Cruise of the Month: London Town: Lost and Found

[Chesapeake Bay Magazine - August 2009]

A trip back to the South River's lost London Town unearths a forgotten appreciation for the past.

by Jean Korten Moser

It happened to Jamestown. It happened to St. Mary's City. Colonial towns that hummed for generations with people and prosperity just dried up and blew away, like so much dust. What haunting possibilities of lost stories and lives these places offer us, the modern visitor. On the South River, only a few miles from Annapolis--a thriving colonial town that survived--lies historic London Town, just such an abandoned town. Before the Revolutionary War, London Town's docks throbbed with activity. Merchant ships stood off its shores, waiting for the year's tobacco crop. But within only a few years, all that was gone. The first blow was struck when the port was closed to tobacco trading; the recession brought on by the revolution finished the process. Only one grand Georgian brick home, built by William Brown, a tavern keeper, ferry master and aspiring gentleman, survived to tell the lost town's tale.

My husband Carl and I had first visited London Town--now a 23-acre Anne Arundel County park--a decade ago. But this past fall, we decided it was time for another visit--a stroll through the gardens and a tour of the tavern keeper's elegant home. We embarked on our voyage of rediscovery on a blustery Friday morning in mid-September, setting sail from Swan Creek on the Eastern Shore. It should have been a great sail. The forecast called for 10 to 15 mph winds from the west--ideal conditions for a lovely reach south. But as we emerged from Swan Creek and headed toward the Bay Bridge it became quite clear that the winds were south-southwest, not west--and more like 25 mph, not 10 to 15. Instead of a reach, we had the wind on our nose and two- to three-foot seas. We could tack laboriously down the Bay, or we could motor. Given our tight schedule we elected to motor--we needed to reach London Town before 3 p.m. or we'd miss the last tour of the day.

Bounce. Bounce. Jerk. Bounce. Bounce. Splash! Each attacking wave left our cockpit sole quivering in its wake. We'd been under way less than an hour when my husband wanted to call it quits. We listened to NOAA weather radio for current observations and learned that, even though small craft advisories had been issued, conditions were considerably calmer south of the Bay Bridge. So we pressed on and were indeed rewarded with lighter winds.

Four hours after we'd cast off, we reached the green-red "SR" buoy marking the entrance of the South River. About five miles in, Brown's 250-year-old Georgian mansion came into view--perched on a hilltop of a peninsula bounded by Glebe Bay, South River and Almshouse Creek. The house struck a discordant note among its sprawling modern neighbors. Near mark "15" we turned to port and headed to London Town's 185-foot pier, where we tied up to the west side. Even though it was dead low tide, we were relieved to find 5 1/2 feet of water at the end of the dock.

At the foot of the dock we found a large sign with Historic London Town's operating hours posted and signs that directed us up the hill to the 12,000-square-foot visitor's center. There we watched a short movie and visited the gift shop before meeting Rod Cofield, director of interpretation and museum programs, who gave us an hour-long tour of the William Brown house and the historic area.

London Town, we learned, was established as a tobacco port town in 1683 and thrived as a center for the tobacco and slave trade from 1695 until the mid-1700s. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key passed through this bustling seaport and ferry crossing that served as a vital link along the Colonial superhighway that connected Williamsburg to Philadelphia. Once the busiest port in Maryland, the town's fortunes began to change in 1747 when the Maryland Assembly restricted tobacco exporting to designated sites in order to address quality control issues. London Town wasn't one of the sites chosen, and by the early 19th century the town was little more than a memory.

Brown's grand legacy and London Town's sole surviving building has the symmetry and balance typical of Georgian buildings. A National Historic Landmark, it is considered to be a fine example of header-bond brickwork, an expensive kind of construction in which bricks were laid side to side in walls two bricks thick. Brown used the house as a private residence and upscale tavern, but never completely finished the interior. The building project left him owing money he couldn't repay. As the tobacco economy declined, Brown lost his home and possessions to the heirs of his main creditor. Ironically, his grand mansion served as the Anne Arundel County almshouse (poorhouse) for more than 150 years (1828-1965). It was turned into a museum in the 1970s.

A portion of London Town, including the Lord Mayor's Tenement, the Carpenter Shop and the Rumney-West Tavern, is being reconstructed by Lost Towns Project archaeologists. We visited all of these with our guide, then walked the mile-long trail through the eight-acre Woodland Garden, which is planted with native and exotic plants ranging from azaleas and hostas to hollies, magnolias and camellias. We also checked out the smaller gardens nearby: the kitchen garden, medicinal garden and African-American garden.

As we prepared to cast off from the dock I took a long look back at the Brown House, which overlooks the South River and Scott Street, the town's main thoroughfare. The street that once led to the ferry landing is now nothing more than a tree-lined ravine. Yet for a few hours we had returned to a time when London Town was the busiest port in Maryland, when citizens were all English subjects and the slave trade prospered. The town may be gone, but thanks to archaeologists and historians, it's no longer lost.

For more great articles and photos on boating, sailing, fishing, and cruising, visit http://www.ChesapeakeBoating.net

Back Where It All Began

[Chesapeake Bay Magazine - July 2009]

A visit to Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg, Va., comes to a stellar conclusion with an eye-popping Fourth of July celebration.

by Maureen FitzGerald O'Brien

When husband Dan and I began our full-time cruising life aboard Trinity three years ago, we knew that all manner of wonderful and eye-opening experiences lay in store for us. All those undiscovered (by us) creeks and rivers, all those cities and towns, all that unspoiled nature. Best of all, we would now have the time to explore it all--or simply to sit and observe it.

What we had not anticipated was the omnipresence of history here on the Chesapeake, the sense that no matter where you go you're sailing headlong into the pivotal moments of our nation's history. Looking back, it seems that we should have. After all, you can't swing a dock line around here without hitting something profoundly historic: the earliest English settlements, the Indian conflicts, the colonial period, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War. It's all right here.

No, we hadn't been focusing on the historic part at all . . . until a bit of luck landed us in Virginia's Historic Triangle--Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg--for our most notable Fourth of July celebration ever.

For palpable, reach-out-and-touch-it history, the Historic Triangle is hard to beat. Consider the offerings: Yorktown, site of the very birth of the nation, where American and French forces cornered the British and forced a surrender that essentially ended the Revolutionary War; Jamestown, America's first permanent English colony, founded in 1607 and a profoundly important archaeological site; and of course Williamsburg, Virginia's beautifully preserved and re-created colonial capital, the gold standard of Early American interpretive history.

How, an experienced cruiser will surely ask, did we cover all this ground with virtually no advance planning? A lot of the credit goes to the free Historic Triangle shuttle service. We made full use of these comfortable little National Park Service buses, which come along every 30 minutes or so on their continuous service from Yorktown to Jamestown to Colonial Williamsburg, from mid-March through October.

But first things first. We had just returned from southern climes for a summer of sailing on the Bay and were happy to be in our home waters. Having set our sights on Yorktown--the most boat-friendly of the three points of the triangle--we headed out of Hampton Roads, reveling in the open expanse of the Bay after long days on canals and narrow rivers. We watched without wariness--plenty of room, plenty of water--as tankers lumbered north and fishermen headed out to sea. After a few hours of stretching our sails in brisk 20-knot winds, we steered Trinity into the wide and deep York River, sailing past huge barges moored east of Yorktown, which was coming into view off to port ahead of us. Because of the Navy vessels coming and going from the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, just beyond the town on the same side of the river, this is a fairly busy patch of water, but there's still plenty of room for pleasure boats.

Since even sailboats need fuel, not to mention regular pump outs, we veered to starboard toward Sarah Creek, on the Gloucester side of the river, turning to port beyond green "9" to York River Yacht Haven. This pit stop took longer than expected, since both tasks were strictly self-service, and, having never been here before, in the absence of dockhands, we had to figure out for ourselves what was where and how to work it. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful spot and empty slips were scarce on this beautiful summer weekday.

But our destination was the city-owned Riverwalk Landing Marina, which lay on the other side of the York, just below the Coleman Memorial Bridge at Gloucester Point. A slip at Riverwalk Landing, named for the city's delightful new Riverwalk Park, puts you smack in the middle of Yorktown's downtown scene. Indeed, it's all so new that our charts of a few years' vintage showed no sign of the marina, which was completed in 2005. But we had read about it and its mooring field in a guidebook, and wanted to try both. When our plan for a two- to three-day stay stretched into seven happy days, we had plenty of time to sample both some dock time and a spell on a quiet mooring.

On the lower York, you learn quickly to be mindful of currents, which can shove you around rudely, especially when the tide is turning. Once inside the marina entrance, though, things calmed down quickly, and with help from a small army of cheerful dockhands, we soon had Trinity snug on the inside face dock. The marina has two floating concrete piers with 1,200 feet of sidelong docking. They can accommodate almost any size boat, including vessels as large as 400 feet. At one-tenth that size, our Trinity fit just fine.

Since we found ourselves in this renewed little city on a perfect (that is to say, hot) day in late June, we were delighted to see a white-sand beach just next door to the dock, where locals were splashing and playing--and where we agreed to do a little splashing and playing of our own as soon as possible. But first we headed for Riverwalk, the town's happening riverfront. Recently refurbished, this cobblestoned waterfront area is bustling with retail shops and restaurants, as well as a small park and bandstand--the site of regular concerts on summer and fall evenings. After ordering coffee pick-me-ups at an ice cream shop, we hopped onto the Yorktown trolley (free) and surveyed the town with the help of the friendly driver, who acts as a tour guide.

It was quite a scenic ride, and after meandering through several blocks of beautifully preserved homes and churches, we jumped off at the Yorktown war monument, which honors the American and French soldiers who lost their lives in that pivotal 1781 victory over the British. Walking along the edge of the battlefield on our way to the Yorktown Visitor Center, we felt a shiver of comprehension, that sense of awe you feel when, for just a moment, you have your mind around what actually happened here, the profound importance of it.

Here too we found an excellent museum maintained by the National Park Service. Among its exhibits was a replica of General Washington's field tent, and a scaled-down replica of a quarter-section of a British warship, where swinging hammocks, creaking boards, and cramped quarters conveyed to us all too well the belowdecks experience.

Out on the battlefield itself, on that warm summer day, it was hard to picture what a rotten place this must have seemed to the foot soldiers of Washington's underfed and overworked Continental Army. After a brutally long and hurried march all the way from New York, they were thrown up against the entrenched and battle-tested British regulars and Hessian mercenaries, led by General Charles Cornwallis. Bolstered by 11,000 French troops under generals Lafayette and Rochambeau, Washington managed to set the British on their heels, driving them back and back, one earthwork at a time, all the way to the York River. From the York, the British had no means of escape--there were no warships waiting to carry them out of danger, because early that fall a French fleet had repelled the British Navy at the mouth of the Bay. With no possibility for escape or reinforcement of troops or supplies, Cornwallis's fate was sealed. He was forced to surrender or sacrifice his 9,000 soldiers.

Which led us to "Surrender Field," where that last major battle of the Revolutionary War came to its ceremonial end. We boarded a small van in front of the museum and rode out to see where British troops and German mercenaries marched onto the field and laid down their arms. Our driver/guide described how some of these weapons were smashed and broken by disgruntled British and German soldiers, professionals all, smarting from their defeat by the rag-tag citizen soldiers.

Leaving the battlefield, we returned to town, where we pondered our nation's scrappy beginning over drinks and dinner at Nick's Riverwalk Restaurant. Since we had no reservation, we opted happily for their "Rivah" patio, overlooking the York and dined well on warm Virginia crab dip, followed by Carolina-style pork barbecue and nut-crusted grouper fillet. Afterwards, we strolled along the river and were excited to find a concert under way, featuring a popular local oldies band. With benches to relax on and a dance floor set up by the bandstand, we were some happy sailors.

Over the next several days we soaked up a wonderful variety of experiences in and around Yorktown. The most memorable of these was our half-day at the Yorktown Victory Center, a living-history museum that highlights the experience of ordinary men and women of the Revolutionary period. It's the kind of place where you can muster with the troops in an encampment or help with the chores on the re-created 1780s farm. We helped--a little--with processing flax, stirring a kettle, and weeding the garden. The weeding part wasn't pretty. No longer landlubbers, we'd lost our touch with the hoe and the . . . uh . . . digger thing.

Finally it was time to go see the place where this whole America thing began. The next day we took an early morning shuttle to Jamestown, a mere 15 miles away as the crow flies, though more like 20 as the parkway meanders. Here, 104 men and boys had landed and set up shop. Three ships, Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, had left England nearly six months earlier, in December 1606. What was then deemed a profit-making venture would prove to be the beginning of the English colonization of America. At Yorktown we had seen the virtual end of that colonial period; now, in Jamestown, we saw where it had begun,174 years earlier.

It is fair to say that we were a little overwhelmed by Historic Jamestowne, the site of the original settlement. We found it a thrilling place in its palpable sense of destiny. The setup here was quite straightforward, with no reenactments, no interpretive theatrics-only a single actor/historian describing the conditions and activities of that first band of English settlers in the New World. (We learned, for example, that several of the expedition's young boys were sent to live with the Powhatans to learn their language and customs, so they could return to the village and become interpreters.) Now the archaeological digs in progress here on the site of the original fort, which was long thought to have been lost to the river, are revealing the spatial realities of life in such a tiny and vulnerable place. It was an altogether moving experience to see this with our own eyes.

We found an altogether different approach to the Jamestown story--and also one not to be missed--at the nearby Jamestown Settlement. It too chronicles the nation's 17th-century beginnings in the context of its Powhatan, English and African cultures, but through historical interpretive programs, set in a re-created Powhatan village, colonial fort and replicas of those first English ships. This is the history of remarkable personal loss. The odds of surviving were shockingly low; indeed, all but a handful of the original 104 were dead within a few years--the majority killed off in the brutal winter of 1608-1609, dubbed the "starving time" in history books. And American slavery began here, as did the long and painful demise of Native American culture on the continent. We left Jamestown with a lot to think about.

What can one say about Williamsburg, the very theatrical third point of this Triangle? It's a fantastic spectacle of colonial life, and the actors/interpreters deployed throughout this re-created first capital of Virginia are convincing and great fun to engage.

For our first visit to Williamsburg, we again caught the shuttle at the Yorktown Visitor Center and settled ourselves comfortably for the scenic ride--first along the York River and then west to Williamsburg itself. There we switched to the local shuttle and made our way to the Williamsburg Visitor Center. We had decided to make our first day's visit a walk-around-and-get-acquainted tour. Our first acquaintance, as it turned out, was General Cornwallis--on horseback and bolstered by a small troop of redcoated cavalrymen--who stopped to scold us and a few other nearby tourists, exhorting us to reconsider our treasonous inclinations and to think twice about allying ourselves with the French "monsters."

These "people of the past," as they are officially known, are quick to engage tourists in whatever is on their interpretive minds--whether it's a mere pleasantry, an explanation of whatever chore they might be engaged in, or a lively debate (sometimes quite one-sided) about the revolutionary forces, the state of the government, the prices of goods, taxation, and the like. Later in the day, we encountered the infamous turncoat Benedict Arnold at the capitol building, where we suffered his Tory views on the colonists' fight for freedom and equality. But he was roundly heckled and reviled by the "people of the past" citizenry.

After lunch at the excellent Trellis Restaurant on Duke of Gloucester Street, we returned to our exploration of this remarkable museum. Historic Williamsburg dates to the late 1920s and was initially financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the Standard Oil baron. Rockefeller Jr., whose financial involvement was kept secret at first, called his first walk with Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin, the Episcopal clergyman who envisioned the restoration of Williamsburg, "the most expensive walk I have ever taken."

The next day, back in the here and now at Yorktown and Riverwalk Landing Marina, we decided it was time for a change of scenery, so we left the floating dock and moved to one of the $25 moorings just downriver from the marina--though still within easy striking distance by dinghy. This turned out to be the perfect plan for our extended stay, and we were superbly positioned for our view of the Fourth of July fireworks display. After spending a festive Fourth in town, we dinghied back to Trinity for a front-row seat and a steak barbecue dinner. Then we waited, wine glasses in hand, for the evening festivities to begin. The evening began with a Marine Band concert at the Yorktown Monument--the fifes and drums could be heard in the distance--and the feeling of expectation increased as we watched preparations aboard the nearby fireworks barge.

And what a show it was! For what seemed like hours, countless rounds of fireworks filled the sky above us, each one bigger, better and more colorful than the one before--and all of it coming to a dazzling and loud climax in a spectacular finale. Among the boats that had filled the moorings around us, the air of celebration lingered for a little while after the fireworks had subsided. Then, one by one, they meandered off into the dark, heading for nearby home ports or other anchorages. We were happy to stay where we were, briefly considering, then abandoning, the idea of selling everything we owned and living here forever. Instead, we tidied up the cockpit and turned in.

Very early the next morning, we slipped our mooring and rode the retreating tide back out to the Bay, leaving Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg behind us. Did I mention there's a lot of history around here?

For more great articles and photos on boating, sailing, fishing, and cruising, visit http://www.ChesapeakeBoating.net

It Does A Body Good

[Chesapeake Bay Magazine - August 2009]

Virginia's Mobjack Bay is a cruiser's delight when it comes to quietude and kicking back. But when you add a historic bed-and-breakfast or two to the equation, the relaxation factor for author Paul Clancy is off the charts.

by Paul Clancy

There's a buzz of anticipation that comes with every journey on the water: fair winds, a newly discovered cove, a shared sunset in the cockpit, a simple meal, a cozy berth. At the same time—to me at least—there's the ragged edge of worry that everything won't go exactly as planned. Well, I had few such concerns on a beautiful morning last fall as my wife Barb and I cast off our mooring lines on the Lafayette River and headed up the Bay. We were going for the ultimate sailors' bliss—days on the water that end with four-poster beds in elegant rooms, followed by mornings that begin with the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and somebody's award-worthy breakfast creation. We were going to be flat-out pampered on a Mobjack Bay bed-and-breakfast cruise.

Before you scoff at this comfort-loving scenario, consider that while cruising is wonderful, there are times when you'd like not to wake up at first light, throw breakfast together and, while still sipping your first coffee, haul up anchor and shove off for the next destination. Consider too that cruising often means not conversing with anyone but your ever-loving spouse and/or companion for days on end. Nor do you always learn anything about the places you visit. Why, you don't even get the chance to stand off and admire your boat riding at anchor or sitting at the dock.

"This," said Barb, my ever-loving spouse and/or companion, as we prepared to leave, "is my kind of boating." The Chesapeake Bay is one of the world's great sailing areas, and when it comes to quaint accommodations on or near the water, it's none too shabby either. In fact, with a little planning, you could go B&B cruising almost anywhere. What we particularly like about Mobjack Bay, however, is that it's one of the most beautiful places we've ever put wind in our sails—wide, deep and relatively undiscovered. But what we hadn't realized until we started planning this trip is that it also has an embarrassment of bed-and-breakfast riches.

There are four major rivers flowing into Mobjack Bay—the Severn, the Ware, the North and the East—and all of them, it turns out, have B&Bs that you can get to—or pretty close to—by boat. We would like to have visited Airville Plantation on the Ware River, a place with a Colonial- and Federal-era pedigree, as well as a deep swimming pool. Airville has a dock at the mouth of the Ware, two miles from the inn, where the owners will pick you up, so getting there would have been easy. Time was a factor, though, so we decided we'd have to save that one for later. The East River has the Inn at Tabbs Creek, but last fall the inn was still undergoing extensive remodeling under new owners, which made a visit there impossible. (Now, though, the Inn at Tabbs Creek is open and flourishing.) So circumstances had made the choices for us: the Inn at Warner Hall on the Severn River, and the North River Inn on . . . yes, the North River. Oh what choices they were! We were about to sail deep into Virginia . . . and history.

We could feel the energy of the season as we sailed out of Hampton Roads in Ode to Joy, our Tartan 30, and headed up the Bay. To our right and left we saw schooners quitting Hampton Roads after the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race and now flocking north toward home. At the same time, passing from the other direction were the white sails of snowbirds on their journeys south. We waved like crazy to them all.

After passing the York River in late afternoon, we turned to the west, picked up a nice northwesterly breeze and slid into Mobjack Bay and then the Severn River, bound for Warner Hall. The sun, which had been as bright as a torch all day, now became muted by clouds. This change was followed by something quite miraculous. Like rainbow smudges in the sky, a pair of sun dogs (created by light refracted by ice crystals) punctuated the western sky. Then, at last, a crimson sunset scorched the horizon.

Our trip had been a little slower than we'd planned because of the northerly winds, so our arrival was going to be made in the dark. After making a last turn up the Severn's Northwest Branch and passing Brays Landing to port, we began running out of water, as we'd expected from the chart. Not far ahead, though, we could make out the twin blue silos that we'd been told were right next to Warner Hall, so we picked a spot near a little spit of land, dropped the plow anchor and stepped into our inflatable. (Did I mention we'd been dragging it behind?) By motor, it would have taken about five minutes to reach the landing, but we opted to row, so it took nearly thirty. (There had to be some hardship!) We took turns.

"I didn't know you'd be using a one-horse motor," said Troy Stavens, who had come down to help our landing, accompanied by Cocoa, one of the B&B's resident beagles. Troy and his wife Theresa are the proud owners and restorers of a place that goes back to the dawn of Virginia Colonial history. The couple had owned a personal investment management company in Williamsburg, Va., but found 10 years ago that the history and beauty of Warner Hall was irresistible.

Barb and I followed Stavens and Cocoa up to the house from the river. After a long day on the water, Barb and I were famished, and luckily we had called ahead and ordered a dinner basket for two. As we sat and happily consumed its contents—along with a couple of glasses of pinot noir—Troy regaled us with the hall's history.

Augustine Warner first arrived in the Colonies in 1628 at the age of 17, putting in seven years of indentured servitude before striking out on his own. He sailed back to England and then in 1642 returned to Virginia with a dozen settlers, which earned him—at $50 a head—600 acres on the Severn River in what would become Gloucester County. He called the place Austin's Desire, reflecting a shortening of his name, but not of his ambitions. There would follow several generations of Warners, and then, through the marriage of one of the daughters, several more generations of Lewises before the property was sold out of the family. One of Augustine's great-great-grandsons was George Washington, who often visited his ancestral home (and no doubt slept there). General Robert E. Lee, too, can be found on a branch of that family tree, as can explorer Meriwether Lewis. And so can Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor (better known to the world as Queen Elizabeth II), who is a twelfth-generation descendant of Augustine Warner. In fact, shortly after her coronation, she came to America and laid a wreath on the grave of her ancestor, here at Warner Hall.

With all the right political connections, with income from tobacco and the assistance of generations of slaves, the Warner and Lewis families prospered, and the riverfront plantation grew. The house itself was not as lucky. It was taken over and ransacked in 1676 by that rebellious rascal Nathaniel Bacon. And twice it was burned and rebuilt. So, with the exception of one of the dependencies—a west wing of the mansion that dates to the 1680s—little of the original structure remains. The current main house, a stately Greek Revival manor, was built in 1903 and meticulously restored by the Stavenses almost a century later.

There's a spacious elegance about the place that envelopes you as soon as you enter the house's center hall—with a staircase that would make Scarlett O'Hara envious. There are portraits of George Washington and Augustine Warner II—and a couple of new owner Theresa Stavens as a young girl. To the right is a spacious drawing room, with a huge Italian olive wood breakfront. To the left, a large formal dining room and a bar. All with 14-foot ceilings, mind you. But there's an informality to the place, too, that is underscored by the presence of Cocoa and Maxine, the owners' beagles, lounging and napping on the sofas.

After our dinner and conversation, Barb and I retreated to our room, "Bacon's Retreat," with its soft coral print wallpaper. There are 11 bedrooms at the inn, all of them spacious, all with full baths, closets with terrycloth bathrobes, antique furniture, high ceilings. It's not surprising that the website www.Iloveinns.com this year chose Warner Hall as one of the top 10 romantic B&Bs in America.

The next morning we discovered that, having arrived after dark, we'd missed a major part of the inn's attraction: its views. That was immediately clear as we sat down to breakfast on the wide covered porch facing the river. Warner Hall sits on 40 acres adjacent the waterfront, but there's another 500 acres of undeveloped farmland surrounding the inn that is owned by Theresa's brothers and sisters. This preserves the "view-shed." When I stood up and looked to the left, I could see the mast of our boat downriver. This could have been the same view the original owners had as they awaited boats bringing supplies to the mansion.

It was the perfect motivational vista, Barb said. "You can't quite see everything, so it makes you want to go out the door and explore." And after our elegant breakfast of lemon poppy-seed muffins, asparagus, and ham and cheese quiches we did just that, embarking on a long walk around the property. The path led down to a boathouse and the pier where we had tied up our dinghy. Circling around by the waterfront, we came across a small walled cemetery. We were amazed to see dark gray limestone tablets with legible inscriptions, including those of Augustine Warner and his wife Mary Townley Warner. The stones, a brochure informed us, were probably imported from England. We stood at this spot, looking across at the mansion, the peaceful riverfront, the sprawling fields, and felt as though we had slipped back into early Colonial history.

We left the Inn at mid-morning, rowing back to our boat. Troy and the "girls," Cocoa and Maxine, saw us off. A nice northwesterly breeze allowed us to sail the entire five miles out of the Severn and back into Mobjack Bay. There the wind was building, and as we turned northward and sheeted in the main and jib, we found ourselves going at almost breakneck speed toward the North River, and then up it. But after we had rounded the bend at Lone Point, we entered calm water, and suddenly the pace of our boat, as well as our mood, slowed to an agreeable crawl.

The best way to locate the North River Inn is to spot Breck and Mary Montague's sailboat, Promise, tied to their dock, just beyond Toddsbury Creek. The water was absolutely placid here, so we were able to maneuver Ode to Joy alongside the pier and tie up. We'd been hearing about the likelihood of gale-force winds, so we fished out every fender and line we could find and tied up snugly.

The North River Inn is about as different from Warner Hall as you can get. Instead of a single plantation-style mansion like Warner Hall, North River Inn is a collection of three dwellings that are spread out across a rambling 100-acre property bordering the river and beautiful Toddsbury Creek. Secondly, where Warner Hall is mannered and elegant, North River Inn is rustic and laid back.

There was no one to greet us because it was a weekday and both Mary and Breck Montague have day jobs, but there was a welcoming letter, which directed us to walk down a pretty tree-lined lane to Creek House, a four-room cottage that nestles up to the creek. It's a spacious cottage, in the style of a West Indies British officer's residence, with tray ceilings and many French doors that give way to the creek and to garden walks. There was sherry, crackers, brie and snacks in the fridge. And, maybe best of all, a laid fire in the fireplace and an invitation to fire it up.

But first, we wanted to take a walk around the property. The main house, where the Montagues live, must be one of the oldest dwellings in Virginia . . . or America, for that matter. Called Toddsbury, the house was built by Captain Thomas Todd sometime after he claimed the land in 1652. This restless sea captain soon moved to Anne Arundel County, where he acquired land on the south side of Maryland's Severn River. By sailing frequently back to England and returning each time with new settlers, he received a succession of land grants, among them a chunk of land in Fells Point in Baltimore County and another, called North Point, on the Patapsco River—the site of Todd's Inheritance, a 1664 home site. Todd must have been constantly on the go since he apparently returned often to Virginia to obtain sweet apple cider to sell to his Maryland neighbors.

Toddsbury has been lived in and well maintained for something like three and a half centuries, and it's no wonder the present owners are keeping it for themselves rather than turning it into part of the B&B. But Toddsbury Cottage, once a tenant farmer's house, and Toddsbury Guest House, a small replica of a Colonial Virginia cottage, both have guest rooms, as does Creek House, where we were staying. One of the great things about Toddsbury Cottage is its view of the river across a pasture occupied by a couple of pretty horses. As Barb and I made our leisurely tour of the property, one of them nuzzled me as I patted him across the fence. There was also a country lane lined with tall red maples, an 18th century walled garden and an equally old ice house to explore. At the corner of the property we found a couple of Adirondack chairs, so we tried them out as the sun set to the west of the creek, turning the water a soft rouge.

Back at Creek House, we lit the fire, sipped some sherry, read books and enjoyed the solitude. When we awoke in the morning, it dawned on us that the bustle we heard and smells we smelled, not artifacts of a pleasant dream, were coming from the kitchen, where the inn's chef, Marjorie Hayes, was already at work. It was Saturday morning, and the Montagues soon joined us at Creek House for fruit, scones, savory Virginia bacon and a wonderful egg creation that owed its character to free-range chickens raised on the property.

The Montagues are actually distant cousins, but they'd never met until Toddsbury brought them together. Breck is named for his great-great grandfather, John Breckinridge—a Kentuckian who served as vice president of the United States before the Civil War and as a Confederate general during it. The modern-day Breck was a Navy salvage diver before turning to the slightly more genteel world of financial advising.

He inherited Toddsbury from his aunt and moved to Gloucester, Va., from Alexandria in 1990. Mary Montague, a marriage and family therapist who works as a counselor at St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock, Va., also traces her family back to Toddsbury plantation. Her great-great grandparents bought the estate in 1880. Their descendants sold it in 1946 to Breck's side of the Montague family. But her grandmother held on to a small portion of the land, where she built Creek House. Mary inherited it and moved there. She and Breck lived within shouting distance until, as they put it, friendship, love and marriage followed.

But what were they going to do with the centuries-old property? Neither of them wanted to give up a place that had been in both of their families. They decided to recombine what had been broken apart in 1946. Then 10 years ago, after a visit to Great Oak Manor in Chestertown, Md., they decided to go the bed-and-breakfast route. They'd keep its character, its sense of unhurried, gracious country manners, alive by inviting others to share it. "We decided that if we were not going to live in the real world, we were going to bring the real world to us, in the form of our guests, and that has been so true," Mary said.

Barb and I were not sure we qualified as the real world, having arrived in such an old-world fashion—water—but we did now know that a weekend of exploring Mobjack Bay's quiet rivers could lead to surprising discoveries, fascinating people, and history we'd never known about. As we left the North River Inn later that morning and headed back home, we knew we'd tapped into a great way to both see and know part of our world.

Cruiser's Digest: Mobjack Bay B&Bs

One of the great parts of exploring Mobjack Bay's rivers is having the chance to sail the bay itself. Mobjack is wide, wild, deep and gorgeous. You'd not be sorry reaching the bay early enough to take a couple of turns. Popping in from the Chesapeake is easy, especially because Mobjack is presided over by the white, sail-like, New Point Comfort light, and the markers ushering you inside are helpfully labeled "MB".

We turned into the Severn and marveled at the shoreline, long and pristine, off to starboard. At Stump Point, about three miles in, there's a sharp left into the Southwest Branch, the place to go if you're looking for dockage and fuel, but otherwise you hold steady and follow the markers to the Northwest Branch. One mile later, after rounding green "5" at Cod Point, you're out of markers but almost there. Another sharp turn to the right, then past Vaughans Creek, you're within dinghy range of Warner Hall.

Leaving the Severn, we gave a wide berth to the shoals off the Ware River and headed toward the North River, which, so it happens, is almost due north. Another wide berth for the entrance marker, flashing green "1", and you're in a narrow but well marked river. At about three miles, past Lone Point on the left and a duck blind on the right, there's a sharp turn to port and then about two miles to a final turn to starboard and the last stretch of river. The channel is narrow here and it's wise to proceed slowly. Just past Toddsbury Creek we spotted Breck and Mary Montague's sailboat at their dock and took the outside T berth. At low tide it would have been difficult to dock with five feet of draft. We arrived and departed at mid-tide.

The Inn at Warner Hall on the Severn River (800-331-2720; www.warnerhall.com) has 11 rooms, each with a bath. Rates during the week are $175–$225; weekends $190–$245. There's a "chef's tasting" dinner on Friday and Saturday for $70 per person. A supper basket at $65 for two includes cheeses, fruit, appetizer, entree and dessert.

North River Inn (877-248-3030; www.northriverinn.com) has three separate cottages, rates are $155–$255. There's a full breakfast on the weekends. During the week, breakfast is self-serve, continental style.

The Inn at Tabbs Creek (804-725-5136; innattabbscreek.wordpress.com) is just off the East River, and is reachable by small boat or dinghy. The new owners, Lori and Greg Dusenberry, pride themselves on their organic gardening and have been working hard to make their 19th-century farmhouse as green as possible. Rates $89–$189.

On the Ware River, there's a dock with six feet MLW where Larry and Kathie Cohen, the proprietors of Airville Plantation (804-694-0287; www.airvilleplantation.com), will meet guests. Airville Plantation has three accommodation choices (rates $105–$160) and 300 acres of gardens, meadows and woodlands to explore. The home dates to 1756.

For more great articles and photos on boating, sailing, fishing, and cruising, visit http://www.ChesapeakeBoating.net

Mr. Yielding's Dream

[Chesapeake Bay Magazine - August 2009]

What happens to a wooden-boat dream when the dreamer dies unexpectedly? In this case it lives on, in the hands of a husband-and-wife restoration team in Rock Hall.

by Cindy Genther

Chalmers Yielding, a Florida architect nearing the end of his career, had a dream. He would sell his firm, buy and restore an old wooden boat, and then sail off into the sunset with true love, Elaine. And for about three years, things were unfolding nicely. In 2003 he found the boat of his dream, floating on a mooring ball in Rock Hall, Md. It was a beauty, a 1955 Sparkman & Stephens Gulfstream 36, built by Robert Derecktor's renowned Long Island boatyard. Before long Mr. Yielding had sold the company and begun the restoration process—painstakingly and methodically, with the precision you might expect from a veteran architect, photographing every step of the deconstruction and meticulously labeling the pieces.

By the end of 2005 he had her down to a bare hull, and it was time to buy everything he'd need for the rebuild—wood, hardware, stove, batteries, you name it. All this he stored at his home in Mountain City, Ga., and he'd bring supplies to Rock Hall as needed, sometimes staying with the boat for weeks on end if the task at hand called for it. He'd return to Mountain City occasionally, and briefly, to visit his fiancee, Elaine Aitcheson, and to load up with more supplies. Then,in June of 2006, during one of his stays in Georgia, Edward Chalmers Yielding died unexpectedly, of complications from an ulcer. And his boat, his unfinished dream, was suddenly orphaned there in Rock Hall.

And that's where we came in—several months later, anyway. My husband Dale and I have a boat refinishing and restoration company, Mobile Marine Services, also in Rock Hall. In September of that year we got a call from our friends Lee and Cindy Bair, owners of Swan Creek Marina, where Mr. Yielding had been working on the boat. Was there any chance, they asked, if we'd be interested in taking over the restoration of a nice old wooden sailboat? If so, they said, we might want to come have a look at her, and perhaps talk to the family of the late owner, see if she was for sale. So we went to see her, and were duly impressed with her overall solid condition—mahogany planks over oak frames, no rot and good bronze fasteners.

With a design dating back to the 1930s, she was quite fetching with her low, sleek profile and round foredeck hatches, a Derecktor signature. After a bit of research, we came to believe that she was not only the last Derecktor-built Gulfstream 36, but might have been the boat that the renowned designer had built for himself. So . . . oh yes, we were interested. By November she was ours, as were all the parts and supplies Mr. Yielding had bought for the project.

Back in Rock Hall, we were ready to pick up where the architect had left off. But where exactly would that be? We decided that it would be not only respectful of Mr. Yielding's intentions but also generally the path of least resistance to restore the boat according to his vision—with the help of his own notes and sketches. And, with a goal of launching the boat during the 2007 season, we went to work, beginning with the cockpit.

We had found the pieces of the original cockpit in a pile on the boat shed floor, along with some new mahogany boards that Mr. Yielding had started to fashion for the replacement. Using the old wood as templates, we rebuilt the cockpit structure with new wood. We found the old wheel-steering system that he had removed . . . but here was the first mystery. He'd bought no replacement steering system. Had he intended to put the old wheel back on? Or had he intended to rebuild with a tiller, which had been the boat's original design? There was no way to know for sure, since his notes made no mention of it. But the absence of a replacement wheel-steering system was a pretty strong clue, and we were comfortable erring on the side of design veracity.

By the first of December we had a rough cockpit structure that could withstand the elements, and it was time to focus on the interior. After spending a couple of months reinstalling the boat's fuel and water tanks (which Mr. Yielding had had cleaned and refurbished) and roughing in the fuel, plumbing and electrical systems, our attention turned to the aesthetics. We spent many a winter evening puzzling out what he might have been thinking—indeed so many that we soon dropped the formality of "Mr. Yielding" in favor of simply Chalmers. "What do you suppose Chalmers intended to do with the aft deck?" I'd ask, having found no clues in his notes. "What do you think Chalmers had in mind for the main saloon cabinetry?" Dale would ask.

Sometimes there would be hints in the notes, and sometimes not—in which case we'd rely on the original design drawings, or, if they failed us, our own best guess. We found virtually all of the old wood for the bunks and cabinetry lying on the ground in the boat shed, and we organized it into categories: main saloon, galley, V-berth, etc. Whenever possible we used this wood, first concentrating on the galley and then on the main saloon. Some pieces had been labeled and some had not, so there were times when we were reduced to matching up old paint drips or screw holes to figure out which pieces went where, and with which end up.

By late February we had installed the galley, the main saloon and a head. We tore down the shed surrounding the boat and painted her decks, her bottom and her hull. The work went on and on (and on), well into April. Finally she was ready for another once-over by Fred Hecklinger—the toughest, most experienced wooden-boat surveyor we know, who had also eyeballed her carefully when she was down to a bare hull. It had been a lot of work, so we were thrilled to hear Fred say that she was not just as good as the day she'd been built, but in some ways better!

But what would we name her? A boat this special had to have a special name, and that name would have to be painted on the transom before we launched the boat. We scoured the notebooks again, and even asked Elaine Aitcheson if he'd ever come up with a name for the boat. But he had not, she said. Hoping for inspiration on a name of our own choosing, we looked up the boat's previous monikers and found that for 15 years she had been known as Beowulf. Before that she had been Brigadoon and Savage and others. Interesting names all, but none of them seemed to fit this sleek beauty we'd labored over all winter, this beautiful boat that was now gleaming in the spring sunlight, under eight coats of varnish, positively radiant in the . . . ah, there you go, radiance! We'd call her Radiance.

Finally, in April 2007—five months and 900 work hours after we'd taken possession, we returned Chalmers's now radiant dream to the water. There were tense moments that Friday evening as Radiance sat there, still in the slings, waiting for her long-dried hull planks to absorb water and swell shut. But by Sunday morning the leaks had subsided enough that we felt safe to motor her around Swan Point to Rock Hall and her new home slip in front of the Harbor Shack Restaurant.

Since then we've put some 300 more miles under Radiance's well traveled keel. Although we haven't been far, we've taken her out in some nasty weather and she's come through it all just fine. One day soon we hope to take Elaine and Chalmers's sister Beth out for a sail. Both are happy that the dream sails on.

And, we like to think, so is Chalmers.

Dale and Cindy Genther, owners of Mobile Marine Services, a boat refinishing and restoration company, live and work in Rock Hall, Md. Radiance won best in class for sailboats at last year's Antique & Classic Boat Festival in St. Michaels, Md

For more great articles and photos on boating, sailing, fishing, and cruising, visit http://www.ChesapeakeBoating.net