A Loud, Obnoxious Exploit: Hooper Strait Lighthouse, the Self-Emancipation of Slaves Along the Atlantic Seaboard, and the Endless Lore of the Oyster

When last we spoke, I explained how climate change is everywhere. It’s eroding the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, where skeleton towers, by the grace of some god or another, sit like billboards along Route 66. Out there with the oil rigs and Texas flamingoes, rusting in the elements, creating makeshift reefs for fish. Out where the Mississippi delta pushes and pulls, displacing islands and carving waterways. It’s diminishing the barrier islands on the East Coast, the famous ones with wild horses in Georgia, and the lesser knowns where the mother tongue is Elizabethen in Maryland. It’s changing the seasons in Michigan, where fishermen were accustomed to long winters, pulling their boats out of the water in October, putting them back in in May. Now, the lakes barely freeze over. The cold season is shorter. The heat has come to say.

This time, I’d like to talk about how white supremacy, too, is everywhere. So parasitic and widespread is its impact, even the lighthouses have felt the immovable force with which it comes.

My last significant lighthouse trip, I went to Maryland and Virgina. I started way up where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The heat was insatiable on the small, uncovered fishing boat I’d hired to take me out to Battery Island, where little known Fishing Battery Lighthouse sits almost completely obscured by the trees. The sun beat down on us. Even as the boat crossed the bay to Elk Neck peninsula, where Turkey Point towers over the water, the wind had little pacifying effect. It was a fearsome day. I’d come to expect a future of fearsome days.

I moved south to the lighthouses in Craighill Channel, Back River, and Baltimore Harbor, peering out behind Fort Carroll at the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, whose two onramps tapered off into the void. I got a vantage point of Bloody Point Bar at the very tip of Kent Island, standing beside stacks of freshly painted red crab traps with my binoculars. Then I made it to St. Michaels, where the story of this essay begins.

Hooper Strait Lighthouse, a screwpile lighthouse built to replace one of the many lightships and stations destroyed by Confederate guerillas during the Civil War, once sat in Hooper Strait on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay. The first Hooper Strait lighthouse was destroyed in 1877 by an ice floe, and the 1879 rebuild is now viewable at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum after being lifted from its pilings in 1966 and barged forty miles upriver to St. Michaels. It’s not unusual for a lighthouse to be in their second or third forms, especially in the bay, where stations were vulnerable to ice floes, lacking the barrier and infrastructure of a lighthouse like Detroit River in Lake Erie, its foundation shaped like the bow of a ship to fend off wayward debris.

Hooper Strait Lighthouse’s foundation in Hooper Strait, 35mm photo by Charlee Remitz

Hooper Strait Lighthouse in St. Michael’s at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, 35mm photo by Charlee Remitz

It was an overcast afternoon, Hurricane Erin preparing to make landfall in a day or so. I stood in wait at the museum by some decommissioned lighthouse’s fourth order Fresnel lens, encased in a glass box in the main entryway, while a middle-aged woman regaled the docent with tales of her youth (I’d come to find that lighthouses carried with them mountains of nostalgia). The geography of memory in places like these often caused a sort of hypnosis. She held that docent hostage, and me causally, for ten minutes while she walked this winding road back in time, when she’d attended summer camp on the property. We stood there with her, holding her in a way, until she’d run dry. And as she walked off, I stepped up.

“I’m here to see the lighthouse,” I said.

“You have to pay the museum fee.”

“Well, if I have no other choice,” I joked.

She did not think I was funny.

I wandered the main building’s permanent exhibit with all manner of watercraft and placards dedicated to Bay staples like National Bohemian beer and Old Bay seasoning, which was developed by a German-Jewish immigrant after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939.

It’s hard to imagine the cultural impact of Old Bay, or a Yankee who doesn’t consider it to be the seasoning of the Northeast, much like it’s hard to imagine a United States without the inventions of Immigrants. The labor of Immigrants. The land without Immigrants. In my imagining, one might say it was hard to avoid the touch of Immigrants. One would have to make a concerted effort to find a place not extraordinarily manifested by the minds, hands, or taxpayer dollars of Immigrants.

The majesty of this museum would be totally lost on me if I hadn’t been to a dozen and one other maritime museums in my pursuit for the United States’ lighthouses. The ceilings were tall, the stores sheathed in glass on white pedestals, duck decoys mid-flight hanging on invisible line from the rafters, backless benches placed in the center of each grand pavilion not unlike those at the Guggenheim. An air that I can only describe as museum-like: important and archival.

It was hard not to be totally romanced by the little wooden boats mounted along the walls, their gleaming varnishes painted along their sides with names like “Big Bad Syd”, and hull numbers at their bows. I’ve long felt lustful towards the life of a boater. There was something about the freedom of it for me, of not being relegated to land. It was one of those adult things that simply hadn’t occurred to me beyond the abstract. I could buy a boat? I could slip into the water, unannounced, and jet away?

I did not dwell long. I took pictures of notable placards, meditated briefly by the waterfowl section, then entered the gift shop, with its buckets of Old Bay-seasoned popcorn, lighthouse prints, and postcards. Out in the courtyard, running all the way up to the waterline, there were several outbuildings. To the left, a special exhibition titled “Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad.” To the right, “Oystering on the Chesapeake.”

I went to the left.

A few rowdy folks exited as I entered. There was something disquieting when the mood of the sightseers managed to transcend the mood of the subject matter. Partly, I felt activated, sensitive, on guard. Everywhere I looked, it seemed there was a fascist hiding in plain sight, rejoicing as ICE scraped our streets, using military-like force to kidnap people without due process, sending them to countries they’d never been, to detention facilities with inhumane conditions. A part of me could acknowledge how many of us were simply in the dark. Without being chronically online, you missed things. It was calculated. The Trump Administration was firing in rapid succession, and we were all struggling to keep up.

It felt horrible stepping into that vacuous space, where a large steam engine was on display, and a model of a log canoe used by slaves to self-emancipate along the Underground Railroad was in an alcove over my head. I’m sure I won’t be alone in this: but I had no idea the network extended itself to the sea, where enslaved African Americans made their way to freedom along the Atlantic Seaboard aboard merchant or passenger ships, some small watercraft too, and in all manner of conditions. Aboard the Pennsylvania, James Mercer, William H. Gilliam and John Clayton hid away near the boiler room, taking turns catching a breath of fresh air from a small hole in the hull to avoid heat stroke. Anthony Blow fled on the City of Richmond, spending eight days in a seated position in a tiny space over the steamer’s boiler.

There were failed attempts, like the fate suffered by the 77 slaves aboard the Pearl, which, owing to bad weather, was forced to anchor at Point Lookout, where a famed Maryland lighthouse sits haunted by its own history as a Civil War prison camp and hospital. The Pearl was overtaken by a steamboat the following morning, and many of the slaves were sold and transported even farther south.

I took two photos while there. One of a tombstone with this engraving: “Captain Drayton Commander of the Schooner Pearl Sailed from Washington D.C. April 15, 1848 Saving seventy six persons fugitives from slavery arrested by the U.S. Government confined in a national jail at Washington four years and four months And, broken by cruel suffering during confinement he died a martyr to his benevolent effort.” The other of a placard discussing Maryland Plantation slave labor, which partly financed Georgetown University.

At every location where a story of these freedom seekers took place, there was a lighthouse. Turkey Point, D.C., Baltimore, Havre de Grace, Cambridge, Portsmouth, etc., all haunted by the geography of memory.

I was rightly depressed as I left the exhibit and wandered along the boardwalk, reading placards about shoreline erosion, the last 300 years of population growth causing continued impacts on the Bay’s animals, habitat, and water quality. It was old news to me—these particulars feeling overripe by this point—but the insulation of the rest of the population continued to confound me. Still, I’m teaching friends about the ecological impact of AI, its ferocious need for water, the terrible heat it gives off into the atmosphere. Growing up, I thought it customary to report on current events. But journalism had become so politicized and quiet. Pressing things needed to be screamed, not commented on ambiguously, cunningly.

View from the boardwalk. shot on 35mm by Charlee Remitz

I read that the Chesapeake Bay is the United States’ largest estuary, sustaining 2,700 species of plants and animals, the watershed home to seventeen million people in six different states. The subliminal messaging in reporting these numbers was clear. The collapse of this area would be detrimental.

I know the aim of this museum was not to panic, it was to inform. The only problem is that information without action is panic-inducing. Kids were playing on the lawn, and I was calculating how many reasonable years we had left enjoying simple pleasures like blue crab with butter. Perhaps the most culturally and economically significant influence on the bay is the Blue Crab, and owing to commercial over-fishing, pollution and shore run-off, their population has been declining since the 1980s. I remember Christmas 2023, when I took a solo trip to the upper bay, and tried blue crab for the first time. It was served to me in a small jar with butter and bread. I sat by the windows in Chesapeake City, where the marina’s boats were decorated for the holidays. The small lighthouse I’d come to see flashed red. It was extraordinary. It was fleeting. Someday, it would all be gone.

I tended to find metaphor wherever I looked. During a period of immense anxiety, when I was consistently cowering into myself, I stood before a piece of art at Detroit Institute of Arts Museum depicting a sunflower bending towards the earth so it could drop its seeds, and new life could begin. Similarly, in the third outbuilding on the property—by all accounts a refurbished boat shed with fairy lights zigzagging across the ceiling—there was a metal sign hung on the wall that warned, “CAUTION YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR WAKE”. This gave me pause. What was the point? Why did we spend all this time in school learning about checks and balances if there was no true limit to the president’s impunity? If he could do as he pleased with little consequence, while the rest of us paid our taxes, showed up to our Immigration hearings, recycled, composted, donated, volunteered, for all intents and purposes: took responsibility for our wakes? What difference did it make if the one person with the most influence, with the ability to enact real policy, denounced climate change, oversimplified humanitarian crises, and operated like a mercenary for an unknown fascist cause?

What was the point of anything?

I approached the lighthouse.

Hooper Strait lighthouse, shot on 35mm by Charlee Remitz

Hooper Strait is white with black trim and a black lantern room. The two main floors were outfitted with era-appropriate furniture, appliances, and even a traveling library, which tender ships would bring, along with supplies, to remote stations for the entertainment of their intrepid, isolated keepers. All traveling libraries looked the same: like a wooden cabinet over a sink. Even the bell, which was used before fog signals became automated, had a lever you could crank to hear it ring.

The lighthouse was beautifully refurbished. It felt well-loved. I always looked favorably on humanity when I stood in a lighthouse that was only open to the public because a society of one interest or another rallied around the lighthouse, fighting for its preservation the way it once fought for the preservation of mariners, its keepers running up and down multiple stories of stairs to keep the lens shining.

Miles River from Hooper Strait’s porch, shot on 35mm by Charlee Remitz

Hooper Strait’s lantern room and fourth order Fresnel lens, shot on 35mm by Charlee Remitz

I looked out on Miles River from the lantern room, from the catwalk. The clouds were low, the water was grey. Hooper Strait’s light characteristic was originally fixed-white, but in 1882, it was outfitted with red sectors to warn of shoals (shallow waters) in the strait. Through those red panels, I could see water-front condos and private docks. I wondered briefly what their lives were like. And how different they likely were from my own.

On the lawn, a stressed father made business dealings on the phone as I descended the stairs, assessing my appearance in my phone. My hair was so frizzy, it had come alive.

It was time to leave.

I popped into “Oystering on the Chesapeake” on my way out. In black and white photos, there were mountains of oyster shells with excited mariners standing off to the sides, holding shovels or each other. It was 1800 when America’s taste for oysters had stripped New England’s oyster beds clean. There was not a resource in this modern world that hadn’t been subjugated in this way. Even when it came to Chat GPT, there was no moderation. There was no knowing something gently, with consideration for its boundaries. It was a loud, obnoxious exploit always, the world crazed for gold in all its forms.

The exhibit was a conceptual masterpiece. There were ropes, masts, barrels, nets, all spilling onto the wooden flooring. There was a poster with translated oyster slang, like “soccer balls”, which meant oysters covered with mussels. There was a photo of Lincoln, who threw oyster parties in Springfield, Illinois, importing oysters on the Ohio railroad, and red checkered tables with menus for oysters done 15 ways. It was a nautical maximalist dream.

Oysters were an underrated asset with endless lore. On Sapelo Island in February, I met a woman working to document the effects of climate change on the barrier islands for a non-profit called Shell to Shore, dedicated to recycling oyster shells in Georgia. Oysters make incredible filters, removing excess nitrogen from waters, but they also have the uncanny ability to regenerate themselves—oyster bars having much in common with the ocean’s coral reefs: around them, living things can congregate and thrive.

Shell to Shore aims to combat climate change with oyster reef restoration, diverting shells from the landfill and introducing them back into the ocean where they can help build intertidal structures to combat rising sea levels. The Gullah Geechee (descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans) on Sapelo Island have continued to push back against zoning regulations, keeping their land rights amidst rising property values and taxes, but to preserve their heritage, the land itself must survive climate change-induced flooding and sea level rise.

Everything is white supremacy, everything is climate change, and often, the two are inextricably and brutishly linked. There is no outrunning the climate crisis. There is no bespoke cycle to the earth warming. It will not cool without our help. We will all become climate refugees, and the impoverished—those impacted by “colonial plunder,” as Mikaela Loach said in a recent video of Jamaicans preparing for Hurricane Melissa to make landfall—will be the first to experience hardship, food insecurity, displacement, etc.

I drove through town, stopping in at the local bookstore to show my support amidst the war on academia and knowledge. Then I set up shop at Ruse’s bar and read the newest Jandy Nelson, with fish dip and the bartender’s take on a mojito in front of me. I packed it in early, drove back to my hotel, and set my alarm for five AM.

Tomorrow, the hunt would continue out on the water in the lower Chesapeake, where the barrier islands continue their fight against climate change, and Holland Island Bar lighthouse’s foundation sits, irreparably damaged when pilots in training during WWII mistook it for a target ship and bombed it to high hell.

Charlee and Point No Point Lighthouse, shot on 35mm