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give me a little bit on the founding of fellspoint from the bunker perspective. [laughs.] well, i don't think anybody knowswho the first person to settle in fells point, or east baltimore, was. i don't think anyone'scome up with any definitive answer to that. i did find an account here in the london gazettefor thursday, june 15 to monday, june 19, 1671. and it says, "from lyme, june 11. yesterdayarrived here the providence of this place

antique woodworking tools scotland, in 5 weeks from james river in virginia, fromwhence she came in company of another vessel of hull. the master tells us that he laydedhere there at wooten creek in the county of baltimore 12 leagues higher in the bay thanever any did before." so at least in 1671, they were beginning to ship various productsout of baltimore -- i'm not even sure what

they were -- it might have been tobacco orany number of things. but, we do know that fells point essentiallycame into being with edward fell and his brother, william. william was a shipbuilder and waslooking for an opportunity to build ships here in the new world. and of course, fellspoint, being a deep water anchorage, and the only real good deep water anchorage in thearea -- that's where he chose to set up. so they were building small ships, probably sloopsand small schooners, early in the 1700's, certainly by the 1730's and 1740's. in 1763,fells point as we know it, was laid out and essentially became a...[phone rings] so by the 1730's and 1740's, we had peopleliving in fells point, or fells prospect i

think it was at one time called, and wereconducting business. fells point was really the deep water port for the baltimore area.what's the closest deep water other than fells point in the baltimore area, what surroundingcity? well, in those days, you had a number of portsthat no longer have the same relevance -- oxford, chestertown, annapolis -- there were any numberof ports up and down the chesapeake bay that were in those days considered deep water ports.now they wouldn't be considered deep water ports today. but keep in mind, you were dealingwith ships that were usually no more than 100-150 tons and didn't draw, for the mostpart, any more than 10, 12, 15 feet. a place like fells point...what's a modern ship draw, to get a comparison?

35 feet, 40 feet.so fells point was a real boon. baltimore at that time, the harbor in baltimore, whatwe now think of as the harbor in baltimore, were mostly swamps and fens that tapered downinto the water and were fairly shallow. it was a good many years before that area wasdredged and was laid out as we see it today. fells point and baltimore, an awful lot ofwhat we see today, is fill. they actually filled in right up to the waters edge, andthen dredged out areas for their piers and their docks.i've seen that before. somebody showed me a map of fells point, and it was like ... awhole different geography along the coastline than there is today.fells point was at one time known as "the

hook" and you had an area known as the hookthat stuck out into the harbor. originally, it was thought of as being a place where amajor section of the town could be built. it eventually became crimping dens and bordellosand sleazy bars. and the hook was a place that gained a bad reputation. you've all heardthe word "hookers". i don't know that it actually came from fells point's hook because ...i was going to ask that because i heard that someplace before.well, hooks as a geographical feature are fairly common around the world in many, manyports. so it may not have come from fells point originally. but it certainly was appropriateto fells point in the early 1800's. when you say the "port of baltimore" -- thatwas fells point in the early days?

well, baltimore still had maritime traffic,but they were generally skiffs and small schooners and barges and scows and flat-bottomed vesselsthat could come in "over a morning dew" as they used to say. they didn't require a lotof water. but if you wanted to bring in a real ocean-going cargo, if you wanted to bringin something of real significance from the mother country, from england or scotland,then you'd go to fells point because that's where a deep water ship could go. deep waterships couldn't make it up into baltimore harbor. and fells point in those days was separatefrom baltimore; it was a separate town. there was jonestown and fells point, which werereally founded in very similar times. jonestown probably came actually a couple of years earlier.edward fell was a partner in the founding

of jonestown. and he later switched his fortunesto the area we now call fells point. but, any kind of deep water traffic wouldhave to come in through fells point in those days.let's talk a little bit about shipbuilding, something i know nothing about.well, one of fells point's earliest and best-known citizens, and indeed the fellow who reallyultimately gave fells point its name, william fell, was a shipbuilder in england. when hecame to the new world and saw this deep water harbor, he immediate set up shipbuilding operations.and that was the mainstay of fells point for a long time to come. you were either goingto sea or you were building ships that were going to sea. and that was how a living wasmade by most people in fells point right up

until the civil war, and even long after thecivil war. but shipbuilding as we think of it today,major shipbuilding, really went into a decline after the civil war. ships were being builta lot larger. they were a lot more technically complex. they were building ships now in ironwith big steam plants in them, and fells point was largely bypassed. the glorious time forfells point in shipbuilding was the time between the revolutionary war and some time just beforethe civil war. what was the date of the revolutionary war?1775 to 1783. fells point began building its famous privateersat that time. a couple of hundred privateers came out of the baltimore area during theamerican revolution. when you consider the

size of baltimore at that time and the sizeof fells point, that's pretty remarkable. privateers and letters of marque were vessels,private armed vessels, vessels that were not naval vessels particularly. they were merchantships, but they were licensed to prey on enemy shipping.legal pirates. they were legal pirates. and fells point becamefamous for that. their time of real glory in that field was the war of 1812. in 1812,fells point really hit its stride. they not only built many, many ships to go privateering,but they were great innovators. fells point had benefited from immigration in the late17 and early 1800's. not only were people coming over from england and scotland andireland, many of whom were highly qualified

craftsmen and ship builders, but you alsohad an influx of french refugees after the french revolution and then the rebellionsin haiti under toussaint louverture and king christophe, mad king christophe... when haitifought for its independence and threw out the french, many french citizens panickedand ran to whoever would accept them. and a lot of baltimore ships were trading in thatarea at the time... whoever would accept them. france!but you know, times were not good in france. in france at that time, not only did you havethe effects of the french revolution, but you had napoleon. anyone leaving haiti andgoing back to france was very likely to be drafted into the army, or be put to work intosome kind of national service. so many good

craftsmen, many fine maritime craftsmen, sailmakers, artisans, ship carvers, carpenters, came north and settled in fells point becausethat was a place that you could continue making a living and look forward to a new life inthe new world. the french that left haiti ... these are dumbquestions that cross my mind ... any of them go up through new orleans?oh sure. was that any part of the french, cajun zydecothing ... was that the beginning of it, or was that too early for it?the earliest french migration to baltimore coincides with the french migration to neworleans from canada. in 1755, the british passed a removal act to take what they consideredenemy aliens, in this case the french, out

of what was then called acadia and ship themsomeplace else, any place else to get them out of canada because they considered thema security threat. scotts immigrants came in and settled in nova scotia, new scotland.the french that were forced to leave went 3 basic places in the united states, whatlater became the united states. one was maine. there are still many of their descendantsliving in maine today. another was louisiana, where acadians became known as cajuns andare still there today. but a third group, and a smaller group actuallycame into baltimore. and when they came to baltimore, they not only brought french languageand customs, but they brought their skills. and, like the later refugees from haiti, likethe refugees from the french revolution in

the 1790's and early 1800's, they found awelcome in fells point. so fells point absorbed quite a number of people of french origin.also, in baltimore itself, the area down in the harbor, down where the lutheran seniorcitizens home is now, was once known as french town because there was a large french colonyliving there. you ought to do your own tv show called "meetmr. bunker". you every week just talking about stuff.we had a lot of immigrants. that whole area... fells point was ...any of the immigrants bad, i mean that people didn't get along with, besides the british...any of the immigrants move in that were kind of the black sheep of the immigrants?i haven't found any notice of that in historic

times. in recent times, there has been somecontroversy. i think there are some folks in fells point that would rather some of thenewcomers had not come. but then, that's always the way it is, isn't it, when a new groupof people come into town? it's like the old thing -- we fear what wedon't understand. yes. and fells point and baltimore generallyis just like anywhere else in the country -- they've always had their problems acceptingsome folks, people that are of a different religion or a different color or a differentcreed of some way... and so, there has been racism. and there has been, in the 1840'sand 1850's there was, of course, the know-nothing movement. there was a very strong anti-catholicmovement in, of all places, baltimore.

wasn't it the first diocese? strange placefor it to happen. yes. it makes no sense at all. but, thosethings tend to level out, given time. keep that thought in mind as we talk aboutfells point today. we're going to something else here... something controversial. theconstellation that's sitting there in the harbor. i notice through all your stuff, you'vegot enough ship stuff to build your own ships in the back yard. you kind of know ships.is it the real constellation, a copy, parts...? what's your take on the whole thing?the original constellation was built as a 36-gun frigate in harris creek, what was thenknown as fells point ... harris creek is virtually a drainage ditch now... it was built in 1797in fells point, in baltimore. it underwent

many, many rebuildings.its last major rebuilding and redesign was in 1854. most maritime historians today dateships from the time of their last major design change, not the age of the wood that's inthem, but by the time of their last major design change. the constellation that yousee in the harbor today bears no relation whatsoever to the constellation of 1797, indesign, form, shape or size. if you choose to accept the fact that the constellation was built in 1797,fine. if you want it to be built in 1854, you're also correct. i believe it is an 1854warship. it was built as one of the last major ships of its class, built without a steamengine, before the great change-over when they began building more modern ships. theremay be pieces of the old constellation in

it. that does not make it a ship of 1797.i don't think there's any way around that. how much of the ship is left?i think there is nothing, whatsoever, nothing at all from 1797. i think what you have isessentially an 1854 warship that was rebuilt in recent years in baltimore. the ship thatyou see today would border on being a replica. it's a wonderful ship. it's a wonderful amenity.and its a great piece of maritime history, and baltimore should be proud of it. i donot believe it was built in baltimore in 1797. it essentially was built over in locust pointin the 1990's. there's nothing wrong with that. it's in the tradition of the originalconstellation. ok. i think that's going to make everyonehappy .... including geoffrey footner.

well, geoffrey and i have had this conversationover and over. we have talked about it. we've batted it around for over 25 years. i havegeoffrey's book. i was one of the first guys to get a copy of his book.is that it right there? [laughs.] no, no. i've got it in there, andits a wonderful book. no one has done the kind of in-depth research on this questionthat geoffrey footner has done. he's done a remarkable piece of work. and it's a pieceof work that will stand for all time. and it's a real benchmark in maritime historyresearch. his conclusion i disagree with. i do not believe it is a 1797 warship. itdoesn't matter whether it has pieces of the old ship in it or not. a ship should be datedfrom the time of its last major design change.

the maritime historian alexander lange bringsup an excellent point. the fact that winchester cathedral in england may be built with stonesfrom a roman temple does not make winchester cathedral a roman temple. so what we haveis an 1854 warship that we should treasure and take care of and maintain in the traditionof the great frigate constellation of 1797. but it is not a 1797 warship.you go into germany and a lot of the tiles they've uncovered, the roman tiles, doesn'tmake it a roman coliseum. it's just some roman tiles in germany. i see your point. it's verygood. sorry geoffrey, you lose. geoffrey and i have argued this back and forth.but his book is wonderful. his research is flawless. his research is on the money. hisconclusion i disagree with.

more on the shipping, since you really knowships. [reading from sheet] impact of slavery and war on local feelings and politics. andyou can go anywhere you want with it as far as....the 1840's, 50's and 60's were a very, very troubling time for fells point and for baltimoregenerally. maryland was a slave state, but fells point was also home to what may havebeen the largest free black community in the united states outside of new york maybe. abouthalf the african-american folks in baltimore and in maryland generally were free. therewas a lot of feelings... how do you know a slave was free? a pieceof paper? yeah. generally they would have ... they wouldbe given manumission papers to indicate that

they had been freed. many of them were bornfree. you had several generations, by this time, of free african-americans living inbaltimore. fells point, in the area over by bond street and what's now dallas street,what used to be strawberry alley ... there were a large number of free african americanswho were artisans and craftsmen. they were particularly known for working in the shipyards.virtually all ship caulkers in baltimore, the men who kept ships watertight, were black.the most famous of them had been frederick douglass, who in those days was known as frederickbailey, before he ran off to freedom in new bedford.a little-known tune, "won't you come home fred bailey".you're going to have a very tough time editing

this, you know.well, like you said, i'll have to take clips here and there.you're going to have to on this. when he does that, i don't remember where i am.i'm sorry. i'll get back to... i just couldn't help that one.but, the ship caulkers in baltimore were nearly all black. many of the dock workers, manyof the shipyard workers were african-american. at the same time, there was a feeling in baltimore,particularly among the well-to-do families, that their natural affinities and their naturalroots were tied to virginia. a lot of the wealthier families of baltimore wanted tosee their daughters married off to virginia aristocracy, and many of them had commercialconnections with the south, tobacco and so

forth.the people of fells point were a little different. fells point and east baltimore generally tendedto be a little more pro-union. when the civil war broke out, the folks in east baltimore,many of whom were immigrants, there were a lot of new englanders, again a big free blackcommunity, tended to lean much more toward the union. where west baltimore, where someof the "better families" as they would have said, lived, tended to be much more pro-south.maryland was caught up in the war very early. after the firing on ft. sumter, presidentlincoln called for volunteers and immediately needed a volunteer force, a militia forceto defend washington, thinking that there might be an invasion from the south.the earliest troops came from new england.

several regiments of massachusetts militiaheaded south. in order to get south in those days, you had to come into baltimore on thephiladelphia, wilmington and baltimore railroad to president street station. you would thendetrain from president street station and either take a coach or have your rail cartowed across town because it was against city ordinances to run steam engines downtown.you had to tow your car across to camden station where you would connect with the b&o railroad,and the b&o would then take you to washington. there were several other stations around town,but the one that was the most used from the troupes coming down from massachusetts andfrom new england was the president street station. the president street station wasprobably the 2nd passenger station built in

the united states by a railroad strictly forpassengers. it was built in 1849 and was something of a landmark even then.the 6th massachusetts regiment was bound south for washington. on the 18th of april, riotinghad broken out in baltimore. the ship fanny crenshaw from richmond had come in and tiedup in fells point and had run a succession flag up in its rigging. a mob from fells pointattacked the ship and pulled the flag down. when the mob left, the ship's boy came upand put the flag back up. so the mob returned and tore the flag to shreds and threw theship's boy in the harbor. a pro-southern mob had attacked one of theturnverein german social halls. the germans and many of the immigrants were living atthat time in what is now little italy, what

was then called mechanics row, over into fellspoint, and they tended to be very strongly union and strongly abolitionist.is that why they called it mechanics row, because they were?they were mechanics. they were artisans and mechanics. they were men who worked on thedocks, worked in the steam factories and the steam plants, and kept baltimore going inthat sense. so there had been rioting all through the17th and 18th. on the 19th, the morning of the 19th, the 6th massachusetts regiment comesinto president street station. the first few companies are towed in their railway carsover across town, over to camden station and they board the trains for washington. buta mob gathers. they gather at the bridge where

the bridge crosses over light street now andpratt street and they converge on the station. and they begin throwing rocks and bottlesand breaking windows in the cars. the rail cars are being towed across by horse untilthey get up to the pratt street bridge. and the bridge has been blocked by anchors andpaving stones and a bunch of other stuff that's been torn up and thrown in the way. the leaddriver panics and unhitches his team to take his team around to the other end, the backend of the car to tow the car back to president street station. this emboldens the mob andsomebody in the mob starts shooting. the soldiers go back, try and retreat back to presidentstreet station, can't really make it. they start going ahead to head over to camden streetstation, and the mob has become uglier and

bigger all the time. they've broken into acouple of hardware stores. every hardware store in those days sold shotguns and oldmuskets and things for people to make their living with, to hunt with...[clock chimes over next few sentences] so now there are guns in the street on bothsides. another mob forms in mechanics row. the mob in mechanics row is pro-union. theycome out and begin fighting with the pro-southern baltimore mob. the soldiers fall right intothe middle of this. somebody orders the soldiers to fire and they shoot. so the battle of prattstreet commences. when the battle is over, there are 4 dead soldiers and 11 dead baltimoreans,several of whom were from fells point. fells point's response was -- a group of businessmengot together and immediately formed a pro-union

militia and armed themselves. and baltimorewas very much in danger of being a divided city, a split city, at that point.it all calmed down eventually. baltimore went under martial law. a number of the leadingcitizens of baltimore who had southern sympathies were imprisoned in ft. mchenry until thingscalmed down. but the civil war was a very cruel time for baltimore. it was hard on familiesbecause there were many families who were divided. about three times more marylandersfought for the union than fought for the south. most of the southern volunteers went southvery early, usually in 1861. very few went down south after that. but there was alwaysa division of sympathies and a division within many, many families. it was a very tough time.also, areas like fells point suffered badly

in the civil war because there was an embargoon shipping and many of the products that used to sail out of jackson's wharf and brown'swharf and the various wharves that lined the fells point waterfront couldn't be shippedout of there. instead, baltimore merchants were having to send their cargo north to philadelphiaor wilmington or new york or even boston to get their cargo shipped properly. it wasn'tuntil 1863 and 64, well into the war, that things began to ease up in fells point. bythat time, government contracts were beginning to get let for the shipyards. the federalgovernment felt more comfortable about maryland, were less concerned about maryland succeeding,and were less concerned about the troubles that usually seemed to pop up in "mob town."is that where the name came from? the fact

that the mobs, or this one particular instance,or other.... no, no, there were many mobs. baltimore wasknown for its mobs. that's why it was called "mob town." during the war of 1812, roberte. lee's father was almost killed in the streets of baltimore because he opposed the war of1812. he was badly beaten and never recovered, never really recovered from it. edgar allenpoe was probably a victim of another mob during the elections in the late 1840's. he eventuallydied up the street on broadway at the hospital. the civil war, of course, the 19th of aprilof 1861, a terrible time. so baltimore had always been known for its unruly behavior,a tradition that i like to think we kept alive in fells point, at least until recent years.[discussion of whether to break or go on a

few minutes. 01:30:26:03]frederick douglass, isaac myers and other african-americans ... do you want to justsay a few things about them and what they did, or any special take you've got on it?sure. probably one of the most distinguished citizens to come out of fells point in historictimes was a young man by the name of fred bailey. fred bailey was born on the easternshore and was brought as a slave to baltimore... by who?the auld family, i think. i wouldn't swear to it. i don't remember that.i mean, not the dutch or british or anything... no, no, no. this was americans. he came tofells point as a young man, was apprenticed as a ship caulker in the gardner & kemp shipyardand several of the shipyards in fells point,

lived in the auld house, which is now gonefrom fells point. most ship caulkers in those days, in maryland and points south were black.it was a profession that african-americans took great pride in. fred bailey was the topof his trade. but he didn't like the idea of being a slave. so fred bailey dressed himselfas a sailor, and sailors were fairly common on the trains in those days, going from oneplace to another. if you were dressed as a sailor, they didn't question whether you werea slave or not. and again, half of the african-american population of maryland were free at that time.so, no one questioned him. he took the train north. he ended up in new bedford, massachusetts,and changed his name to frederick douglass. douglass is a man that really goes beyondrace. he taught all of us how to be free.

he's a great revolutionary figure in americanhistory. when the civil war was over, both of his sons had fought in the civil war assoldiers. one, his oldest son, was the sergeant major of the 54th massachusetts, a famousblack regiment. another son was in the 5th massachusetts calvary, a black cavalry regiment.and douglass himself had become a central figure in the fight against slavery, and inthe fight for civil rights for african americans and for all americans after the civil war.he eventually came back to baltimore, bought a piece of property in strawberry alley notfar from where he had lived. he had gone to church in the balcony at the strawberry alleychurch, which is now gone. strawberry alley is now bethel street, or no, excuse me, dallasstreet. he built what's still there, in the

1890's, called "douglass block." that washis excursion into real estate. so he's certainly one of our more distinguished figures.how old was he was starting to do all this? well, he was a young man when he came to baltimore.he was really a boy, he was a teenager. when he finally came back and got a pieceof property? i don't remember precisely when he was born,but he was an older man. i believe he was in his 70's when he died. so he was probablyin his 60's or so when he built douglass block. off the top of my head.isaac myers was a labor leader, a labor figure, an early proponent of civil rights for africanamerican citizens in baltimore and was one of the owners of the isaac myers shipyards,the first african-american owned shipyard

in the united states that i know of. thatwas at the end of thames street down where the living classrooms foundation is buildingtheir ... i've got a question that i've got to haveanswered by you. right there where you talk about the shipyard, there's a building that'sround ... they've torn it down ... is that because of the africans with the fear of thesouls hiding in the corners? no, no. that's the sugar warehouse. it wasjust the style of building at the time. [brief discussion and correction that it wasnot the one that was torn down.] that's the old sugar warehouse. when i firstmoved into baltimore, that was a warehouse. it had been a warehouse for a ship chandleryfor a long time and still had some anchors

and chains and stuff in it. it burned in theearly 90's i would guess. it caught fire and burned ... the top floors burned. we wereafraid we would lose that building, but we fought to save it. living classrooms foundationeventually came in and took over that piece of property.i had proposed in the 1970's the building of an historic shipyard, the recreation ofan historic shipyard. because at that time, we were in the process of building the prideof baltimore. and we had the skipjack mini-v and a couple of other historic vessels thatwere owned by the city. and i proposed building that shipyard to help maintain those shipsand to maintain the crafts and the skills. that idea went by the boards until the 1980'swhen a group of people in fells point got

together and thought this would be an excellentidea. bob keith, who wrote the fine book on baltimore harbor, and charlie norton and anumber of other folks, had a number of meetings and talked about it.the lady maryland foundation, which is now called the living classrooms foundation, wasinvited to those meetings and essentially picked up the idea for their own and wentahead with it. and that eventually we hope is what's going to happen there. i don't knowthat it'll be big enough to maintain a ship the size of the pride of baltimore, but they'llbe building ships and maintaining ships, and have apprenticeship programs and educationalprograms down there. i hope they'll do that in conjunction with the community. we suggestedearly on that it be named after frederick

douglass. it was only appropriate being acitizen of fells point and being a ship caulker. it's pretty important that that heritage berecognized. an idea which, by the way, they will claim is entirely their own. [under hisbreath while jacquie asks the next question] ... sons of bitches. i got no use for them...isaac myers .... is he the one ... he started that company because blacks couldn't get workin white-dominated... after the civil war, there was a tremendouscompetition for jobs in fells point, particularly along the waterfront. the shipbuilding tradehad been badly hit by the civil war. the embargoes early in the civil war had hurt fells point.and fells point, even with government contracts and the railroads and all coming through,fells point had never really recovered. so,

there was a real competition for work. ithad to be very tough for african-americans to find work in what was at that time stilla very prejudiced society. it was people like isaac myers who created opportunities forafrican-americans, that opened things up and really helped bring a certain amount of socialjustice and diversity to fells point. the free black community would have always beena marginalized and poor community if it hadn't been for people like ... the leadership ona national level of douglass and on a local level of isaac myers.china sea ... the china sea was in fells point for 21 years. some of our best customers weretraditional ships and schooners and the older ships. even occasionally we'd put things ontugs. so we would find odd-ball hardware and

things that hadn't been made for 100 yearsthat could go back to sea. one day this german seaman, young german seaman, came in witha little schooner and ... did wonderful knot-work. he had no money [laughs] ... he was tryingto sail around the world. he had no money at all, so he needed groceries. so i said,well, there musts be something you can do here... china sea kind of became a way stationfor travelers, for wanderers. we always found something to keep them busy. so he starteddoing knot-work for me. he did that cat-of-nine-tails. the other cat-of-nine-tails i have came offthe three-masted schooner artemus of rotterdam. artemus was, as far as i know, the last workingsailing ship, sailing with international cargo listed by lloyds of london. and i was theship's carpenter for a little while. she was

a wonderful ship. she was built in 1903. andthe boson actually made that cat-of-nine-tails as a joke. we never hit anybody with it. heused to walk around with it when we would put into port, he would walk around with itto terrorize the onlookers, the people on the docks who were looking at this colorfulold ship. [laughs.] we wanted people to know that we were not some pleasure yacht.[cut. discussion of having a drink later.] when i had ships, when i had schooners andsailing ships, i had a rule on the ship ... we ran a dry ship. there were no ardent spiritsallowed on board. no alcohol of any kind. the only time i had liquor on my ship waswhen i had the yankee hero, we were a bum boat. we were probably the last bum boat towork out of fells point. and in the middle

of the night, we would sail out of ann streetwharf... she was 66 feet on deck, big 66 feet, last rebuilt in 1912. i had beetles records,old blue jeans, cases of peanut butter and ketchup, electronics ... from jerry over atpoptronics, i would buy these little, we used to call them rasta boxes down on the islands,boom boxes, and they had a 110 and 220 switch on them so you could play them aboard shipand overseas... and we would take this stuff out in the middle of the night, over at theanchorages, when one of the energy crisises was going on, a lot of ships were tying upin baltimore, were at the anchorages in baltimore loading coal, so these guys ... half the timethey wouldn't let them ashore because they knew they'd run off ... so we'd come alongside at night and we would supply them with

all kinds of strange things. the poles likedpeanut butter, american peanut butter for some reason and blue jeans. the russians likedbeetles records. we had ketchup ... all kinds of crazy stuff. stuff that you would neverthink would have any value particularly. and we would trade for all kinds of things. wewould get ships salvage and extra tools and ring buoys and life buoys and stuff, all kindsof stuff. but in order to get up the pilot's ladder to get up on that ship, you have tobribe the boson. so i always had a bottle of black jack. that was the only booze i everallowed on my ship, was one bottle of jack daniels. and that always ensured a welcomeon board ship. [laughs.] but i wouldn't drink it and i wouldn't allow anybody else on theship to have it.

all right. let's talk a little bit about fellspoint ... you were there for a long time. tell me some of the things you were involvedin while you were there as far as the community ... i'll just shut and let you talk. wheredo you think it's going since you've left and beyond.and if you could start at what you were telling me before about the road and the reasons behindit and some of the dynamics, even though that's before you got there.i got to fells point at the end of the road fight. i think that fight had pretty wellbeen decided by the time i got there. a number of the folks that later formed the preservationsociety had come in and had had bought an awful lot of property down there, and foughtagainst the road. an awful lot of those people

were simply speculators. and while they certainlyhelped save fells point, they also helped destroy it. many of those historic propertiesthat they bought, they simply sat on without doing any restoration work and without maintaining,and those properties fell apart and were either very badly rebuilt or rebuilt to somethingthat they never were to begin with. and a lot of money was made.the city came in and in many cases i believe terrorized people out of their homes. theycame in and they would tell older people, people that had been there most of their lives,that if they didn't sell their property to the city or if they didn't vacate their property,then the city would simply condemn it and they wouldn't get any money ... they wouldn'tget anything that the property was worth.

so a lot of people panicked and left. rightbehind those people, speculators and folks looking to buy property cheap, would comein and say, "you know, the city's going to condemn your property ... you might as wellsell it to me." some of those people did good things... folks like roland reed settled downand made a commitment to the community and lived there and raised family there. otherslived in the suburbs and simply sat on the property or rented it out as slum housingto poor folks. i think that before we start throwing out too many bouquets about who savedfells point and for what purpose, we ought to consider all the facts.the preservation society was in my mind in the early days was a little too concernedwith the saving of property and the saving

of structures and buildings and saving otherpeople's investments. today, the preservation society, like the community associations,thinks more in terms of people. communities aren't buildings. communities are people.it's community. it's people working together and pulling together for common causes.one of the good things that came out of the collision of cultures that we had in the 70's,80's and 90's in fells point was that those of us who took different sides of issues learnedthat there was joy in working together with your neighbors, even neighbors that you havedifferences with. fells point has always been a place where a diverse, and sometimes perverse,group of people have come together. there has always been a mixture of nationalities,a mixture of races, a mixture of economics,

there have been very rich and very poor...when i first moved into fells point, there were people living in allies in cardboardboxes, there were people wondering the streets talking to themselves, there were folks thatwere absolutely unemployable. there were others who were buying property and were rebuildingit, and doing quite well for themselves. there still are. all those things.the fells point that we knew is gone. most of what i knew as fells point, the fells pointthat i knew and loved, has to a large degree, gone. that's ok. i'm different. i've grown.i'm not the same fellow i was back in the early and mid 70's. so why wouldn't fellspoint change? we've all had to grow up a little bit, and sometimes that's painful. i misssome of the rowdy times that we had. i miss

my rowdy friends. there was a real pioneeringspirit in those days in fells point because most of us didn't have anything. and so westarted out with nothing and we had to kind of pull together to get there. artists andmusicians and merchant seamen and longshoremen and immigrants and folks that didn't speakenglish and folks that didn't bother to check in with government authorities when they gotoff the boat. nobody turned in anyone for anything if they could avoid it. you nevercalled the police for anything short of murder. and we didn't get murders. people didn't tendto hurt each other very much. it happened. it certainly happened. but for the most partit was a time of some innocence. unfortunately, a lot of those people thati new then died young. they spent a lot of

their lives in the saloons, in the bars. anddrugs became a factor. and it wasn't long before you began to see friends in their 20'sand 30's who looked like they were in their 60's and 70's. people that didn't have familiesany more, didn't have any money, couldn't hold a job, and who died tragic deaths, earlydeaths. when you say fells point as you knew it wasgreat but it's over, give me a few specifics. maybe you're leading to some... give me anexample. as somebody that, i'm a newer resident ... i've been there 10 years with my wife,but i haven't been there as long as you have, and you were there at some of the criticalcrossroads, i guess you would call it... so, be kind of specific...when i started my business... i think i had

$40 to my name when i opened the door of myshop at 817 south broadway next to the port mission. i didn't know where the next fewmeals were coming from. but i thought this would be a good place to start. my rent inthose days was about $200 a month for my shop on the bottom floor, for my home, where ilived, my apartment, on the top floor, and a nice living room and a couple of extra roomsthat i let out to wandering merchant seamen. i had a back yard where i could work. wheni looked out my galley window, my kitchen window, i could look right out on the tugs.and in fact, it was funny because i'd get out of the shower in the morning. and sometimesi'd look out the window without a stitch on and the guys on the tugs would give me a tooton the whistle. we all knew each other. we

were all good neighbors. living was cheap,and it was good. we had lots of friends. a lot of folks that were just getting a startin life. and a second start in life.... you know, fells point was always a second startcommunity. it was a place where people went that had lives in other places. and you didn'talways ask questions as to where someone had been. you waited for them to volunteer it.explain that a little bit. that's the interesting part. some of the stuff that no one's mentionedyet... when i moved the shop, when my partner, billoliver ... bill owns the wharf rat now ... when bill and i had moved the shop around fromthe square, around to where the maritime museum is now, 1724 thames, in the old car barn.it was just a wide-open filthy warehouse.

it was a mess. there had been some guys inthere working on cars and there was grease everywhere. the place was a disaster. theback half of the building was taken up by john fergusson and dave gerlack, who wereiron and steel fabricators ... very talented guys, sharp guys, good neighbors, too. sobill and i set up a shop in there. and in the back, i had a forge for doing some blacksmithing.i would occasionally bring it out front and when the street arabs would come with theirhorse-drawn wagons, the wagons were always falling apart, and the horses were throwingshoes, and i would refasten shoes occasionally and fix iron tires on the wagons and so forth...you started as a blacksmith? no, no, it was a ... an operation just likeit is now. i sell all kinds of ships stuff.

but we did whatever it took to stay afloat.if somebody needed woodwork, if somebody wanted an antique-type sign painted, i would do that.my father's family was originally trained as blacksmiths.yeah. i would do ships figureheads and name boards for some of the older ships, the olderstyle ships, traditional work. and we had a stove in the back and on the stove was alwaysa pot of chili cooking in the daytime. there was always a pot staying warm. so any timeyou wanted to take a break, you could take a break and go on over and there was a coffeepot and you could pour yourself a cup of coffee and have a little chili. well people wouldcome in the store who were just discovering fells point and they would walk in the backand we'd sit them down and give them a bowl

of chili and tell them a little about fellspoint ... tell them if we knew there was an apartment available, or where they might finda job in a bar, you know, or if the tugs might be hiring. so a lot of folks got their introductionto fells point that way. those were young and innocent times for fells point.that's the kind of thing i really love, and you're right about those things disappearinglike that... that kind of thing where you can just come on in and "how you doin'?" myneighbors are kind of like that. we do that a lot.the law as it applied to fells point was a little bit different it was in the rest ofthe city. people didn't always bother to get their zoning clearances and their buildingpermits to alter their buildings... they'd

ask their next door neighbor if it was alrightand if it was alright with them then it was probably alright, they'd go ahead and do it.again, you didn't call the police for anything if you could possibly avoid it.i remember in the old days, the cat's eye was really two operations. you had the frontroom, and you had the back room. the back room of the cat's eye was run by a fellowthat we all called back room eddie. sometimes we knew him as easy eddie. easy eddie wasa big fellow, ex marine, vietnam vet.... good guy. and sometimes at 4 or 5:00 in the morningi'd be walking by and i'd hear a little sound of music coming from the back room, you know,or i'd see a light under the door, and i'd bang on the door, and somebody would comeout in front and open the door and lead me

into the back room. and we'd be back there,we'd be drinking beer, doing things that were not always particularly legal. but it wasyour neighbors. we'd be telling stories, having a good time, and sharing time with each other.it was a lot of fun. that won't happen again in fells point. notdown on the waterfront. it can't. it's too bad. and that's what i miss. but, you know,there is still some old fells point left. if you go back into the neighborhoods, ifyou go back up on durham street, and up through that area, up into the neighborhood, go onup dallas and bond, and through that area. there's a lot of artists still, a lot of workingstiffs, a lot of the old timers, a lot of immigrants and folks that are fairly new tothe area, getting a new start in life up there.

and so, i don't think they'll ever be ableto fully, completely eliminate old fells point. but most of the fells point that i knew onthe waterfront back in the 70's and 80's, it's pretty well gone.it was people living and working and getting along, trying to build themselves. now it'sjust ... a conglomeration buys a bunch of things and puts things in there...a lot of us lived over the top of our shops. and that makes a big difference. when youlive in your business, you make a real commitment to your community and your business, it counts.even if you're a renter, that's something that really counts. it's the way you makeyour living and the relationship with your neighbors is important. and so, you tend tocommit yourself to a neighborhood. you'll

fight for it. you'll fight for it in waysthat you wouldn't if you lived out in the suburbs or if you only slept in fells pointand worked downtown. the folks that really didn't have much, that put everything theyhad into their small businesses, and their little entrepreneurial operations on broadwayand on thames and even some of the back streets, they were folks that fought for that neighborhood.they weren't always the best of neighbors. they weren't always the politest of people.but they were people you could count on when the chips were down.ok, so now we see fells point moving from that into what? what do you see? where doyou see things going? if steve bunker were to move back there tomorrow, what would surprisehim or what would he go, "oh, no ... this

is kind of nice but boy i don't like this..." just some things... well, i don't know.steve bunker couldn't move back to fells point if he wanted to. i couldn't afford it now.the area that i love is working waterfront. that's what i'm used to. that's what i wasborn to. i've lived on working waterfronts all over the world and fells point is theone that i love the most. it's the one that i stuck with. but that waterfront that i knewis gone. i couldn't afford to live there now. today, speculators have bought much of theproperty. they are often people that don't live there and have not made the same commitmentto the community that some of the residents have, or some of the small businesspeoplethat have been there a long time. what they

want is, they want their management companyto bring them that check, wherever they happen to live, once a month. and they paid a lotof money for that property. so, there's no way you can rent that property at prices thatyou can make a living on. a lot of those businesses now will have to be hobbies for people. anawful lot of it is going to be people that have income somewhere else and so they'reable to take a loss, but they happen to enjoy having a designer soap store or whatever theyhappen to have there. the day where a young couple or a young man or woman can come inand start a new business and create his dreams is largely gone. and that's what i miss. ireally miss that about fells point. fells point taught me a lot. it taught methe meaning of community. for the first time

in my life, i had neighbors, real neighbors.people that really meant something to me. people that i knew i would be seeing the nextday and the day after. those are folks that i was willing to fight for and i knew wouldfight for me. that's what's hard to find. you can't create community with historic homeownertax credits. that's not how it's done. it's done with people.i agree with everything you're saying. there's no doubt about it. where do you see it going?let's say steve bunker doesn't really live there, but he's seen enough of the place.where do you see it going in 5, 10, 15 years? gimme 5, gimme 10, gimme 15, 20...history is like the great wheel of life. it's just going to keep on going. for a while,people will make a lot of money in fells point.

they'll speculate on the property. they'lldo quite well. eventually, people will not be able to open imaginative and interestingbusinesses. they won't be able to afford little working-class houses that were built in the1800's for irish laborers that now they're trying to make into little federal periodpalaces. eventually that string is going to run out.there will be economic hard times in this country. that'll reflect in the prices ofproperties. eventually things will go back down again to a more reasonable level. therewill always be a circle. it's history. it simply continues. it probably won't happenin my lifetime, but in the lifetime of our children, fells point will once again becomea place where people will come to start again.

where they'll look for a break. where they'llopen small shops and businesses, where they'll look to build new lives. and do so in an affordableway. i wish i could be around for that, but it's not going to happen.you make good sense. you think some of the gentrification now is going to... it'll topout at some point and then maybe there'll be an abandonment... for instance a lot ofpeople park their cars down there to go to the ballgame. and people come down there becauseits just the trendy place to go. upscale restaurants were never fells point.but if you look at fells point now, you'll see that the trend is changing again. fora time in the 90's it was where all the kids, all the drunken college boys, all the sillysorority sisters would go and misbehave. they

would do things in fells point they wouldnever think of doing in their own homes or around their own neighborhoods. and they thoughtthat fells point was the place to get away with it. just like sailors in the 1930's and1920's, 1910's had put in and had chased hookers and done crazy things and misbehaved, whichthey couldn't do in their own home towns. that's changing already. now suddenly peopleare discovering canton. they're going to find other venues. every neighborhood that hastrendy bars and kiddy clubs always runs in cycles. it's a 5, 6, 7 year cycle. the placethat was new and interesting and dynamic this day will change and it'll be old hat the next.americans' attention span is about that long. and so, when they choose to do something else,when they find some other place to go, some

other new trend, they'll do it.i remember just a couple of years ago, cigars were the big thing. and we had a couple ofcigar operations in fells point. and all these guys would come down from the suburbs, fromthe washington suburbs even, and they would buy 3 and 4 dollar cigars. and on sunday morning,you'd look in the gutter and there were 2/3 of a $5 cigar laying in the gutter. becauseit was a very popular trend, and so that's what they were following was this populartrend. it looked very macho. arnold schwarzenegger had his picture on the cover of cigar aficionado,so a lot of guys thought that that looked neat. but they really weren't into cigars,so the cigars ended up in the gutter and the money was up the spout. the cigar places aregone now. that's the nature of things, and

it's the nature of fells point. history isa great circle. it'll just keep changing. i'd love to be here for another hundred years.because i'd love to see fells point and see what happens.i wonder if my clothes would fit after 100 years....one of the points i'm kind of getting to... nob hill in san francisco, beacon hill inboston, those places, it's just kept on going.... downtown london for instance... it's justout of control. now what's the difference between that.... i don't see those reallybeing connected. but you know the history of all the other places better....yes, but ... well, here it is... baltimore has never had, and does not nowhave, nor will it probably have in the future

the kind of economy to sustain the kind ofreal estate boom that's happened in a place like fells point. prices are not going tojust keep going up. it's not going to be elfreth's alley in philadelphia or beacon hill in boston.those places have stable economies and a very solid business base, financial base that peoplecan maintain the value of their property. it's unlikely to happen in east baltimore.east baltimore may never go back to the poverty that it once had, thank god. that's the goodthing about gentrification, is when people see things that are better, when they seeneat, clean homes, when they see people taking pride in the appearance of their community,they like to stick with that. but, you're not going to be able to continue to try andrent out property at the outrageous prices

that some of the businesses are renting forin fells point today. it's simply not gonna happen because it's not sustainable. eventually,that will go back to the point where people can afford it. it's those people that canhold out will be the beneficiaries of that. that's not going to be me. i'm too old forit. i'm too far down the road. and frankly, i'm content to let the old fells point thati knew and loved live in my memory, and it always will. i'll always treasure it, andi'll always owe a tremendous debt to fells point and to baltimore for allowing me togrow and to learn the meaning of community and to mature. i appreciate its forgiveness.do you have any words of wisdom for fells point? ... watch out for this, don't do this,look at this, things you've seen... taken

on the fact that you're also a historian andyou look at fells point as not only a place you live but also a place that maybe couldfit into a pattern as other cities could fit into a pattern... i noticed that you justcompared philadelphia and beacon hill in boston. any words for fells point in that ... don'tfall into this pattern or this trap or some things that you see just stepping back andlooking at the whole situation. one of the things that we did in fells pointin the 70's, 80's and 90's is we learned to fight for the things that we believed in.and we learned to pull together to do it. fells point is the kind of place that's wideopen to exploitation. political exploitation -- there was a time when every developer thatwandered into town with an expensive suit

was promised a piece of fells point by thecity administration. they never met a developer they didn't like. some of these guys wereabsolute con men. and they would come in with the most outlandish schemes, schemes thattook no interest whatsoever in the well-being of the people who lived in fells point. theyproposed 28 story tall condominium towers for brown's wharf. they proposed all kindsof outrageous development that would have destroyed fells point as we know it. it wouldhave forced out people on fixed incomes. it would have forced out elderly citizens. itwould have prevented young people and immigrants and the folks that make up fells point fromever being able to create the opportunities they did. many of the residents that livethere now, folks that renovated their homes

and took pride in their homes, would neverhave been able to stay. and the neighborhood that would have been created would not havebeen the kind of neighborhood that anyone would want to live in.if it weren't for local people, the people of fells point, fighting those battles andinsisting on justice, changing their city councilmen when it was necessary, discipliningthe city administration, testifying at meetings at annapolis as well as downtown, if we hadn'tbrought pressure to bear on the powers that be, fells point would have disappeared. andwhat we would have been left with would have been a series of towers, huge white elephants,that no one would want to own. instead, they would have been strictly rental propertiesand would be half empty most of the time.

fells point will always be open to that kindof exploitation if people don't learn to stand on their hind legs and voice themselves anddemand justice from the city administration. if a neighborhood has a philosophy, and it'sthe most important thing it can have, it has to know what it wants to be. it has to makea decision. it has to come to some kind of consensus as to what it wants to be... infells point, we decided we wanted a residential community with a strong business element.we didn't want to run off all the bars. we didn't want to run off the small businesses.we wanted to have a combination of things. we wanted to have our grocery stores. we wantedto have our bars where we could socialize. but we wanted also to have residents wherepeople could be left in peace and raise their

families and live decently. we wanted to havelife on a livable scale. we had to fight for that. that didn't just come because it justhappened. we had to fight for that. we sometimes fought each other. it was very difficult attimes. that's like the old thing, freedom isn't free.there was a tremendous collision of cultures in fells point at one point. it's happenedat other times in fells point's history. in the 1790's and early 1800's, there were alot of very well-to-do people living in fells point. a series of plagues had swept through.in this case, we know it was yellow fever and malaria from the fens and from the bogs,from the mosquitoes living in the low grounds by the shipyards. people didn't know thatat the time. so the well-to-do families fled.

and what was left was sailors and immigrantsand poor folks. and that collision of cultures was very painful.it happened again in the 70's and 80's and 90's. well-to-do people coming in from thesuburbs, professional people, well educated people, were buying homes in fells point andwere fixing them up. they met resentment from a lot of the older people who had been there,because they saw a threat to their being able to stay there due to rising property taxes.for the folks that had come in themselves, the poorer folks, the artisans, the sailors,and so forth, they saw the collision because their way of life was much looser. they weren'tparticularly concerned about historic homeowner tax credits. they didn't worry about whereto park their car. they only had one car.

they could park it on a back street. theydidn't care. many of the families coming in owned two and three cars and their houseswere only 17 feet wide. so they insisted they had to have a place to park. these were issuesthat had to be resolved amongst ourselves. and it was very painful. those of us thatled organizations and led groups in those days took a lot of blood. we gave and took.but in doing so, we learned the meaning of community. and we learned how much more worthwhileit was to work with our neighbors, to work together and to pull toward common goals.because we had so much more in common than we had apart. and as soon as we got over themarginal differences, we really made progress and we really helped create the fells pointthat you see now.

some of us really kind of created our ownexit strategies without meaning to. i couldn't afford to live in fells point now, not wherei lived. and i wanted to live on the water. i've lived on the water all my life. that'swhat i do. that's where my roots are. that's where my background is. i've been a sailorand a dock worker all my life. you don't really have it too bad here.oh, i love maine. no complaints. my ancestry is here. i was born and raised in new england.this is where i came back. and i didn't want to spend the rest of my life in the city.i knew if i didn't leave when i did, i'd probably never leave. so i had to go. but i think aboutfells point a lot. talk about some of the organizations and theconflicts. you were telling me some of these

stories earlier.back in the late 80's, fells point really didn't have community organizations as welater had. dick feint had led the fells point improvement association for some time. hewas a wonderful man. it was an organization principally made up of older residents andfolks that had been there a long time, working people. but dick really was the lifebloodof the organization. and that was often the case. organizations often were led by 1, 2,3 people. and much depended on what they did. when dick feint died, the fells point improvementassociation really disappeared. the only thing left was orra, owners, residentsand renters association. most of the long-term residents that had belonged to orra no longerwere going to the meetings or no longer belonged.

the organization had really fallen into declineand had become a small social club made up principally of people who were relativelynew to the area, folks that had moved in from out of town or from the suburbs and had theirown vision of what fells point would be. they had invested a lot of money and a lot of timeand a lot of their dreams in their homes. and they envisioned a somewhat cleaner andmore orderly neighborhood than fells point was at that time.in order to achieve that goal, i think they made a very tragic mistake. a number of peoplewithin that small group began calling city inspectors -- health inspectors, housing inspectors,bar inspectors -- anybody who had an inspector suddenly descended on fells point. and seawidows who were renting rooms as mail drops

to merchant seamen suddenly were being hitwith fines for not having a smoke detector or not having a fire escape. and these werepeople that didn't even know such a thing existed. and the people who rented the roomswere merchant seamen, they weren't there three days a month. they just wanted a place toget their mail. restaurant owners and bar owners were suddenly being hit for healthcode violations they'd never had to worry about. the police were sending in cadets tosee who was being served and who wasn't (the age limit).there was a lot of this going on. some of it is necessary, and some of it was certainlywarranted because fells point was pretty wild and wooly. but at the same time, they camedown with a very heavy hand on a lot of folks

that didn't deserve it. and people began toget upset. a lot of the old timers in fells point, a lot of the working people, the guyson the waterfront, became pretty worked up about it, the restaurant owners and bar owners.so, a large group of us decided to join orra. so one night we all walked into the meeting-- and there was about 70 of us, which frankly surprised me. i didn't know there were 70people who agreed on anything in fells point. but they did. and out of that 70 people, therewas probably 5 or 6 waitresses from bars, 2 or 3 bar owners, there was at least 1, isuspect 2 prostitutes, a transvestite who we all loved very dearly, a lot of small businesspeople, a number of folks that didn't have any fixed address but seemed to live fromplace to place in fells point ... and they

joined. they were all fells pointers. an electionwas eventually held and i was elected president. this put me on the firing line, and i certainlynever intended to be in that position, but there i was.the group that had been there, that thought we were all a bit too rag-tag for their taste,formed their own group, the homeowners association, and didn't want to have anything to do withus. i frankly had friends in both camps. some of the folks that joined the homeowners weredear friends of mine. and it was very hurtful to me, and i know it was hurtful to them tofind ourselves on opposite sides of the fence. we had a little civil war going on. it wasexacerbated by a couple of acts of violence. some idiot threw a small gasoline bomb atsomebody's window and that was ascribed to

some political motive. eventually, everybodyin fells point knew who did it ... everybody but the police. there was $12,000 in rewardsout for the perpetrator and yet the police said they couldn't even get a crank call.[laughs.] we all figured out who did it eventually. it had nothing to do with the neighborhood.but it was very painful. our organization, orra, eventually changedits name to the fells point community organization and along with nelson adlin and the folksin the business association formed this group, this coalition. we reached out to canton andhighlandtown and to butchers hill, to little italy, and formed the waterfront coalitionbecause all of us had similar problems. all of us felt that the city was giving us shortshrift. and so we came together with our various

philosophies of our neighborhoods and whatthe future should be and we fought for each other. and it was extremely effective. weeventually replaced the deadwood that we had in the city council supposedly representingus and the course of fells point and east baltimore generally was...[break - end of tape - 02:19:00:06] we've talked a lot about fells point history,and now the spicy part i guess, just some fells point anecdotes, little stories... oneof the ones you mentioned was, people in fells point, talk about their nicknames and whythey had nicknames and things like that with different nationalities.ok. fells point, as i've said, is kind of a place where an awful lot of people got theirsecond start. and a lot of people didn't want

to give out their names, their real namesfor one reason or another. and some people were perfectly willing to give out their realnames, but their real names were either too foreign or too difficult to remember or weretoo similar to somebody else's name, so they ended up with a nickname. so, there was irishmike, who tended bar at the cat's eye. there was greek mike. there was railroad mike, mikeboke. there was easy eddie, fast eddie ... all these different names that people picked upover a period of time ... dirty john. a couple that referred unkindly to people's ethnicity.but they didn't mean it unkindly, it's just something that happened.examples? black doug, that's not particularly unkind,but black doug ... some people called him

doug the biker. doug is still there. livesover the wharf rat. you can usually tell when he's there because his indian motorcycle isparked out front. good guy. long time fells point denizen.remember the guy, rudy, the austrian baker that was there that drove an old bmw?of course. yes. he made the best strudel in the world. i don'tknow if he's still there... yes, he's still around. austrian rudy. rudy'sstill around last i knew. he's got a bakery. he's from austria. baked a lot of the pastriesyou'd pick up at the market. yeah, they were great.yeah. he made some big strudels for i party i had one time, me and my next door neighborbill. and he just came over. he wasn't happy,

and he said, "i'm not going to stay aroundbut i wanted to make something..." and these giant strudels.... they were this fat andthis long [not on camera], two of them. he did a bachelorette party for a friend ofours, denise, denise whitman over at the preservation society. he did the bachelorette party forher. he brought pastries, and some of them were lewd pastries. and they held that partyin my back yard. fells point, at one point, we counted 36 nationalitiesin fells point in family groups. elaine f, who was the city's folklorist, i guess thestate's folklorist, for a time. elaine and i both compared notes at one time. we bothcame up with a figure of 36. and by 36 nationalities, i mean in family groups. that doesn't countthe woman from borneo who was tending bar

down the street. these are family groups.the old ethnic groups in fells point are probably the germans and the irish, and even the french.but the later groups, beginning in the 1880's, 1890's, right up to the present day, are poles,lithuanians, ukrainians, eastern europeans generally. lately, there's been a big influxof folks from mexico, working people from mexico coming up. just a few years ago wasnicaragua, el salvador ... people fleeing the wars and the troubles down there. theyopened a number of really nice little restaurants ... and they've settled the area known asspanish town and have brought a lot of life, a lot of variety to the community.that area was almost desolate and they've turned it completely around.that's right. well, that's what happens, you

know. people have to have dreams and haveto believe in an area enough to settle down and give it time...does that spanish town area ... is that in any reminiscent of that fells point you saidisn't going to exist any more? the people, working people building...yes. this is the way that some folks are able to get a second start. they'll come in andthe whole family will work. there's a thai family running a convenience store up thestreet on broadway. it isn't just one person that came in and plopped down some money.the whole family works there. and that's how they're able to do it.ding how? no, ding how's different. as far as i knowis essentially ronnie and [can't remember

name] came in from shanghai. that used tobe a 7-11 when they set that up. but at one time at the market, you could get... eric was there, who was a dutchman, he was a meat cutter... there was several peopleselling things like pierogies, there was italian specialties, there was hispanic and mexicanfood, there were some palestinian folks there... right on the block alongside the market there,the first market building up on broadway, at one point, there was a palestinian, therewas avie has a little antique and curiosity shop there, he's from morocco, he's jewishfrom morocco... so, it was always a neighborhood that had interesting cross-currents. that'spart of the neighborhood that i always loved.... that's one of the things i always loved aboutit.

yeah, that's still what i love about it. ican go walk around and get different... things. that area has an interesting labor history.there were quite a number of union halls through that area at a time when unions were justforming. when i was going to sea as a young man, the national maritime union, the nmu,had a hall up the street. the nmu was one of the most progressive unions in its day.it was an early union that had no place on its form for race. it didn't matter what yournational origin or what race you were. if you were a working seaman, you belonged inthe union. and that was exceptional back in the 1930's and 1940's, particularly in a portthat was really a southern port like baltimore. the siu was down there, the marine carpenters,the ship's carpenters union was down there.

longshoremen, the ila, was down there... backat the turn of the century and up into the 20's, the marine transport workers union,which was an iww union, the wobblies, they were there. there were quite a number of strikesand a couple of real labor wars that took place there ... big strikes in the late 30'sthat were headquartered out of what is now the admiral fell inn, but what was in thosedays the anchorage, which was a seamen's home. across the street at 817 south broadway wasthe wobbly hall. that was always a hiring hall ... standard oil pete actually hiredpeople for tankers out of there for quite some time...another nickname... yeah, standard oil pete, that's long beforemy time.

in 1949, there was a labor war and, just aroundthe corner from 817, was a hotel, the building is still there ... it's now, i think it'shightops or something now... but that was a hotel for seamen. a lot of those guys werespanish speaking seamen who didn't even know there was a strike on, but they were broughtin to break the strike. so some of the strikers who were living around the corner had enoughof that, and they went around the corner one night and threw a couple of gasoline bombsin the place and a couple of people were killed. so, it always had its ugly side.on the very corner there, that same corner of broadway and thames, was the double-pumptavern. the double-pump was a long-term seaman's bar, had been there for a long time. he didn'talways have the best reputation with the local

seamen. it was back in the 40's and 50's andearly 60's. he shortchanged a group of danish and norweigan seaman one night, gave themchange for a $5 when they had given him a $20. so they waited for their moment. thelocal policeman was walking his beat. they advised the policeman it was probably timefor him to move on and so when he moved on up the street they went in and thoroughlytrashed the place, just tore it up ... put him out of business for a while and taughthim a lesson. but, a lot of that sort of thing happened in that area.right on that corner were two pumps ... that's why it was called the double-pump. it's becausethere were two pumps, two public water pumps there where people could get water.a lot of folks didn't have running water in

fells point really until fairly late. if yougo through fells point, you'll still see out houses in the backs of some of the yards ofsome of these houses, if you go through the back allies... now those aren't used any more,now they're usually used as gardening sheds. but every now and then, you'll encounter onethat looks like it might have been used recently. they're not legal. nearly everybody, i'm sure,has running water now, but those days aren't that far long gone.when i first moved into baltimore, i moved into a place up on federal hill, up on churchillstreet before it became "federal hill", before it became as fancy as it is now and expensive...and there was a big brown mule living in one of the back allies. guy had a nice big brownmule back there. woke me up at night.

nice big brown mule... as opposed to not nice.one thing that nobody's talked about yet, and i guess this would go along with the gentrification... you're familiar with all the controversy, and i even went to a few meetings ... overthe rec pier. what do you see? where the recreation pier stands now, therewas a community out there... there was a whole series of houses, a little village out there,it was part of the waterfront community in fells point. and nearly all those people livingon that pier worked on the waterfront. they were sailors or longshoremen or dock workersof some kind. one of my old neighbors, mrs. lewkowski, who was actually born right there,was my neighbor for a good many years ... didn't pass away until she was in her 90's, she usedto tell me stories about that place. but in

1912, the city decided that they wanted todo something with that and they wanted to build a modern cargo moving facility in thatarea. so they bought everybody out and tore down everything that was on the pier and thenbuilt the recreation pier that you see there now. they called it the recreation pier tosome degree for political purposes. if you look closely at that building, you'll noticeit looks like many of the piers on the philadelphia waterfront that has large bays on both sides.those bays were used for loading cargo. in 1913, they loaded their first cargo out ofthere, a british freighter that came to call in fells point.but because they had taken that community away, people were upset that they weren'tgetting something within their own community.

fells point has always had its own agenda.and so the city said, alright, we'll make a nice recreation facility in a safe placefor kids to play and a nice ballroom. kids had been playing in the street on thames street.and now automobiles were becoming big, and trucks. and the trucks were coming and goingfrom this cargo pier and were in danger of running over kids. mrs. lewkowski said theywere already running over people's chickens, because they used to cut the chickens losein the street to pick for goodies. so they didn't want to lose their kids like they werelosing their chickens. so when they built the building, they built it with this ballroomand this playground, this facility in the back for the kids. they called it the recreationpier in deference to the community's wishes.

in reality, that pier was built to load cargo.the future of that pier is going to be something to watch. i don't think that they should doanything more with that pier in terms of construction. certainly, the back deck is in need of structuralrepair. there's a number of things that need to be done with the building, elevators, forexample, and facilities for disadvantaged people and handicapped people. but i thinkthat the city would be shortsighted in simply trying to dig up highest and best use, thatis make the most money on it. a facility like that is a really important part of the communityand the way the community is viewed. if it's turned into condominiums or boutiques andfern bars or businesses that are too expensive for local people to patronize, then i thinkthey're being very short-sighted. whatever

developer goes in there, i hope he remembersthat he's in fells point. and i hope the city fathers, the powers that be downtown willlisten long and hard when the people of fells point speak and talk about their vision forthat building. i think it's pretty important for the future.cause a lot of the talk on the rec pier... i went to the... actually videotaped someof the meeting ... they had the old-time town hall meeting and they had all the differentdevelopers there. one was going to be a circus with a ferris wheel and one was going to be... with all that idiocy past, do you see it being restored to what it was originallyintended, a ballroom and a place for the community to meet, a community center, or ...it's unlikely that the building will ever

be redeveloped or restored to what it was.there just aren't a lot of freighters calling in fells point for cargo any more, so that'sgone. but they need to preserve the tugs, because as long as you have a working waterfront,there's going to be a turkey on the table come thanksgiving and christmas. as long asyou have a waterfront that's capable of creating jobs, then it's an important thing to reinforcethat and to make sure that they know they have a place for a long time. that ever thecity has to do to retain those tugs there, i think they ought to do. and then they oughtto develop around that. they ought to develop around community uses. that doesn't mean youcan't have offices. it doesn't mean you can't have nice facilities of some kind. it doesmean that you should simply take the philosophy

of the community and extend it into that structure.you're not going to get a huge number of tourists who are just going to come over to go to anothershopping center by the water. in spite of everything they want to tell you about harborplace, that more people went through it in its first year than went through disneyland,this is all nonsense. we know its nonsense. that's not what people come to the waterfrontfor. fells point is unique. don't try to do the same thing there as you do in san diegoand new orleans and every other waterfront. let fells point and the philosophy of fellspoint continue into that pier. its funny, too, because the cordish family,not only in atlantic city but new orleans, the downtown area, all that same developer... david cordish, they were also at the meeting

for the rec pier presenting their plan. sooneror later people should see ... don't all these places kind of look alike? downtown new orleanslooks just like downtown baltimore. exactly. and it's interesting to note toothat in new orleans it hasn't been particularly successful. most of these projects now aroundthe country are not doing particularly well. richmond folded up, the rouse project downthere. listen to the community. communities, peoplethat have committed themselves to a community and to a neighborhood, they have knowledgethat no one else has. it's knowledge that you can't hire. you can't buy it. no feasibilitystudy is necessarily going to reflect it. you need to listen to the people that livethere and that see it every day. take that

knowledge and treasure it. and combine thatwith a sensible business plan, and you'll have a winner. if you just want to cookie-cuttersomething, plan something in isolation that could have fit on any waterfront, it's notgoing to work out. it's just not going to work out. it's going to bad for the communityand ultimately it won't be good for baltimore. i agree with you. a lot of those mega planswork as long as they are brand new. and as soon as the first year the newness wears off.... right in the crapper. when they talked about harbor place and whata success it was in the first couple of years, the city kept beating the drum for it. thebaltimore sun kept carrying stories about it. they kept saying that more people hadpassed through than passed through disneyland.

but, you know, if you were over there andyou watched it, you knew what they were doing. first of all, there was a guy at the bottomof the stairs with a clicker and a guy at the top of the stairs with a clicker, andthey were both clicking off the same people. secondly, the people going through disneylandare spending $50 apiece. the people passing through a place like the inner harbor werespending $1, $2, $3 buying an ice cream cone. it's very different. you can create a feasibilitystudy to say whatever you want it to say. listen to the community. the community knowsthings that the experts don't know. fells point is participatory democracy. it's alsogood business to listen because they'll back you up. if hard times hit and you have workingtugs, and you have a working waterfront ... again

you'll still have a turkey on the table comethanksgiving. if on the other hand you've turned the whole thing into marina and cutsieboutiques and designer soap stores and places that people can't afford, where's that goingto take you? it's not going to hold you up for the long run.no. any thoughts on gambling?i think casinos and gambling are one of the worst things that could happen in a city likebaltimore. it would be a disaster for fells point. there is no business like gamblinganywhere in the world. nothing that depends so much on the largest number of people losingtheir money. it's a parasitic business. the money that comes out of those casinos, thatgoes into those casinos, comes out and leaves

town because they're not owned locally. theypay a certain amount of taxes to annapolis. annapolis will spend them in any way theysee fit. and who does the accounting? it's not going to be folks in the community thatdo the accounting. the first couple years, it'll bring in some tourists. it'll be a novelty.the minute they open a new casino in charlestown or some other place, wilmington, then peoplewill start going there. and when the gamblers and the gaming interests that have built thiscasino then get desperate, who are they going to turn to for their revenue? they're goingto turn to baltimore. they're going to turn to local people. baltimore is a relativelypoor town. and relatively poor people are the ones spending the most money in the casinos.ala the lottery.

exactly. if a man has $10 in his pocket andhe goes out to buy baby food and pampers, and he's desperate and he's hungry. he doesn'thave a decent job and he's feeling bad about himself, he's going to walk by that slot machineand he's going to say, "oh, what the hell. i've got 10 bucks. i'll spend 2 bucks in thismachine and i'll take a chance." because the one thing he has in abundance is hope. sohe puts the $2 in the machine and of course he doesn't win anything. then he puts a 3rdand a 4th and a 5th dollar in the machine and eventually his $10 is gone. he still hasto go home with baby food and pampers. where's he going to get them?the last thing you need in a town, a working town like baltimore, a town with a decliningpopulation and a rising proportion of poor,

the last thing you need is any kind of gamblingor gaming operation. they bring the worst element into the community, and they takethe best out. give me something about music in fells point,and then we'll call it a day. oh, fells point's always had an interestingmusic scene. pretty eclectic. hard to make a living at. i've seen some great acts. alot of them have passed through my store at some one time or another because a lot ofthe musicians ... we all seem to like the same things. ron furman used to bring somegreat acts into his club there, max's. but most of the music scene down there has beensmall music venues. i can't say much about the music scene down there because, quitefrankly, i think it never was developed in

the way it should have been. i think it wasalways under appreciated. and that would have been...if more clubs could have had more good, well-paying venues for local musicians, i think it wouldhave been a lot healthier. that's one place i think fells point fell down.the one part i see very close to the mainstay of the jazz scene in new york and the fallingoff in other cities that fells point has ... new york you can walk from jazz club to jazz club.you can have 5 or 6 jazz clubs within 10 minutes. dc used to be like that.you could do that in fells point. it could be a new york type of... now ... it's a wholedifferent city, but it could be done. it couldn't be done in la. it couldn't be done in a lotof other places.

i think a lot of the problem is that a lotof the bars in fells point ... again, this gets to the gentrification of fells point... a lot of the bars in fells point are essentially run as kiddy bars. and they're often operatedby 20-something guys who get money from mom and dad or from some other source and theyopen a club. and they do it as much for peer approval as anything else, and creating theirown social scene. that's why they don't often last very long. but, an awful lot of the clubsare built to appeal to the 20-something crowd, the college crowd. those are people that,they don't have as much money to spend, they don't drink particularly well, and they'renot very good patrons when they do drink. and so it's created some problems in fellspoint. they are also people that do not support

the music scene because, why should they?they figure they can go in, and they don't know the etiquette necessarily of puttingsome money in the tip jar. the club owners themselves don't want to pay the musiciansanything, figuring they'll get it all in tips, so a lot of the quality musicians have avoidedfells point. and it's too bad. i think it's a real loss.it really is. i noticed that when i first moved here, that this would be really neat,and it just never came to pass. this would be so neat if....i remember the music scene that i used to love in fells point was the spontaneous musicthat would just suddenly break out. you'd be in a bar some place that wouldn't evenhave a license. the ann mckim, now the dead

end, or even the cat's eye. i've seen it happenin the whistling oyster. bertha's, of course, is famous for it. and people would just startsuddenly playing, and somebody else would come in with another instrument, and somebodyelse would come in, and they'd all pitch in together. we formed our own band at one timein fells point, captain bunker's happy harbor home for wayward seamen's band. and it wasprincipally ex-sailors... hence the drum hanging in the main room there?yeah. well, there's one hanging in bertha's hanging behind the bar. what we would do is... we had john the piper, who was a very fine bagpiper, john albert ... there's twojohn the pipers, by the way, there's john albert and john mccruten. john mccruten pipesfor the fire department in baltimore, a very

fine piper himself. john albert's an old friendfrom many years ago from the street who kind of followed me into fells point. and he wouldbreak out his pipes and a couple of guys would come along with whatever other instrumentsthey had. when i had my flop house for sailors there on the square, people were always leavinginstruments, all kinds of odd-ball stuff. but heavy on the percussion ... lots of drums.it doesn't require a huge amount of talent to bang on something ... so we would get outon the square. we would all get together. usually spider would grab ahold of a boathook and a ridiculous hat and he would be the drum major. and we would then pipe ourway from bar to bar. john playing his pipes and the rest of us banging on drums and bodhransand tambourines. we would stop in each bar,

play a tune, sing an thoroughly bawdy andvulgar song, pass around the oyster can for tips, and then move on to the next bar. atthe end, by the time we had drunk enough beer and had gotten enough money in the can, wewould then take the money in the can, either divide it among ourselves or give it to somebodywho needed it the most and go on home and have another story to tell. that was the kindof music that i loved in fells point. he wanted to talk about the hotel on the street.one night about ... this had to be about 1981 or 82. my friend dirty john was visiting.he's an old friend from other adventures and other times. we decided that the place wasa mess. we had cleared a couple of rooms for our friends coming in off the ships. and ihad all this extraneous furniture. there was

a couple of big over-stuffed chairs. therewas a huge mattress and box springs that somebody had left there. there was a lamp, a big standinglamp. there was a handsome table cloth with a few holes in it. there was ... just thiscollection of odd-ball stuff. so we threw it all out the back window. this was 817 southbroadway, the old union hall where my first shop was. we threw everything out into theback yard, and didn't want to leave it there because we knew it would rain and this bigover-stuffed chair would just stink. so, we dragged it through the alleyway outonto the street, right at the corner of broadway and thames. this is 3:00 in the morning andwe were in no condition to be making rational decisions. so we decide the best thing todo with this stuff is to leave it on the corner

figuring that somebody might appreciate itand come by and pick it up. so we put the chair out. and of course, there's a littlestone table there with a checkerboard on it. so we put the tablecloth on that, and we hada vase, and we found some raggedy flowers and we stuck them ... and we put them in themiddle of the little stone table. and then we took the mattress and the box springs andlaid it out. we had an old set of sheets and we put the sheets on the bed. and we fixedit all up real nice. it looked right comfortable. it would be bindlestiff's heaven, you know.and we figured it would be funny. people would get a laugh over it the next day. the citywould come and police it up and carry it all off.well, about 3 days later, i walked by it and

there are 2 gentlemen of the road who aresitting at the stone table. they've taken the table cloth off and they're playing checkerswith bottle caps they've found on the street. there is some guy sitting in the chair wholooks like he's about to doze off. and in the bed ... there's one guy sound asleep inthe bed with the sheets cast off, laying there in his underwear, with his trousers very neatlyfolded in a pile right next to it. so we laughed. we thought this was wonderful. we provideda home for these gentlemen, and expected it would be gone in no time.it took about 3 weeks for the city to finally come and pick it up. in the meantime, we hada whole colony living on the street corner. they never bothered anybody. we didn't evenhave pandlers in those days, because there

was no money to panhandle.just to fill in, can you tell me what you told me earlier about bob eney?oh, yeah. if anybody can take credit for saving fells point, and doing it with historicalintegrity, it would be bob eney. bob was the architectural and historical genius who putall this information together. other people could buy the property and other people couldamass this stuff and create some political front to fend off the highway. but for thecommunity to be appreciated in its historical context, it really took somebody like bobeney. and bob worked long and hard on that. whatever has been done to save fells point,has been done on the foundation that bob eney laid. we all should be very grateful to himfor that.

we're interviewing bob, and that's a realnice kind of segway. he's a real nice guy, too.yes, he is. he's the salt of the earth. i love bob.i new bob and his partner very well. you know, bob is gay ... and lived with jack gleasonfor many years. jack was a good guy.... oh, not jack gleason ... oh god, i'm tired ... i'mthinking of david gleason. anyway, jack lived in atlanta for some time; we knew a lot ofthe same places. he had a daughter living in atlanta. so, that's how i got to know jack.jack died, i guess probably early 90's. and bob had a beautiful home. bob and jack hadthis beautiful home together. bob surprised us all one day by selling his house. he soldhis house. sold his house to an asshole. which

is a shame. because we not only lost bob asa day-to-day neighbor, but we gained this suburban fool who came in who demanded theneighborhood change just for him. where was bob's house?bob's house was on thames street in the 1800 block across from dogshit park and the ragfactory. i don't know what they call dogshit park officially, but that's what we alwayscalled it. it's got a lot of dog shit there still. andthey periodically clean it up. and there are sections of it that are forbidden to dogs...yeah, yeah. that's right. we always called it dogshit park. and "king george house" ... nobodycalled it king george house. it was the rag factory. for one thing, it was fells point.nobody recognized a king in fells point, for

god sake! unless it was the king of the gypsies.it was the rag factory because that's what it was -- it was a rag factory.at one time, that had been known as king george street or george street. then it became thamesstreet after the revolution. yeah, i remember seeing that on the maps.eastern avenue was known wilks. is it off? [referring to the camera]no, it's not off as long as he's sitting in that chair, i'm leaving the camera run. butif you can get up and i'll turn it off. he's tired, but let him talk a little bit.i'm going to go have a beer. 
[brief beer discussion. this was very late, and we hadtraveled all day through a snowstorm to get there... 02:53:24:25, moved to dvd #2 01:11:55:28]fells point should be known for its more distinguished

historical citizens as well. edgar allen poewas an obvious one. frederick douglass. isaac myers. billie holiday....tell me about billie holiday. billie holiday....i had a dear friend there. we called him hots. his real name was paul. he was an older blackman, probably 90 years old when he died. i have no idea how old he was, but he was fundamentallyold. hots knew fells point like the back of his hand. he knew it in ways that some ofthe more politer crowd in fells point, myself included, would never know. hots at one timetrained fighting dogs, worked on the barges on the waterfront down there, ran wagons,he was a street araber for a while, worked at dickman's stables. dickman's stables wasdown, if you continued on down lancaster street,

dickman's stables were there for 110, 112years. he told me one time that he had run acrossbillie holiday when she was younger, much, much younger, when she was a little girl.she played her first public performance, he told me, in her uncle albert's low house,which was one of the houses that was sadly torn down. we tried to save it, on what wouldthat have been? bond, no not bond. caroline street, it was on caroline street.there was a series of houses in there, one of which was edgar allen poe's half brother'shome. it was a home for seamen and his half-brother was a sailor. and poe supposedly sat thereand got many stories from his brother. one of them supposedly was the gold bug that hebased on a story that either his brother or

one of his sailor friends told him.another one of those houses later became uncle albert's low house. it was part of the freeblack community that lived there in the times before and after the civil war. this is back,probably the 20's or 30's, i don't know. but, she was a young girl. she was only 13 or 14years old and she used to come by uncle albert's low house ... he always referred to it asa low house, which means a dive ... and sing for a few pennies for tips from people. anduncle albert seemed to like that because it kept people coming around. she went on tobigger and better and sadder things. but supposedly she had her first public performances in unclealbert's low house on caroline street. neat! when i first started working on this,i had this idea that maybe i could play off

of ghosts. there's several competing ghosttours in fells point now. and when i was talking to richard kirstel and ed kane, they tookcredit for having made up all the ghost stories. [laughs] most of them are nonsense. you knowthat. but before i got too much into the detailof ghostness and found out there wasn't any, i was wondering ... there are whole areasof fells point that have been razed. do the ghosts go away when the buildings are gone?i don't know. it depends. if you happen to have a bar or a restaurant with decliningfortunes, it's always a good idea to resurrect a ghost.i'll give you a ghost story. it's a great story. it's a story that not many people know.it's a story that encompasses not just fells

point but the whole working waterfront ofbaltimore. everyone shared in it. in 1913, the s.s. alum chine from cardiffwales shows up in baltimore harbor. they're there to load dynamite for the building ofthe panama canal. it's a tramp freighter. so they anchor at the dangerous cargo anchorage.the dangerous cargo anchorage is out in the area out beyond curtis bay down by what'snow the bridge, where the bay bridge is. any ship coming in loading explosives or anythingthat was dangerous was supposed to anchor there and the cargo then would be lighteredover there in barges. this industrial grade dynamite was loaded on railroad cars. it wastaken down through fells point, the tracks that run down thames street, also run downfell street and run right to the water, in

those days. and the freight cars were thenusually dragged by teams of horses, big percherons, big heavy draft horses. they were hauled downthere and were then loaded on barges. and these were called carfloats. and the carfloatswere then towed out by tug, tied off to the freighter in the dangerous cargo anchorageand the cargo was unloaded from the cars and then loaded in the freighters.so they were loading dynamite. they had loaded something in excess of 600 tons of industrialdynamite. we don't know how much more dynamite was still in the cars, but there were 6 boxcars alongside on railroad car floats. the cargo caught fire. dynamite burns. and whenit reaches a critical mass, it'll eventually explode. they couldn't put the fire out. thecrew of the alum chine, the regular crew,

was in fells point living it up in the barsand waiting for the ship to be loaded. the men who were aboard the ship were all localboys. they were from fells point, locust point and canton. they were stevedores. they didn'tknow what to do. there was no boat to take them ashore.coming up the bay is the tug atlantic. the tug atlantic is heading up for its berth,gonna stop in fells point. captain william vandyke was on the helm that day. captainvandyke wasn't even supposed to be working. he was living in locust point at the time.he was going to go on a picnic with his family, but the weather looked a little inclementso he went ahead and he took the watch and let somebody else take the day off. as theywere about a mile from the ship coming up

toward baltimore, they notice all these menon the forepeak of the alum chine waving their hands. and they see smoke coming out of theforward hold. so they know something is very wrong. so they put full steam and head forthe alum chine. they get up there. the men jump off the ship into the water. the crew,lenam, george diggs, i don't remember all their names now ... the crew of the tug pullthese boys aboard. [dvd #2 01:19:33:20] and they start steaming away as fast as they canbecause they know it's about to blow. they get about 100 yards away and captainvandyke looks back. and 6 more men who have been trapped by the smoke down below havefound their way out and now they're up in the forepeak yelling for the tug. he looksaround at his crew and there is no question

what they are going to do. they immediatelyturn around. vandyke tells his crew, "take all these men we've rescued. put them downin the engine room. get everybody down below in the engine room because if there's an explosion,it'll blow up everything on the surface of the water, but if you're below it, down inthe engine room, you've got a chance of surviving." and he sends his crew down there, and alonehe heads for the alum chine. when he gets there, the men have jumped off and they'rehanging onto the anchor chains. half of them don't swim. by this time the smoke is billowingout and they know it's going to blow any second. the crew of the atlantic ignores instructions.they immediately come running out of the engine room, grab these guys and pull them aboard,risking their own lives. they shove these

guys down into the engine room.there's no room for anybody now, so captain vandyke and his crew are on deck. they turnaround to leave, and the alum chine explodes. the explosion left a mushroom cloud that lookedlike an atomic bomb. albert waldeck, a photographer for the baltimore sun happened to be in theinner harbor at the time taking pictures in the harbor when this explosion happened. hetook pictures, and the pictures are astounding. it does look like an atomic explosion overbaltimore. the explosion was so powerful that it killed8 men on board the s.s. jason which was a ship that was at maryland shipbuilding anddry dock. they happened to be out on deck watching the fire. they were killed by rivetsand flying shrapnel. a piece weighing over

a ton landed a mile down the bay through thehobo hunt club. all the windows in the quarantine station across the river were blown out.we don't know how many people it eventually killed because along the waterfront in thatarea was good crabbing ground and fishing ground, and so there were a lot of peoplealong there, poor people who would come out and fish for their dinner at the mouth ofcurtis creek. they were swept away. the ship was atomized. just blew it to bits.i talked to captain buckey smith who was 13 years old at the time it happened, down incurtis bay. he was probably 2 miles away and he said that they had to dodge all the stuffcoming down out of the air, all the debris. it was incredible. in locust point, it blewin the transom window at captain vandyke's

house. and his wife knew immediately thathe wasn't coming home. it's a remarkable story, but it doesn't endthere, because just behind the atlantic, about a mile and a half behind them, was the sister,the tug marie riehl . marie riehl was coming up the bay. it blew all the windows out ofthe pilot house and covered the men on the marie riehl with glass. but they had seenthe atlantic. they knew that there might be something there to rescue.there was a small tidal wave. by the time they got up to where the atlantic was, birdshad been gathering and there were thousands of dead fish on the surface of the water.there was no trace of the alum chine. but the hull of the atlantic was still afloat.it had blown everything off above the deck.

there was pieces of the pilot house and thefidley, the top of the boiler, still standing. the men who had been packed in down belowin the engine room had survived. they were all cut and burned and bruised and bleeding,but most of them had survived. the entire crew of the atlantic was gone. they foundcaptain vandyke's body a mile down the bay. as they came up to the ship and began pullingthese guys off the sinking atlantic, the atlantic started to go down. two men were trapped byshifting debris in the engine room. so two men from the marie riehl jumped on the deckof the atlantic, went down into the engine room to free these guys, and sank with thewreck. until all 4 of them popped to the surface. all four of them badly cut up and bleeding,but they survived.

it's an incredible tale of heroism, and it'ssomething that people in baltimore have long since forgotten. i studied newspaper accounts,all of which conflicted with each other. but i got to baltimore early enough where therewere some people around who remembered it, and some survivors of it, and interviewedthem. it's quite a story of heroism. the 7th of march 1913 ought to be celebrated on thebaltimore waterfront as atlantic day because the guys from the tug atlantic certainly livedin the best traditions of the american merchant seamen.so if you look at the sign that i painted for the point, look at it closely and you'llsee that it's the tug atlantic. i didn't have any idea the significance ... i'vealways liked that sign.

that's the tug atlantic. it says underneathit in the ocean, if you look closely, it says, "tug atlantic, captain william vandyke, heroicallylost 7th of march, 1913." i didn't have a good picture of the atlantic,so a lot of it's conjecture. and it's largely now become a folk tale. i couldn't find enoughsolid information about it. i did find the names of the crew. i found a few personalstories. and then the interviews that i did in 1976 and 77 in talking to people, of course,but it's a long time later. captain buckey, he was wonderful. he used to give me all kindsof stories. so, why did you do this research?i was the city's maritime historian. you didn't ever tell us for the camera exactlyhow you got to baltimore.

i was the acting skipper of a ship in boston,of a 112 foot brig, and it wasn't going anywhere. and i didn't feel like i was going anywhere.so, i spent part of one winter deep sea lobstering. and after 3 bouts of frostbite, and seeinga number of my friends go over the side and disappear, i thought there must be a betterway to make a living. i've always loved history and i'd done somereading and some writing on history. i had written a couple of articles over the years.and i was always a civil war buff. i've been in a ... civil war reenactment outfit, a maineregiment for many years. so, i thought i'd get into the history business. it seemed tohave more of a future than getting frostbite on the north atlantic off the grand banksand off of cape cod.

so, i got this offer -- marty millspaugh,from charles center harbor management, he and his wife meredith were visiting bostonand they came aboard the boat and were getting a tour of boston and asked if i was interestedin becoming part of a crew that wanted to build a baltimore clipper in baltimore harbor."yeah, yeah, sure. ok. why not?" i'd consulted on 5 different projects that year, bicentennialship projects for historic ships that i knew would never come to pass. so i didn't takeit really seriously but they seemed like nice folks. and sure enough, i got a call one dayon the dock, would i come to baltimore where they could pick my brain? they'd give me agood hotel room and if nothing else, i'd have a little vacation for a couple of days. soi did it.

i didn't really want to come to baltimore,but i went down to fells point. somebody directed me to fells point. and i'd been to fells pointback in the late 60's as a young seaman. i liked it. it just felt right. i thought ididn't know about living in baltimore but this is kind of nice, fells point's nice.so, they finally made an offer and i took them up on it. and i came to baltimore. theymade me the curator of inner harbor historic properties and exhibits, which is a $2 titlefor a nickel and dime job, but it was essentially baltimore's maritime historian.i was supposed to be there for a year. they asked me to stay for a second year. by theend of the second year, i had no place else to go. i shipped out occasionally, but i alwayscame back to fells point. then i started my

business.where else, where else could essentially a drifter and a water rat move into a communitywith really no money and no particular future, not many dreams left, and find myself eventuallywith a going business, a place in the community, on the board of several different organizations,with a lot of friends? it's a very forgiving place. god knows, they had a lot to forgivewith me. it's a great place to grow, and i'll always be grateful for it.thank you.