Charmed life for a Chesapeake buyboat

For a wooden boat to last a century, it needs annual trips to the boatyard railway, and all bets are on that the buyboat Peggy of Newport, built in 1925, made that trip most every year.

The Peggy, owned today by the Mathews Maritime Foundation, turns 100 years old this year and the foundation plans to celebrate the boat’s long heritage as a commercial fishing vessel.

The Peggy was built in Mathews County and worked and owned by Mathews County watermen.

In the heyday of Chesapeake Bay deck boats in the 1920s and ‘30s, there were several thousand of the boats working the bay. Today there are only about 40 left in various stages of life–some needing major repairs and maintenance to continue on.

The boats are referred to as buyboats when being used as a working platform for the purchase of seafood from fishermen working in smaller boats. The boats are also referred to as deck boats when decking is installed fore and aft to create a working or standing platform over the hull of the boat.

When this photo was taken in the 1980s, Peggy’s owner Edward Grinell was working her in Virginia’s winter crab dredge fishery. The dredge post can be seen just aft of the mast. Larry Chowning photo.

The Peggy has lived a charmed life compared to some buyboats, as she has had only four owners and all have been dedicated to maintaining her. She was built in 1925 by Harry A. Hudgins of Peary, Va. for pound net fisherman Captain Walter Burroughs, who named the boat after his daughter Peggy. The 55’ x 12.6’ x 4’2” vessel was originally built as an open (no decking) trap boat and was decked over in 1950 with a pilothouse installed aft to work in Virginia’s winter crab dredge fishery.

The Burroughs family had owned the Peggy for 36 years when she was sold to 23-year-old Edward Grinnell in 1961. Grinnell worked the boat in the bay’s pound net and crab dredge fishery until he sold her to Kim and Gretchen Granberry in 2001.

Racing

In 2008, Terry Grinnell Hudgins, Grinnell’s daughter, wrote a brief history of the boat, recorded by the Mathews Maritime Foundation.

“Peggy was known all over the area for her speed and being a very fast boat,” she wrote. “People stated they had never seen anything as fast as the Peggy was. In the early 1940s they held boat races down at Bayside in Bavon, Va. Some boat races were even held on Christmas. People came from all over to watch the Peggy race. It was noted the Peggy would win races and the local people placed bets on her capability,” she wrote.

“On one occasion, Peggy raced the (deck boat) Mabel Lee owned at that time by Swanson Hudgins. Of course, Peggy won by a large margin. It was known that shoe polish and grease was used on the bottom of the boat to make her slick.”

The Granberrys

Grinnell had owned the Peggy for 40 years when the Granberrys bought the boat in 2001, after attempting to purchase it for nine years. “This was a very difficult decision for Edward (Grinnell) to make,” says Hudgins in her history of the boat. “Peggy was part of the family. She was his pride and joy.”

The Granberrys converted her into a cruiser by adding a truck cabin and converting the fish hold into living quarters. They used her to cruise from Maine to the Caribbean on trips.

When she was converted to a pleasure boat in 2001, owners Kim and Gretchen Granberry installed a truck cabin to provide head room and space in the fish hold for living quarters. In this photo, the truck cabin can be seen on the dock next to the Peggy. Kim

While the Granberrys owned the boat, she was awarded “Best Overall Lines” on a deck boat at the 2005 Harborfest in Norfolk, Va., and won first place in 2007 for Best Owner Restored Power Boat at the Wooden Boat Show Concourse d'Elegance at Mystic Seaport, Conn. She also was a “centerpiece vessel” at the first annual buyboat rendezvous in 2004 at Rock Hall, Md. When the Granberrys decided to move out of the Northern Neck of Va. area in 2008, they donated the vessel to the Mathews Maritime Foundation after owning the boat for seven years.

Mathews Maritime Foundation

Since 2008, the foundation has painstakingly spent thousands of volunteer hours and dollars to maintain the Peggy in an effort to carry on the 100-year-old tradition of keeping her alive and well. It has not hurt that the foundation owns its own railway at Gwynn’s Island, Va.

The foundation has two parties planned this year to commemorate the 100-year celebration of the Peggy. On June 21, the foundation is holding a birthday party for the vessel with just relatives of former owners and former owners attending, and on Sept. 20, the group is holding a “everyone invited” birthday party at the Hudgins Horn Harbor Marina in Port Haywood, Va.

Chesapeake Bay artist John Barber has been commissioned to create a painting of the vessel that will be raffled off to generate funds to keep the “ole workhorse” of the bay alive for generations to come.