Photography By David Harp
Slowly motoring across Broadwater Bay and into Wharf Creek, Rick Kellam beaches his 24-foot Carolina Skiff on the edge of Hog Island’s marsh. He cuts the motor, and we jump off onto the island road, walking past the remnants of the 1896 lighthouse and into the now deserted village of Broadwater, once home to 250 people, a school, a hotel, and a dance hall. My guide for the day and owner of Broadwater Bay Ecotours, Kellam surveys the landscape before him, recalling a bit of island lore. “A lot of times the water table was so high and the graves holding the islanders’ coffins were so shallow that they would pop out of the ground and float around. After the storm of 1933, the people started carving their loved ones initials into the coffins so they would know where it went in the cemetery.”
Although the tale sounds farfetched, I take Kellam’s word for it. After all, few know this island as well as he. For more than five generations, his family lived on Hog—one of the twenty-three barrier islands located off the coast of Virginia’s Eastern Shore—until erosion and storms forced them back to the mainland. It’s Kellam’s knowledge of these islands and the ecology of the surrounding seaside that make his ecotours some of the most worthwhile in the region.
On the day of the tour, I meet forty-nine-year-old Kellam at a dock in the seaside village of Willis Wharf. “Hey there!” he calls out to me, flashing a broad smile that brings an explosion of laugh lines to his face. A thick mustache can’t disguise the impish dimpled chin and the eager Boy Scout twinkle in his eye.
Using a laminated map of the barrier islands, Kellam shows me where we’ll be going on this three-hour sunset wine and cheese tour. Taking the “waterman’s shortcut” along the Machipongo River, we’ll head eight miles to Hog Island to learn more about the “drowned village of Broadwater,” then take a beach walk on neighboring Cobb’s Island. Along the way, we’ll learn a little more about the fragile beauty that marks the ecological treasure that is the barrier islands.
Heading out of the channel, Kellam mentions that Willis Wharf is home to eighteen buildings that once stood on Hog Island, including a barbershop, an ice cream parlor, and a general store. Due to erosion, the buildings’ owners had them moved off the island to the mainland on small, flat wooden boats known as oyster monitors. He points out the home of Miss May Bowen, who survived the storm of ’33 and who still lives in the same house. Seems that during the storm Bowen and her then-newlywed husband Wendell stood inside their island home, holding their wedding presents on a board over their heads. As the seawater rushed around them, they held them up as long as they could, finally giving up. “She told me, ‘Ricky, the water come clear up to my chest, and I was about to drown.’”
The world soon widens to water and sky. Looking out over the adjoining coastline Kellam asks, “What don’t you see?” He answers for me, “No houses, no development. Where else in 2003 can you go between Ocean City, Md., and Virginia Beach and see a pristine landscape without any buildings?”
He’s right. Out here there isn’t another human for miles. But still, there is plenty of life. Former waterman, Virginia Marine Police officer, and Barrier Island Program specialist for The Nature Conservancy, Kellam knows just where the wildlife can be found.
Pulling up alongside a faded-gold marsh in the Machipongo River he picks up a small, jeweled periwinkle attached to a blade of spartina grass like a miniature flag to a pole. “Having these little guys here is an indication of a clean, healthy marsh ecosystem because the marsh is their food source,” Kellam says. “And the fact that they are dangling low on the grass tells us the tide is low.”
Our next outdoor classroom is Broadwater Bay where we find a naturally occurring oyster rock, or a colony of oysters clutched together. Spotting them inspires Kellam to talk about the glory days when foot-long bivalves flourished in these waters. His story is interrupted by shrill shrieking overhead coming from a thick strip of seemingly unidentifiable birds. But Kellam knows them and their unique call instantly. Handing me the binoculars, he explains that it’s a flock of nearly 1,000 Atlantic brant, similar to the Canada goose except smaller and without their distinct white eye patch.
We then head south to explore Cobb’s Island, a perfect spot for shelling, a simple pleasure offered on Kellam’s tours, in addition to clamming, swimming, and fishing—all part of what he calls “nature therapy.” He beaches the boat at the north end of the island’s Bay side and hands me a bucket to use on my seashell hunt. Walking the secluded shoreline, it’s hard to believe that in the 1870s to the 1880s the island’s namesake, Nathan Cobb, ran a thriving hotel and a nationally known hunting and fishing resort for the rich and famous. Two of Cobb’s most notable guests, says Kellam, were Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and prominent author Thomas Dixon, Jr. who wrote the novel The Clansman from which the famed 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation was based.
Returning from my walk, I show Kellam the thin, translucent shells I found on the beach. They’re jingle shells, he says. “They [the islanders] wouldn’t want the mainlanders to know that they didn’t have any money, so when they’d walk down the street or go into stores, they’d put jingle shells in their pockets. They’d rattle their hands in their pockets, and the shells would sound like coins.”
While I was gone, Kellam prepared a table of goodies, complete with white linens, china, flowers, goblets of red and white wine, gourmet cheeses, and fruit. On other tours he can provide a sampling of local cuisine: just-caught clams and oysters steamed or on the half shell, crab cakes, steaks grilled on the spot.
The hours have flown by, and it’s time to take the restful ride back to the mainland. Behind the captain, the islands fade like ghosts into the blue. While another boat ride might have showed me this tranquil place, without Kellam sharing the tales of his family’s life on the islands and his personal knowledge of the area, there is much I would have missed. “Anybody can take you out here and tell you that the Eastern Shore is seventy miles long and ten miles wide,” says Kellam. “But they can’t tell you about each barrier island’s own personality, its own history, its own charm.”
Donna Bozza Rich, a frequent CL contributor, writes about the people and places of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
