Island Out Of Time (Cronkite)

Oh. In the middle of the Chesapeake Bay on the eastern shore of the United States. Is an island that is home to just over 400 people. For nearly 200 years. The fate of Smith Island and its people has been tied to the water. Islanders their living from the Chesapeake. Passing on the tradition to their sons and daughters.

My father my father Father Father father bought beforehand. But now. Smith Island is changing. The people who work on the Chesapeake are known on the bay as water. They depend on water's one so teeming with life. The Indians call the Chesapeake. Great shellfish. One of five years ago for a farm it was. What are. You. You could actually say for example that. There is no bottom to this. Pollution disease and overharvesting have nearly killed off the oysters. And many worried that the blue crab the island's last resource could be next.

Everything is great at. France France France eats grass. Every spring the Atlantic blue crab is drawn to the sea grasses around Smith to make and shed its shell to grow larger. These Peeler crabs become soft shell and worth up to five times more than our grams. You have to know what to tell you. Brad has a. Hard time. Yeah. There's one thing come I. Notice how our our real first trial. That's a good payoff. Notice how the collar is off. Yes like a dog. Since English settlers first arrived on Smith Island in the early sixteen hundred geography has defined the island's history squarely in the middle

of the bay. The island was a way station for commerce going up and down the Chesapeake. This made it an ideal hideout for pirates. The Eves who tormented the local settlers. Smith Islanders learned to fight to survive and were known on the mainland as a tough independent and mostly lawless bunch. This reputation was tempered by the arrival of the Methodist Church. But to this day there is no law enforcement or local government on the island. It is 180 settlements in the whole United States. I believe that the people that game here. Really came with the intention. To be left alone. Yeah I don't want to go to hell but you want to tell you but you know I go I

work away. You know way up and used to working in our own balls I work a while Want to quit what I want nobody tells me what do you have to obey certain laws you know you got to go berserk a lot of people get all you all are good. But that's what I like independent. For as long as anyone can remember. The women of Smith Island would get up long before sunrise and head out to their backyard sheds to pick the meat from the crabs their husbands catch for extra income their families depended on. And for just as long the state of Maryland Health Department. Knew they were picking bread a violation of health regulations. And sending it to market. On the morning ferry. In 1995. The health department decided to crack down.

Janice Marshall of the island town Tyler was caught in the middle. One day the state of Maryland. How to farm an inspector was on the dock and first bail we were waiting up here on the dock. We had marine police back up. And we basically just laid back kind of quietly until the boats actually does. So when I stepped off of the first morning he'd just come and gathered up the prayer of me and Turkey Janice was extremely upset. I don't remember the exact words but it was words the effect that she would grab me. I was actually that day when you depend on the family for a living and always have if these cramps here and that Boxer crabmeat was just snatched out of my hand. The first thing you defend yourself in your way of living.

Faced with being shot down by mainland government. Janice decided she would try to organize the first liberal baking facility on Smith Island. Most Islanders initially opposed the idea. Which book nearly a century of tradition and required help from the mainland. A lot of the experts that I started talking to you said also you are not high for grant money. And I thought a massive Well I want to try and one of the first grants come through it was one hundred fifty five fives and I just about fell over my chair 15 island women led by Janice Marshall. We're today able to celebrate the opening of a modern set of very credible package syllabi. It's there for our town if I move or I die tomorrow that building's still there for power to be able to work in and. That makes me feel good knowing that it's there.

Smith rises more than two feet. Spread out across the island would have slowly moved back. On the windward side of the town. During high tide. After storms water almost reaching the town's front door. They got together. Here's what it looks like.

Before most of this is washed away. Every year. Sea level rise with claims almost a fifth of an inch of the island. I don't so I like the man. 100 years on it you've got 20 edges. And we've only got a couple above a level where. We're holding our friend in Maryland will try to get together here. And do something. For. Me. Gonna disappear into the sea. The Army Corps of Engineers division in Baltimore has been keeping track of sea level rise and erosion on Smith Island for decades.

It's. They can see the problem and are developing a plan to control it. So what we're looking at here is Roads point. Here is the town itself. This is 1938 it doesn't show the harbor it hasn't been dug yet and what you find is the town is very well protected. Now if we go to 1958 you can see that instead of a continuous spit of land or Peninsula we're down to islands now. They're still fairly well protected here. Now if we jump to 1977. And look at the same area again. This area of land has been running very quickly. So all of this protection is now gone. It's very serious. The Corps of Engineers isn't as interested in protecting island town as it is in the land and the marine ecosystem particularly the island's sub aquatic vegetation or as a V. What it is just essentially seaweed its underwater grasses that grow.

The water fowl are attracted there because they eat the fish and the crabs that are in the area. So it's extremely valuable habitat. Since the early 90s though every year we've seen fairly drastic losses of SABC. The longer I wrote about Chesapeake Bay the more I became aware that although we wrote stories about what's happening to the water quality to the sea grasses to the crabs the oysters what we were really writing about. Was. There were. Whole cultures attached to. The heart. Best of these that. We could maybe if we lost the sea grasses bring back the water quality in the sea grasses would come back. But meanwhile a place that depended on the sea grasses for their living like Smith Island would just be down the drain and lost.

A load. They are at the mercy of the environment. You can't control the wind you can't control the tide You can't control anything in nature. And so what do you look to Him up to the one who controls it. Oh yeah. Reverend Ashley Maxwell was chosen to be the church pastor after he had preached it even Jellicoe summer camp meeting with her. She dressed every Sunday. He makes the trip to services and all three of Smith's communities you're all roads point and Tyler accessible from the other towns only by one. Last Rites coming on the show. And I don't have a little bit of faith that you know.

You're in the middle of the bay. With no protection of any kind on either side. And specially when one a storm or any thing is threatened or you've got man in the bay that's working that day in the storm. Men who make their living in a world. Of people who. Are very very conscious. Providence and powerlessness on our part. I've grown up in a community that I know everybody from birth to death. Even though we don't get along with each other all the time we don't see eye to eye on everything. Everybody's not of the same political thoughts but everybody watches out for each other. If you're in trouble or anything

happens in your family your high should be full of people in two minutes. For the first time since the crab co-op opened three years earlier. Janice was asked to organize the entertainment for the annual Waterman supper. Tonight. Here's the low they. Say. Maxwell don't worry we've not had time to do a lot of practice and so were well behaved tonight. You don't have a care in the word. Woke up this morning stumble. Your muscles and come and look at me. Now. Live. My. Life yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most evenings on toilets and water men will gather at the general store. Here some say you can still detect traces of the Elizabethan English dialect brought over by the island's first settlers or sheet of paper over and over it went over your point you know where they come from centuries of being isolated.

Oh it's a mixture of the British Isles and this home grown language nursed me here you can go I early morn in the winter time and sometimes Captain oh call the album say to me I say there is more and the other cat Macleod reply Nereus mare not us mare advice is what he manes videos get Rubaiyat to you going forward when you get rid o it all going to oh. If a group of mainland people are sent into group violent people they get lost in the conversation because Island people have a tendency to talk backwards. There can be too little fellow standing on the shoreline in a beautiful boat or come on the end of one kid to say to the other well that boat go away you know it but it don't mean she's ugly. Now the other kid knows you don't mean that you know he means it. It's a beautiful bow. She worn hadnot. That means somebody just landed in their brand new boat and flying down the crick just taking off like a jet. That's what man a look at

that boat now say while she warned her that it means she was free of lifeline. Now if they come in an old boat and she just is a creep and they'll say well she's head that means it's going for a slow. Well. At one time over 800 people lived on Smith on. Each town had new housing several stores. Crowded elementary school and young waterman who didn't give much thought to ever leaving. Today there are fewer than 400 people living here. And the number continues to fall. In Tyler Janice Marshall about 75 people.

Always had a school want power to nothing until 1996. When disco was born in 74 we had about 25 children in school. And now last year we were done three children. And I have a grandson now that he's almost four years old. He is the only baby that was born the next one time is in the third grade. And the next one time under him will be a baby being born on collagen in November. The older students travel by boat to school on the mainland. Where many begin to decide it's an easier life. When Jamie Marshall graduated from high school. He decided to get off the

island. He joined the Marines and traveled halfway around the world. I really missed home and and I wanted to give it a shot being a waterman but now. As I made that decision and been been working on the water for two years. Some dogs Oh thank you it wasn't a right decision. Bad weather scarce crabs and government regulations are sometimes only half the battle. After a morning of work Jamie ran aground and cracked a metal plate near his runner. I lost a day's work that day. Now with things like that happen when I can get caught up depressed. When he left the Marines Jamie married his high school sweetheart Heather.

Who works at Tyler tins only store. But life on the island wasn't what they expected. There's not many young waterman around here. And so nobody gets a little way to get along with. The day after his boat broke down Jamie was back out on the water. And the crabs who were running strong. But in the afternoon the bushel price dropped sharply and Jamie barely made any money. A few months later Jamie and Heather were considering leaving the island. This time. Probably for good. Good. Good. After months of study. The Army Corps of Engineers came to Smith to present its

plan to control the roads. Okay cost cost cost. The Jedi north of you will and I guess what it cost to fix that 2.5 million dollars. Couple hundred thousand dollars here OK. We don't like to ask the government for anything but sometimes we get it. We try to get a little help from your friends and we don't think they want to lose us here. Soon after the study started the erosion control project began just off roads point with the installation of a new kind of jetty. Months later. The Corps of Engineers began work on the jetty north of you. This is the first time we've got beyond studying anything. I think everybody is just full of hope now because this is the first time anything like this is ever happened.

In the spring of 1998 just three years after Janice fought the battle for the crab there were new signs of life on Smith Island. The first local government was started when the tiler Town Council convene. Just down the street. The new bed and breakfast store. Grabbed. The donation of six personal computers training and software. So the members could work as data processors in the old. And the island's population increased by one. With the arrival of Janice Marshall's new granddaughter. Yeah. About 10 miles north of Smith. Is Collins Island.

The last inhabited. Islands in 1925. This is where our homestead was because you can see all the bricks and. Things here and just look at it now. Just more water comes in all the time. Erosion just took you know what. I think of the families that lived here and work here. And played here. Another hundred years none of this I don't believe you even be able to find a trace. Found my. Wife. If he or she was Ghost the boy told him to cry out stalls. Willow do I want

to show off their bodies were still your fresh. Buffalo you know younger people. You know something also something oh my god load. Load. Load Yalom lifestyle is going to disappear but we're so stubborn that we're going to try to cling to it as long as we can and they're going to drag us all peer kicking and screaming. You. Still over load. I want to be. Swayed. I want

to learn to his grave through the sand the marsh is out. I'll be his life. He's grabby play all his life. Smith a version of the yodeling.