The Chesapeake Bay sim has been open for just over a week now and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Over 900 people have visited, many of them several times over, and for long periods. The sim is often full during afternoons and evenings, and at weekends. We were pleased to see great reviews of the sim by Maddie Gynoid, Inara Pey, and Diomita and Jenny Maurer, and we are grateful to everyone who signs the guestbook.
Perhaps most strikingly of all, the Chesapeake Bay Flickr group has grown to almost 450 pictures in just one week. As ever, we have enjoyed seeing many different perspectives on the sim. We felt sure that the place would prove to be photogenic, not least because it features some ‘original’ buildings and structures that cannot be seen elsewhere on the grid. Moreover, because of the layout of the sim, there are plenty of angles from which these can be photographed. It’s never easy picking out highlights from such a large pool of pictures, but here are some observations on what has been posted so far.
First, I’ve been struck by the number of great wide-angled shots that have been taken at the sim …
There are also a good many photographers who have imagined the sim in what I’d describe as a ‘painterly’ way, with stunning results …
By contrast, there are photographers who seem able to render the sim with an incredible degree of realism, which in some cases leaves one scratching one’s head and wondering whether an image was taken in the ‘real’ Chesapeake Bay …
As for the ‘signature’ builds on the sim, there have been some outstanding shots of the house that Stephen White fought to save …
… Sharp’s Island hotel …
… the Holland Island Bar Lighthouse …
… Sharp’s Island Lighthouse …
… the sunken church …
… various submerged roofs …
… the cemetery …
… and the Tangier Island cross …
Finally, the sim’s massive bird population has proved to be popular with photographers …
We usually spend between two and three weeks working on each sim that we open, and much of that time is taken up by the rather obsessive attention we pay to details. So we’re pleased to see photographers who notice – and highlight – features of the sim we worked hard on. Thanks to everyone who has visited and posted pictures. And do keep going, we’ll surely be staying open for a little while longer …
Holland Island is arguably the best known island in the Chesapeake Bay. Once home to almost 400 watermen and farmers, the island was slowly sinking for much of the twentieth century – during which time it halved in size, from 160 to 80 acres – and was gradually abandoned.
The last house on the island, built in 1888, finally collapsed in 2010, before falling into the sea altogether two years later.
Stephen White, a waterman and Methodist Minster, first visited Holland Island when he was a boy. Years later, he was visiting one of the island’s three cemeteries when he saw an inscription on one of them …
Forget me not, is all I ask
I could not ask for more,
Than to be cherished by my friends
So loving and so dear.
Dearest Effie, thou hast left us,
And our loss we deeply feel.
But tis God that has bereft us
He will all our sorrows heal.
The grave belonged to Effie L. Wilson: “Born Jan 16, 1880. Died Oct. 12, 1893. Aged 13 years, eight months, 27 days” …
The discovery inspired Stephen White to embark on a campaign to stop Holland Island from disappearing into the sea. He purchased the island for $70,000, and set up the Holland Island Preservation Foundation. For fifteen years, Stephen and his wife waged their own battle against the sea. Spending $150,000, they built wooden breakwaters, laid sandbags and carried 23 tons of rocks to the island and dropped them at the shoreline.
They employed an excavating machine and a small bulldozer to dig makeshift levees. They even sunk a barge just off the house to break the waves.
Despite these efforts, the silt on which the island had been built could not resist the waves, steadily eroding – just as it had for the past 100 years – until the Whites finally admitted defeat in 2010, and sold the island to the Concorde Foundation.
Today, Holland Island consists solely of marshland – home to many thousands of birds – which is often completely submerged. Fishing still takes place there, as can be seen in this video (around the four minute mark) …
… so we have reflected this in our reconstruction. But given the precarious and ever-changing nature of Holland Island, this is a recreation that seeks to convey a spirit and an atmosphere. In particular, we have tried to encapsulate that dreadful moment in 2010 when Stephen White had to accept that the house was beyond saving …
We have also recreated this distinctive sign from another of Chesapeake Bay’s sinking places, Tangier Island, which reflects the religious spirit that pervades many of the Chesapeake Islands. The inscription – “God so loved the world’ – is from John 3:16 …
On March 31, 1931, the lighthouse keeper, Ulman Owens, was found dead in the kitchen, which was in disarray, suggesting that there had been a violent struggle. Blood stains were in evidence all around the room, and there was a blood-stained butcher’s knife near the body. The dead man, however, bore evidence only of scraping and bruising, with no gunshot or stab wounds visible.
Bizarrely, the inquest into Owens’ death ruled that the he had suffered some sort of fit- even though on the night of the murder, a local captain saw a vessel cruising without running lights, its wake leading directly back to the lighthouse. A subsequent autopsy revealed that he had suffered a cracked skull. The case was re-opened, and a federal agent would later testify that he overheard a suspected rum runner, Guy Parkhurst, say, “There go the rats that turned us in. Well, the lighthouse keeper got in the headlines. We did that. What these rats get will be worse.”
The uncertainty surrounding Owens’ death lingers around this strange structure that stands alone in Chesapeake Bay. As an article in a local newspaper stated at the time …
The waters of Chesapeake Bay moan round the old Holland Bar lighthouse. The hoarse screams of the seagulls resound through the chill spring air. The fogs rise and subside. The moon glints through the clouds of approaching storms. And always the yellow pencil of the lighthouse lamp traces its pattern on the murky waves.
But the hand that guides its course is not that of Ulman Owens, whose wounded body sleeps peacefully in a little seaside churchyard.
In 1960, the house was dismantled, and an automated light was constructed on the original platform. As far as we know, this structure still exists, and we have recreated it at the sim …
While we were researching the history of Holland Island, we started to become interested in some of the other islands in the Chesapeake group. Although it was located some distance north of Holland Island …
Sharps Island sank somewhat earlier than Holland Island, disappearing from view by 1960. Besides the distinctive lighthouse, we have added the hotel that was built on the island by Miller R. Creighton in the late nineteenth century, alongside a boardwalk and steamboat landing. The hotel was very popular, but inevitably short-lived.
According to this newspaper article in The Star Democrat, it may have been the solid appearance of the Sharps Island Lighthouse that convinced its owners that erecting such a building on this land was a good idea. If so, they were sadly mistaken. The article quotes Margaret Stevens Parsons – who lived at a farm on the island as a child – vividly describing her experience of relentless erosion …
The farm consisted of eight big fields that were cultivated, with a large garden, a big apple orchard and a damson and peach orchard. The yard where the house stood was as wide as half a city block and as long as one and one-half blocks. On the west side was a heavy pine woods. Each winter they would cut the trees back from the shore about 10 feet and before the winter was over, the wind and waves had washed away the earth and trees would be falling into the Bay.
The island itself had been reduced drastically in size by 1900, while the hotel itself was closed and torn down just ten years later. We struggled to find images of the hotel, although this one is strikingly evocative …
This has been a fascinating and rather poignant project, not least because of the extraordinary myths and stories that surround these islands. We especially enjoyed the challenge of imagining the houses, hotels, churches, tracks, and piers that sank … and recreating the traces that they left behind, forever lost in time …
Besides the few structures on the sim, there are many birds – cormorants, herons, albatrosses, gulls, brown pelicans, geese, swans, ducks, grebes, loons, osprey, pheasants, woodpeckers, crows, magpies, kingfishers, jays – which we believe are found in the Chesapeake Bay today. For us, what’s left of these islands are poignant, ghostly places, in which one cannot but imagine the lingering sadness of residents forced to abandon their homes – as well as the grim determination of Stephen White.
As ever, the sim won’t stay open for long, so please enjoy visiting while you can and post your pictures here.
Rummu opened one month ago, on 1 January 2019, and we feel that it’s time to move on. So we’ll be closing the sim this week, on Friday 8 February 2019. The place has been popular, with many regular visitors staying for extended periods – hours at a time – while the sim has been completely full at the busiest times. As I commented before, the Flickr group has also been busy, with more than 600 pictures posted in just a few weeks. Here are some of the more recent highlights from the group which reflect the many and varying ways the place has been seen and used …
![[sometimes you have to be alone to come back and be better … ♪♫]](https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7816/45864400705_0c1dfcf253.jpg)
