Claud W. Somers

Built in 1911 by Tom Young at Young's Creek, Virginia, the skipjack Claud W. Somers spent decades dredging oysters on the Chesapeake and twice won the annual skipjack race. On March 4, 1977, owner-captain Thompson Wallace of Chance, Maryland, took the boat out from Deal Island with five crew, nearly all family, after weeks of ice had finally broken on the Bay. Working near the mouth of the Honga River close to Hooper Strait Lighthouse, the boat was struck by a squall building to roughly 70 knots and went down in about 12 feet of water with all six aboard, drowning the entire crew in what is remembered as the worst fishing disaster in recent Chesapeake history. The hull was raised within two days and, after further decades of dredging and a long restoration, now sails as a museum vessel out of Reedville, Virginia.