TUESDAY AUGUST 3RD

A nice relaxing morning. We have decided to stay an extra day at Solomon’s.

Midmorning we rode the bikes to the Calvert Marine Museum.









On display is the Drum Point Lighthouse. It was hauled here from Drum Point and restored.

The lightkeeper and his family of 5 were the last ones to live here. It was actually fairly spacious, but 5 kids!!! And the kids were only allowed on one of the 4 levels. The family was given an acre of land on shore where they gardened and had chickens. And let the kids run around.

Besides keeping the light lit, the keeper had to signal ships in foggy weather. This meant hand winding this weight every two hours, which was conveniently located outside his bedroom, so it would cause a striker upstairs to hit a bell two blows every 15 seconds. Bet no one got much sleep on those nights.

The adjoining maritime museum was interesting.






Think you can eat half a dozen oysters on the half shell of these?















They had a good display on tobacco. It was a labor intensive crop involving hand weeding.

This is a hogshead. It was a barrel with strict size regulations because shipping costs and selling costs were by the barrel. They used a press, called a tobacco prize, to pack the dried tobacco into the Hogshead. The Hogshead could easily hold an acre of dried tobacco. Or about 800 to 1600 pounds of product.













Dried tobacco leaves.
















We have toured many replicas of sailing vessels and I often wonder where the kitchen was. I’m thinking this was it. Called a Camboose. A handcut square of sandstone which the cook would set in a bed of sand inside a box. He would make a fire inside of it, place a grate over the top and set the cook pot on top. Pretty ingenious.













Riding the bikes around we saw many fire hydrants. Each painted differently. This was my favorite. Painted like an old style diving suit.