A Water Connection

Beneath these waters lie the buried timbers of the oldest documented wharf of its kind in the United States, dating to 1746, when Colonel Isaac Handy built a 200-foot bulkhead wharf at Mulberry Landing. Handy had a personal interest in shipping: as a youth he trained as a mariner on his father's ship, the "Samuel and Mary," later inherited a half interest in that vessel, and became part owner in three other sloops, the "George," "Anne," and "Sally and Molly." These ships carried Pemberton Hall Plantation goods to market and delivered needed supplies. At the time, water transportation was the only reliable way to reach other plantations, ports, and the outside world. Remnants of the old rolling road that led to the wharf at Mulberry Landing can still be seen; large barrels called hogsheads, filled with plantation goods, were rolled along the road to the wharf, transferred to flat-bottomed scows, and then loaded aboard ships bound for the Chesapeake and the Atlantic.

Maryland · United States