The Oyster Industry

During the 18th and 19th centuries, oysters in Narragansett Bay were harvested from skiffs with hand-operated tongs, rowed to shore, taken by horse-drawn wagons to oyster houses, and either sold live in the shell packed in ice or shucked by hand, packed in water, and shipped in cans. Each June and July, oyster companies spread accumulated empty shells over acres of bay bottom leased from the state, then released baby oysters, or spat, from shallow water onto these beds so they could attach to the spent shells and grow to maturity. Powered vessels and the mechanical dredge later automated the industry. By 1912, the peak year for oyster farming in Rhode Island, more than 20,000 acres of Narragansett Bay were under cultivation, and oysters provided more than 60% of the state's fishery income. Warren, with its deep water and sheltered harbor, quickly became Rhode Island's oyster capital, with ten oyster houses on the Warren River and two on the Kickemuit, twice as many as any other town in the state. After 1915, the harvest declined because of pollution in the bay caused by heavy dumping into the Providence River and the oil refinery in East Providence. Several severe icy winters in the 1930s and the Hurricane of 1938 destroyed close to 80% of the oyster beds. Only the B. Buckingham & Son Oyster House survived, in modified form, as the Wharf Tavern. In the 1970s, Luther Blount (1916-2006) created the Jenny's Creek Salt Marsh oyster sanctuary on Prudence Island, where protected oysters grow and reproduce and send millions of larvae into the bay. Today, Narragansett Bay and its oysters are recovering, shellfish farms are blossoming, and Rhode Island's oyster industry is valued in the millions of dollars, with oysters accounting for a majority of the state's aquaculture industry.

Warren, Rhode Island · United States