by Larry Chowning –
New York filmmaker Peter Slack came to Deltaville last week to interview three local bay historians for a documentary he is creating on the Coastal Queen, a traditional Chesapeake Bay buyboat built in 1928 at Hudson, Md., and converted to a yacht in 1959.
Over the years, the boat made numerous trips for maintenance services into Deltaville and in August 1996 the Southside Sentinel did a feature front page story on the boat receiving a new stern and a portion of a new bottom at Deagle and Son Marine Railway on Fishing Bay.
“The first time I saw her I knew I wanted to learn more about these boats,” Slack said. “The Coastal Queen has a lot of character and history and speaks to the development of how the boats were converted from work boats to pleasure boats.”
On his trip south to learn more about bay buyboats, Slack interviewed chief curator of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) Pete Lesher at CBMM in St. Michaels, Md.; former captain of the Coastal Queen, Deacon Nelson in Severna Park, Md.; William C. (Bill) Hight, John England and Larry Chowning at the Deltaville Maritime Museum (DMM) in Deltaville; and Allen Holston in Yorktown.
The documentary is being produced in a series and the first part is completed and can be seen online on Peter Slack’s Facebook page. The first part deals with the restoration by McMillen Yachts and the history of the Coastal Queen.
Stories of the Coastal Queen
Two stories related to the Coastal Queen that were recorded in the 1996 Sentinel interview when the boat was in Deltaville follow:
- The A.G. Price was conscripted into the United States Coast Guard in 1941 by the United States Maritime Commission (USMC). Right after the invasion of Pearl Harbor, the USMC was charged with conscripting boats to help in the war effort. The A.G. Price was conscripted and used by the coast guard to ferry supplies from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to military bases in Florida.
- “The boat was on a mission off the Florida Keys coming from Guantanamo Bay filled with goods for American officers’ clubs. She was loaded with some of the best Cuban cigars, rum, and other supplies,” as reported in the Sentinel article.
- “About halfway back to Florida, a German U-boat captured the boat and her crew. It was common practice for the Germans to take the supplies, set the crew adrift without food and water, and sink the boat. This time, though, the Germans took the supplies but let the boat and crew go in hopes they would come back again with some more of those fine Cuban cigars.”
- In another story when the boat was used as a yacht, the Coastal Queen was moored in the Bahamas when the skipper went ashore to get some supplies and left the mate, a young woman, onboard taking a shower. “I had gone ashore and left our mate onboard. She was down below taking a shower when she heard someone on deck. She came out in a bathrobe with a .38 caliber gun under her rope. She told the men who were there to pirate supplies that the captain was below and they better leave. They told her that they watched the captain leave and they knew she was alone. She pulled out the .38 and fired the gun. Those boys left in a hurry!”
