oyster Capital of World.” During the industry’s heyday, trains would leave Port Norris daily loaded with fresh oysters for the restaurants of Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. To fill those trains, the watermen of Delaware Bay developed rugged schooners such as the MEERWALD that could handle the bay’s challenging wind and sea conditions, work on shallow oyster bars, house a crew for days at a time, and carry hundreds of bushels of oysters back to the wharves on the Maurice River.