Pleasure Trips

Sea Scouts

WITH THE ADVENT of steamship service on the Chesapeake Bay in 1825, citizens of Baltimore began cruising to escape summer heat and humidity on the beaches of Tolchester and Betterton on the Eastern Shore also known as the DELMARVA Peninsula – All of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia were located there. Amusement parks were built for their entertainment and Annie Oakley gave frequent exhibitions of her world famous talent for sharp shooting. 

The amusement park at Tolchester was still in operation when I was a Sea Scout, and it was located just 12 miles across the Bay from the Baltimore Yacht Club, making one of our favorite day trips. The Skipper trusted us with the Gig whenever we wanted to make the hour and a half cruise. We would drop the anchor about a hundred feet from the wooden pier. We would then backup until the stern gently touched and tie up. We had to use the end of the pier inasmuch as an excursion boat might arrive at any time while we were there. 

I remember the boatswain taking me under the roller coaster after riding it for the first time. Chunks of wood began falling as a roller coaster passed overhead. On closer inspection, I found that its wooden structure was rotting away and that maintenance personnel had been hammering it back together with ten penny nails for decades. The ends of cross bracing were splitting from all the nails driven into them. What the hell, it made the ride all the more exciting when you knew that it might collapse under you at any time.

The place may have been going to seed but the food was still excellent. The funnel cakes were memorable although the fryers looked as though they may have been using the same oil that Annie Oakley had sampled there decades before.

On my last visit there when I was boatswain, about 1960, we ended the day by bowling a game of duckpins in an open air pavilion. Duckpins are like ten pins only much smaller, and the balls weigh only three pounds. The game was invented to be played on smaller alleys than ten pin alleys, that bar owners in Baltimore and Washington had installed. 

Pin boys sat above the pit where the pins collected when they were knocked over. They would jump down and clear away any pins that remained on the alley after you bowled – you played three balls in duck pins. Then they would launch your ball on a track that carried it back to you behind the foul line. After your bowling three balls in each frame, the pin boys would set up the pins for the next player.

At the end of the game, you rolled a quarter down the gutter to pay the pin boys for their service. Unfortunately, we had spent our last money to play the game and had nothing left to pay them. We shrugged our apologies and began to run when we saw that they weren't in a forgiving mood.

We grabbed the stern lines and cast off as soon as we jumped aboard the Gig. Two boys on the foredeck began hauling in on the anchor line as I started the engine, and the pin boys gave us a hearty farewell by heaving loose boards from the dock at us.

Those who could not afford the price of a ticket on the steamship rode the trolley from Baltimore to Pleasure Island where a less elegant amusement park waited. The trollies sped along Sparrows Point where the British had marched to attack the city while their ships bombarded Fort McHenry. They rolled past the Bethlehem Steel Works and Sparrows Point Ship Yards, crossed a narrow wooden trestle bridge and discharged their passengers on the island.

I only visited there once when I was about five or six years old. I still remember standing beside my mother, hanging onto her skirt, as the trolley rocked from side to side. There were no seats for us until the workmen disembarked at stations along the way. These were the old-fashioned trollies with a pantograph at each end that connected to the overhead wire. They also had couplers like railroad cars. The one we road that day was joined to another for the trip to Hart Island. I don't remember anything about the park itself – just the trip there and back. 

The amusement park was closed and abandoned in 1960 after storms washed away the bridge and damaged the park beyond repair. I passed the island many times but we never stopped. After 1960, there was no reason.