Tangier Island is a Cemetary

Tangier Island is a cemetery. Tangier Island is many things—a 250 year history treasury, a Godly respite from modernity, a disappearing wetlands testimony to “climate change”, a last bastion of the Chesapeake “waterman”, and I could go on. But the island is also a cemetery! I am sure that there are more graves and gravestones on the island than people. This fact should not be a surprise since Tangier has been inhabited by Europeans since 1680s. Also the current population is declining and maybe now numbers about 600 or less.

Tangier is a small, flat island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. There are about 800 acres of land exposed above the water line. Only 89 acres are dry enough to support habitation. When John Smith discovered the island and named it in 1608 there were about 2000 acres above ground. It is estimated that the island loses about 9 acres of area each year to erosion.

White Pepper has always heard about Tangier Island and desired a visit. We set out for the Island from Mobjac Bay in a surprise July norther. It was quite a bash to weather. The boat performed magnificently, the crew less so; and Aphrodite, cat, was miserably sick. There is no anchorage at Tangier. The only marina, Park's Marina, is primitive to say the least. Mr. Park is a marvelous specimen at age 92, but frankly the boating world has changed since 1976 when the marina was built.

Regardless, Tangier Island is worth all of the hassle to get there and dock.

However, White Pepper's overwhelming first impression was of the cemeteries which are everywhere. They surround the beautiful Methodist Church, they are in the parsonage, they are in lots all about the town, but most of all they are in people's yards. Most of the headstones carry the name Pruitt, followed by Crockett, Park and a few Dise. I am very sensitive to keeping relatives close by, but the custom of family plots in the front yard is fairly unique to White Pepper's voyages.

I conclude with a display of these cemeteries. Baring immense human intervention all of these will be underwater within a few centuries.