The F.D. Crockett is a restored Chesapeake Bay buy boat, a motor-powered workboat with large decks, an aft pilot house, and a mast and boom for hauling seafood and cargo throughout the Chesapeake region. Like some early buy boats, it was built from logs shaped and pinned together, and as one of the last and largest of its kind, it is the last remaining log-hulled buy boat in Virginia. Built in 1924 by Alex Gaines and John Franklin Smith in Dare, York County, Virginia, it first carried freight from farms to port towns and cities. For nearly 100 years, it remained economically profitable, hauling goods, produce, and livestock, buying and selling oysters, and dredging in winter for crabs or oysters, until trucks and expanding bridges and highways replaced its usefulness. Donated in 2005 as a derelict to the Deltaville Maritime Museum, it was restored after 7 years and 10,000 hours of volunteer labor. It now serves as an outreach program for the museum and was listed as a Virginia Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Photo: Devry Becker Jones

Deltaville, Virginia · USA