Large-scale harvesting of the riches of the Chesapeake Bay did not begin until after the Civil War. By 1900, almost a quarter of all U.S. registered boats were making a profit on the Chesapeake Bay. During the height of the Kent Narrows seafood industry, from 1946 to 1983, as many as 100 vessels a day arrived at the waterfront processing houses. They offloaded oysters, crabs, clams, and finfish for preparation and shipment to markets throughout the Eastern Seaboard and beyond. The Chesapeake Bay could not sustain such growth. By the 21st century, pollution, disease, and overfishing had all but destroyed the Bay’s fisheries. Of the 30 processing houses in the state ten years earlier, only three survived. Two of these survivors are still operating on the Kent Narrows.