Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island

by Earl Swift

A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction from rising sea levels—part natural history of an extraordinary ecosystem, starring the beloved blue crab; part paean to a vanishing way of life; and part meditation on man’s relationship with the environment—from the acclaimed author, who reported this story for more than two years.

Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation’s largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water—the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world.

Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year—meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.

Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island’s past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier’s people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by—and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Nature, Science, Environment, Book Club, Audiobook

448 pages, Hardcover

First published August 7, 2018

About the author

Longtime journalist Earl Swift is the author of the forthcoming ACROSS THE AIRLESS WILDS: THE LUNAR ROVER AND THE TRIUMPH OF THE FINAL MOON LANDINGS, due from HarperCollins in July 2021.

He is also the author of seven other books, among them the New York Times best seller CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM (HarperCollins, 2018), the story of an island town threatened with extinction by the very water that has sustained it for 240 years; AUTO BIOGRAPHY (HarperCollins, 2014), a narrative journey through postwar America told through a single old car and the fourteen people who've owned it; THE BIG ROADS (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), an armchair history of the U.S. highway system and its effects, physical and cultural, on the nation it binds; JOURNEY ON THE JAMES (University of Virginia Press, 2001), about a great American river and the largely untold history that has unfolded in and around it; WHERE THEY LAY (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), for which he accompanied an Army archaeological team into the jungles of Laos in search of a helicopter crew shot down thirty years before; and a 2007 collection of his stories, THE TANGIERMAN'S LAMENT (UVa Press). He also co-authored, with Macon Brock, ONE BUCK AT A TIME (Beachnut/John F. Blair, 2017), an insider's account of Dollar Tree's rise from loopy idea to retail juggernaut.

Since 2012 he's been a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in the Blue Ridge mountains west of Charlottesville.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

All right, USA, who wants to go first? Come on, come on someone, anyone. Let’s see some hands. No? No one? All right then, Mother Nature will just have to choose one of you. Eenie meenie, miney mo, which will be the first to go? All right, Tangier Island, looks like you’re it. Congratulations! You are the premier official global warming refugee site in America. Come on down and receive your prize. Free ferry tickets to the mainland. Don’t let the waves hit you on your way out.


Tangier Island - photo credit – Andrew Moore for the NY Times

It is a community unlike any in America. Here live people so isolated for so long that they have their own style of speech, a singsong brogue of old words and phrases, twisted vowels, odd rhythms. Its virtually amphibious men follow a calendar set by the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and they catch more of the prized delicacy than anyone else. It is a near-theocracy of old-school Christians who brook no trade in alcohol, and kept a major movie from filming in their midst over scenes of sex and beer. And not least, this is one big, extended family: All but a few islanders can trace their lineage to a single man.

For 240 years they’ve occupied a speck of mud and marsh that nowhere reaches more than five feet above the tide, seldom tops three, and most often fails to clear one. Now it is washing ever faster into a bay on the rise.

David Schulte, from the Army Corps of Engineers, on the beach in what’s left of the Tangier region called Uppards – image from the NY Times – photo by Andrew Moore

Earl Swift was a reporter for the Virginia Pilot when he got his first briny taste of Tangier island in 1999. He wrote several pieces about this little-known place, that was not only isolated (as isolated as one can be only twelve miles from the mainland), but facing considerable long-term challenges. Tangier had been used by Native Americans for hunting and fishing. It was first mapped in 1608 by one John Smith (you may have heard of him) and not regularly occupied, by Westerners anyway, until 1686, when the Royal Marines built Fort Albion there. It is expected to be claimed by the bay by the mid/late 21st century. It will be rendered uninhabitable long before that. Sparked by a significant item from Scientific Reports in 2015, Swift’s interest was rekindled and he opted to take a closer, deeper look.

…little Tangier is important in one respect. As the Scientific Reports article concluded, it’s likely to be the first to go. That experience—and the uncomfortable questions it forces the country to confront—will inform what the rest of us on and near coasts can expect in the decades to come. What makes a community worth saving? Will its size alone prompt the nation to fight for its survival—or are other, less tangible factors as important? Which such factors count the most? And if size is the chief consideration, what’s the cutoff, the minimum population, that’s worth rescue? What, in short, is important to us?
And there’s the matter of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab: Without Tangier, big-city restaurants will be serving a lot less softshell, and many more will have to substitute imported crabmeat for the genuine article in their crabcakes.

Earl Swift - image from the University of Missouri - Saint Louis

For some the potential demise of Tangier is a crying shame, the loss of a culture that has grown its own ways and language, a real community of real people. Not exactly a lost Stone Age Bornean tribe in their differences from the rest of us, but with enough uniqueness to mark some lines between here and there. For others, the loss of Tangier would be just another manifestation of the ongoing global warming that is raising sea levels and making much of the planet hotter, and much of our weather harsher. The question posed by this book is whether the island is worth saving, given that saving it will entail a considerable public investment.


A backyard of a home on Tangier Island gives way to marsh, a trend affecting more and more homes, as erosion, land subsidence and sea level rise afflict the island. Photo taken on Saturday, July 1, 2017 – image and text from The Virginian-Pilot – by Steve Earley

To inform our answers Earl Swift spent considerable time on the island getting to know its residents, learn the local culture, patois, values, personalities, values, beliefs, and concerns. His more deskbound research offers us both a history of the place and a look at the climatic and geological conditions that seem certain to doom Tangier to a watery grave. The value of the island, and related islands is not just the human history and culture that is at risk. There are natural features that impact the survival not only of local avian life, but the underwater fauna and flora that support a wide range of species, including the blue crab and oyster. There is value to sustaining existing environments and species, for environmental, aesthetic, and commercial reasons. If (when) this island disappears, how will its loss affect the Chesapeake Bay blue crabs that fill so many bellies? How will that loss affect the men and women who bring this renewable resource to our tables? If the potential crab harvest is severely reduced there will be secondary impact, as the shutting down of a significant economic force sends waves through the adjacent economies. What about, for instance, the truckers who deliver crabs and oysters from the Tangier watermen to the rest of the nation, the shops and restaurants that depend on them for customers and product?


The Amanda Lee, a typical Tangier workboat – image from OutsideOnLine.com - photo credit Matt Eich

In reading Chesapeake Requiem, you will pick up some terminology, will learn to differentiate a jimmy from a sook from a peeler, and appreciate the significance of a sponge on a crab. What might a progger be, or a come-here? What is a doubler, and what are the differences between jumbos, primes, hotels, and mediums, and what is a sugar toad?

It is also a place where, when a couple learned that their adopted Asian children had been taken from their birth parents illegally, they gave the kids the chance to meet their biological parents, and choose where to live.


Image from The Virginia-Pilot

It is a place where an overzealous cop shot a kid for violating a blue law when he was buying his mother milk on a Sunday. It is also a place where someone later shot dead the cop who had been convicted of a crime for that action, but who had been subsequently pardoned. No one will say who. It is a place where being a cop is a considerable challenge when everyone who calls in a complaint is a friend or relative and every one they are calling about is a friend or relative.

It is a place where, when a pastor, who was deemed insufficiently conservative left the Methodist church and started his own parish, he was vandalized by locals. Outside intervention was needed to make the attacks stop. And when the national Methodist Church expressed support for Palestinians wanting their own state, member of the local Methodist church rebelled, creating a schism.


From New Yorker article - photo by Gorden Campbell

It is a place where, when one of their most respected captains went down in a stormy sea, fifty boats launched into awful conditions, Dunkirk–like, to try to rescue him. It is also a place where flinty boat owners sometimes skimped on known needed repairs or safety equipment to their own peril, and the endangerment of those seeking to come to their aid.

It is a place where a clothing factory that employed mostly women was burned to the ground when the local men were put off by the independence this new employment provided to the island women. It is a place where the vast majority of land-based jobs are held by women, and the vast majority of water-based jobs are held by men.

It is a place where plans to build a seawall to protect the island keep getting buried under years of studies, funding denials at federal, state and local levels, and presidential impediments.


Wind and waves have ravaged Tangier, including the island’s public beach, shown here – image from The Virginia-Pilot – photo by Steve Eearley

It is a place that welcomes newcomers guardedly, and has benefited mightily from some of the advances those invasive species brought with them. But it is a place that becomes toxic and shunning when those outsiders do not fully accept all the local norms.

As individuals, the islanders are fiercely independent and self-sufficient—modern-day cowboys, or so they like to think. As a group, however, they show precious little initiative.

It is a place where a man called Ooker knows the local ospreys by name, and feeds them, where feral cats abound, where if you have seen a squirrel on the island, it is really the squirrel, not a squirrel. It is a place where a respect for the land is not always obvious.

…objectively speaking, islanders were poor stewards of their island and its waters. The marshes were studded with their discarded kitchen appliances, bicycles. And outboard motors. Litter made eyesores of the ridges. Watermen routinely threw trash, including motor oil, overboard; the harbor’s shallows had acquired a sharp-smelling and colorful sheen. And Tangiermen had nothing but enmity for environmentalists, who warned that the bay’s blue crab population was overfished, teetering on collapse, and would rebound only with tighter regulation of the commercial harvest.

Cameron Evans, 17, looks for artifacts from Canaan, one of the communities that once existed on Uppards. This stretch of shoreline, about a 10-minute boat ride from tangier Island’s harbor, has been receding at a rate of 15 feet or more a year recently – image from The Virgina-Pilot – photo by Steve Earley – Friday, June 30, 2017

It is a place that has survived an invasion of parasites that almost wiped out the oyster crop entirely, a place where limits on crab takes were routinely ignored, forcing the state to intervene to keep the resource from being wiped out.

It is a book that generates few gripes. I recommend that if you are poring through this on or near a digital device, you keep a window open with a map of the islands. It makes it much easier to track where things are while reading. Of course, the full, hardcover edition may offer more visual aids than did the ARE I read for this review, so take that concern with a grain of sea salt. At 380 pps it felt long, but not terribly so. I did think, though, that at times there might have been too much local culture. That made it seem a bit longer. But not much else. Swift is a gifted writer, with a smooth style, a keen eye for detail, and a very useful ability to get up close with people he started out hardly knowing.


An old deadrise workboat sits in a marsh at Tangier island. The island’s three ridges, where people live, are not much more than 4 feet above sea level – image and caption from The Virginia-Pilot – photo by Steve Earley – taken July 1, 2017



==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. OR, you could see the entire, unchopped-up review, as it is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews, all in one piece. Stop by and say Hi!

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chesapeake Bay’s waters are rising, as are sea levels all over the world, due to climate change. The rising sea levels of Chesapeake Bay threaten the very existence of a number of the bay’s islands – including, notably, the historic and culturally distinctive Tangier Island in Virginia. Since the 17th century, Tangier has been home to a small community of watermen and their families – tough, hard-working people who have made their living through the difficult and often dangerous task of harvesting the Bay’s bounty of crabs and oysters. And journalist Earl Swift dedicated a year of his life to living on Tangier and seeing how the people of contemporary Tangier are responding to these threats – in an engaging 2018 book with a troubling title: Chesapeake Requiem.

Swift wrote for many years for Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot newspaper, the paper of record for the Hampton Roads region of Tidewater Virginia. In the process, he engaged in some thought-provoking examples of participatory journalism. For an earlier book, Journey on the James (2001), Swift and a Virginian-Pilot photographer journeyed by canoe all the way down Virginia’s James River, from its source in the commonwealth’s western mountains to its outlet at Hampton Roads. For Chesapeake Requiem, Swift upped the ante – renting a home on Tangier; living on the island; crabbing and oystering with the watermen; exploring the island’s shrinking shoreline, on foot and by boat, with other Tangier residents; attending community meetings; and spending Sunday mornings at services in one or the other of the island’s two well-attended and fervently supported Methodist churches.

Swift had visited Tangier twenty years before, in 1999, to write a Virginian-Pilot story about how the islanders had refused, on religious and moral grounds, to let the Virginia Lottery conduct business on the island. While there, he saw how the island was shrinking as a result of the effects of both erosion and sea-level rise on the island. The island had shrunk much further by 2016, and it was on the basis of those troubling observations that Swift undertook to spend A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island (the book’s subtitle).

Over the course of Swift’s year living among the Tangier Island watermen and their families, a number of major themes emerge. One is that the fiercely independent Tangiermen trust in God, take pride in their own ability to wrest a living from the Chesapeake through their hard work, and are generally distrustful of any outside authority.

When the watermen gather for regular confabs in an abandoned health-center building that they have dubbed “the Situation Room,” problems with secular authority are a regular topic of conversation. A waterman named Leon complains that the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) has taken away a Tangierman’s crabbing license for the rest of the year, for an undisclosed third violation of state laws. “What’s he going to do? They’ve taken away his living!...There’s something wrong with that part of the law. What am I going to do if I can’t work on the water?...I ain’t got a Colonel Sanders fried chicken place I can go to for a job” (pp. 105-06). Swift, who also understands the perspective of organizations like VMRC that are trying to preserve the overall crab population of the bay, sees complaints like these as emblematic of “Tangier’s long, fractious history with officials and officialdom” (p. 107).

Because of the sheer amount of time Swift spent living on Tangier, he is able to delve below the popular image of life on the island. For instance, he looks at the island’s established reputation for religiosity, and points out that, while the people of Tangier Island are indeed devout, they have also shown the potential for taking the law into their own hands, sometimes violently: “Piety and lawlessness [are] competing facets of the Tangier character” (p. 203). In support of that claim, Swift cites examples of unsolved murder and arson cases from Tangier’s past, and then moves to a crime that took place while he was living on the island, and that shook residents of Tangier to their core – the theft of $3,000 worth of funds from Swain Methodist Church. One parishioner says of the theft that “It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened on Tangier” (p. 205), and her dramatic declaration causes Swift to reflect:

It strikes me as an overstatement, what with the cholera, the deaths of islanders in boats and in combat, and myriad other tragedies that have befallen the place over the past two centuries. But then, I reflect, the church has always been the rock on which the island depended in hard times. The church…has been a refuge against all the uncertainties of life on a tiny island isolated and buffeted by big water. Church has been central to the essence of Tangier, and Tangier central to church. Perhaps erosion threatens both. (p. 205)

The Tangiermen that Swift spends that year with are, by and large, skeptical about climate change. They acknowledge that erosion is nibbling away at the island; but to accept that anthropogenic climate change could threaten the island’s existence seems for many to offend their sense of God’s providence, their abiding belief that “the Lord will provide.”

When efforts at promoting positive change in Tangier residents’ attitudes toward the environment have worked, it seems to have been when the islanders’ religious devotion is respected and taken into account as part of the equation. At a time of confrontation between the islanders and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation environmental organization, a doctoral student working with the CBF encouraged the watermen to reflect “that the bay was God’s creation and its stewardship a Christian duty” (p. 299). Her efforts “fostered dialogue among islanders, regulators, and the CBF that made plain to all that they’d been talking past one another” (p. 300). Years after that doctoral student sought to establish that dialogue, Swift remarks, “Tangier is far cleaner and tidier today than when I first visited” (p. 301).

Yet such encouraging anecdotes must be balanced against the overwhelming evidence that the island continues to shrink. One time after another, Swift is taken on a boat trip around the island; and his informants, Tangier natives all, show him where areas that used to be centers of settlement or thriving stands of coastal forest are now well under the water. Inundated cemeteries give up their dead. Seagrasses that provide shelter for blue crabs recede, and the watermen’s harvest of “peelers” (soft-shell crabs) becomes less predictable.

Over the course of Chesapeake Requiem, the reader gets a strong sense of Swift’s affection and respect for the people of Tangier Island. He may not agree with all of their perspectives (for instance, their 87% support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election), but he is impressed by the way they look out for one another – something that is demonstrated when a father-and-son team of watermen run into serious trouble one stormy day on the Bay. Swift concludes Chesapeake Requiem by expressing his hopes that some kind of intervention can save the island from inundation; but the very title of his book speaks to his concern that any such attempts at saving the island may be too little, too late.

[Helen Yoest · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read about our environment, the life on Tangier island, and generally about the Chesapeake. I was born on Chincoteague island, and raised on the Chesapeake in Norfolk, VA. Not enough is written about this unique part of the world, and the people, or at least I can't get enough!

I learned a few new things, and after reading, I'd like to be a tourist...particular since it may be gone in my lifetime, or in my children's time.

As an environmentalist, I encourage every like-minded readers to read this wonderful account, and realize we can all BeeBetter.info

[John Behle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Earl Swift bogs his book down with too descriptive prose. I did enjoy the science of the Chesapeake Bay. However, the way wordy detail forced my call at two stars. I started skipping and scanning to add motion to the slow text.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

”For 240 years they’ve occupied a speck of mud and marsh that nowhere reaches more than five feet above the tide, seldom tops three and most often fails to clear one. Now it is washing ever faster into a bay on the rise. …In fact the lower Chesapeake’s relative sea-level rise – the one-two punch of water coming up and land going down – is among the highest on the Earth, and of all the towns and cities situated on the estuary, none is a vulnerable, none as captive to the effect of climate change, as Tangier.”

I don’t know when I first heard about Tangier Island, VA. Probably when I read Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay by William W. Warner. I found that book when it was first published in 1977 and shared it with my husband and father-in-law. They are the people who first introduced me to crabbing and the delights of picking crabs.

Life continued and after a brief foray into the middle of the United States, we have settled happily into Virginia. Since my arrival here, I have learned a lot about Tangier and other places on and in the Chesapeake Bay. I have always loved the shore and the water. Having the Bay within a two-hour drive has a delight.

Even though I have been interested in crabs, oceans and Virginia, I have never made the time to visit Tangier Island. It is one of those places I always thought I would get around to – eventually. After reading this book I realize that I can’t wait too long. Mother nature is using Tangier to show us exactly what climate change will do to all of us if we don’t put a stop to it.

Swift spent the time necessary to learn about Tangier not only from books and the news, but he stayed on the island and learned firsthand what is going on in that place. His diligence and his way with words shows the residences as they are. He did not fall into the trap of making the people into strawmen for his own agenda.
His writing is clear and, in my opinion, unbiased. I am sure there are some folks on the island who would not like his descriptions of them, but that would be true of any report that is not prejudiced towards Tangier. I am grateful to Swift for putting faces on this Chesapeake Bay treasure. I now have a better understanding of these people and their home.

I am sorry that most of the residents of Tangier Island are Trump supporters and climate change deniers. I am in the opposite political camp and believe science. Our differences made this book hard for me to read at times. However, the author kept me connected to his story and that helped a great deal.

I suspect every politician should be reading this account. Something should be done to save Tangier Island. I worry though that most people would not think this island worth the cost of saving it. It is only a few people and most of us don’t know anyone who lives there. I believe sometimes it is the small things that need rescue the most.

[Jan C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm from a Maryland family. I think my father may have been the first to leave. As a child I have a memory of my grandfather picking up a dozen or so crabs at the harbor and seeing the crabs crawling all over the kitchen floor. I don't remember if I actually ate any of those crabs. On another night, the adults were passing around a container of fresh oysters. They looked pretty slimy to me. I later learned to like both crabs and oysters, and, oh, those soft-shelled crabs. Of course, now I can't eat any of them as I have developed gout.

I think we have always had feelings that Maryland cared more about the Bay than Virginia, and apparently more about saving Smith Island than Virginia does about saving Tangier. I don't know if this means that the residents of Smith were more willing to see the reality of climate change than those of Tangier - they don't believe in climate change. They believe in flooding and erosion but don't believe it has anything to do with rising sea waters. Sounds to me like they're the same thing but the Tangiermen would never believe it. One thing about the Tangiermen is they are quite fundamentalist and seem to take the Bible fairly literally and strong supporters of Trump. Also believe that the Lord will provide, as they continue to watch their island being absorbed by the Bay.

The Corps of Engineers has now been studying about what to do about Tangier for the last 20 years. They come up with a theory about a seawall or a jetty and then they have to study it to death. They can't just invest the money and get it done. One of the problems is that it is a three-way partnership - between the federal government, the state and the island - plus, nature has to cooperate and can't be throwing another hurricane or cyclone at the island. I think I read that they had the money set and then Matthew came along - I know Matthew did a job on my new state of North Carolina. But when there's a disaster the money has to go to the disaster.

I really enjoyed this book. Swift moved on to the island for a year and got in to their confidence. He went crabbing and oystering with the watermen. It got so I could almost smell the water.

My cousins had a place on the Magothy River, one of the tributaries of the Chesapeake. My uncle sailed on the river and possibly on the Bay, they went fishing all the time, my cousin ran trotlines for crabs. I went to one crabfest at another set of cousins - of course, my face did blow up the next day.

So I may have been biased toward this book before starting because of my Maryland connections, real and imagined, but I did enjoy it.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to spend the summer of 2000 as an intern with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation at Port Isobel (the P'int). I've met many of these people - including spending a day varnishing a boat deck at the exacting direction of Lonnie Moore. I believe there is no crabcake better than a Fisherman's Corner crabcake. The author has captured Tangier and its people beautifully - along with their contradictions. A great read.

[S Klotz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was written for me.

Having lived on Virginia's Eastern Shore, as well as some of the other areas mentioned in the book, there was near constant nostalgia on every page. I've worked in seafood restaurants that served the very crabs and oysters discussed in the book. As a boy scout I camped on once inhabited barrier islands on the other side of the Eastern Shore. We got there in a boat very similar to the ones described in the book.

I'm also United Methodist. While I don't agree with the extremely conservative theology adhered to on Tangier, the religious history of the island was fascinating.

Swift does a great job of capturing the personalities and stories of the island characters. He weaves personal tragedy and joy with ecology, geology, religion and politics. His love of both the people and the island itself come through.

Highly Recommended.

[Yenta Knows · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is a brilliant reporter and a brilliant writer. Very few people could have gained the trust of the suspicious Tangiermen. But Earl (or “Oral” as one of the Tangiermen called him) did exactly that.

In exchange for that acceptance, the Tangier Islanders got someone who researched their story deeply and presented it in clear, luminous prose.

And, being a reporter, Swift tries very hard to present what he sees himself, what he hears from the islanders (he reproduces their speech patterns convincingly), and the findings of scientists “all of whom...are certain that the forces threatening Tangier ... are indeed the products of humanity’s hand on the environment.”

Swift draws a portrait of a people in denial, engaged in duplicity born of their desperation.

You can certainly understand their desperation. The men who try to make a living from the water, catching crabs and oysters, work long hours under dangerous conditions. They barely make enough money to survive from one week to the next. Of course they are desperate.

And you can kind of, sort of, understand the duplicity. One example: The island is dry, no alcohol is allowed. This appears to be related to the islanders Christian beliefs. But there’s plenty of evidence that the no alcohol rule is widely flouted.

And all of these conditions lead to the denial that is so much a part of the Islanders worldview. They know their island is growing smaller. They can see open water where they used to be beach. One of their number actually took measurements and found the beach receding at a few feet a year, and, in some years many feet. But they call it erosion, not climate change, and believe that if only the Army Corps of Engineers would build a sea wall completely around the island, all would be well.

That may or may not be true. The Army Corps of Engineers built a partial wall on one part of the island, but the buffeting from the Chesapeake just moved to a different part. It’s dubious that a sea wall would actually work.

In any case, they are not going to get their sea wall. Tangier Island enjoyed a burst of publicity in, I am guessing, 2017 or 2018. A CNN TV crew interviewed islanders and broadcast their plea for a sea wall, as well as their protestations of deep love for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, the President of the United States, called the mayor of Tangier Island to chat.

And after that? Nothing. Donald Trump used the Islanders to further his own claims that climate change is a hoax. And when he was finished using them for that purpose, he forgot about them.

It was their one chance to get their wall and their beloved president, who could have made it happen with a phone call, didn’t make the call.

Did the Islanders realize that they lost their chance? Did they realize that they had been used for political gain? Did their love for Donald Trump dissipate after he had used them so coldly?

The author doesn’t address these questions.

But I think he doesn’t have to. The Donald Trump incident occurs late in the book. By then you’ve read over 300 pages detailing the Islanders propensity for denial.

-You’ve been told plenty of times that Tangier Island is doomed.
-The islanders themselves observe that “the land loss is just unreal.”
-The book itself is called “Chesapeake Requiem.”

If you don’t get it by now, you’re not going to.

[Becky Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swift paints a beautiful, poignant picture of Tangier Island, its quickly vanishing shores and its hard-working, close-knit residents, touching on the environmental impact of climate change and the island's historical significance. My only quibble was the lack of a map (would have been a great reference, particularly showing the island's 17th century footprint as compared to today). Some photos of the island's landscape would have also been a nice addition.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a really interesting book, but it flows very... very... slowly...

[Lisal Kayati Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written and researched- but in the end hard to plow through after my initial interest in the colorful characters. Too much detail can often kill a great story. As a Virginian, I am glad I read it. I realize how fortunate I was to visit and stay on Tangier 20 years ago.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 4 out of 5]

What criteria do we use to determine who we save when the sea-level rises? Will we only save cities of a certain population size - and if so, what number is the cut off? Will it be determined by historical importance? By environmental importance? How will we decide?

One thing seems certain... by the time we do decide, it will be too late for Tangier Island.

Tangier Island is among the last holdouts of the great watermen of the Chesapeake Bay. There, the tiny population gets the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab, so cherished by Marylanders and Virginian. They get enough that they provide over 95% of the crab to local businesses, as well as NYC. If you aren't close to the Bay, you aren't getting the real deal. Even though many restaurants claim to carry it. They also provide the bulk of the oysters to the area. If they go, the crab go, as does a tradition that stretches back plain to the 1600s.

The isolated islanders are a fascinating people, and one not nearly so well documented as they should be. Their voices haven't been heard, and even Earl Swift had to work rather hard to explain why. Their fate is the fate of many poverty-ridden areas, yet even that is exacerbated by the problems of erosion and climate change. With an island that is fast disappearing, why should the younger generations stay? The population is aging, too many moving, too few opportunities. Part of the die-off is due to the above, part due to how difficult and isolated it is. Yet everyone who goes there, loves it, and feels a strong attachment to it.

Tangier's future is in the balance, and there is not much hope for it. This book is indeed a requiem, a requiem for a way of life eroding as quickly as the island is. A requiem for what will be lost if it goes, and what already is gone. It's a strange, beautiful, and haunting story. Anyone familiar with the region should definitely familiarize themselves with it. Internalize it. It soon may be too late to do anything other than that.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay is rapidly disappearing. Rising water levels in the bay, causing coastal erosion are largely to blame. When Europeans first arrived in the area, there were hundreds of islands in the bay. A number of them were homes to thriving industries related to crabs and oysters and other marine life. Tangier is one of the very few remaining.

Swift spent a year on the island studying the people and their way of life. They are deeply religious, and committed to their way of life. Their roots trace back centuries. They are politically conservative. They are likely to put their future in God's hands. Pointing out that perhaps God is sending them help that they are not recognizing, and that it is their responsibility to preserve the bay and protect it as it is part of God's creation. They don't believe in climate change, despite what is happening to their island. There are no simple take aways. Mistakes have been made by the state governments of Maryland and Virginia. The Army Corp of Engineers has failed to act. Even groups such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has made mistakes, some that are egregious. These are simple people and honest people. They have been betrayed. It is understandable why they believe what they do about the future of their island.

This is an important book for readers interested in climate change, and waterways.

[Audiobook Accomplice (Gillian) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeepers! Almost 13 hrs of wanting to throttle people…!
My Full Review

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot damn, Oral! Such
impressive journalism.
And true to Tangier!

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: A journalist's account of nearly two years on Tangier island, the tight knit community organized around watermen harvesting blue crabs, and the likelihood that it may disappear within the next century.

I first learned about Tangier Island nearly twenty years ago when I heard one of the people mentioned in this book, Susan Drake Emmerich, speak about the Watermen's Covenant she helped facilitate, rooted in the strong Bible-based beliefs of the island's watermen, that helped ease tensions over state and federal laws and fostered care for the island environment as well as the crabs and the Chesapeake Bay that provided their livelihood.

Earl Swift chronicles a different threat to the very existence of the island. Throughout the Chesapeake, there are shoals that were once inhabited islands. Over the last two centuries, Tangier Island has lost two-thirds of its land. The northern part of the island, called Uppards, once was inhabited. Now its graves are washing into the sea and most of it is a patchwork of marsh and open water. The west end of the island's shipping channel has widened to over 75 feet. A seawall protects the landing strip on the south end of the island. Residents are hoping for a jetty off of the shipping channel, and a sea wall around the island. The cost is over $30 million, and most consider that it would be cheaper to relocate this community of under 500 to the mainland. The most obvious cause is coastal erosion, evident after every major storm when more coast is lost and parts of the island are inundated. However, geologically, Tangier is slowly sinking, and the Chesapeake is slowly rising. It's possible that all or most of it could be submerged within 50 years.

Swift, who first visited a much bigger island in 2000, returned in 2015 and spent the best part of two years researching his account of the island. It is not only an account of what is happening to the island, but an account of the community that traces its origins back to 1608 when John Smith mapped it and the Revolutionary War, when it was settled. Many of the current residents trace their lineage back to these early settlers and most are related.

Swift joins in every part of the island's life from sessions of the island's elders at "The Situation Room" to attending both of the island's churches. He eats at the restaurants, endures the insects, and attends the funerals. He describes town services from the sewage plant to the local grocery, the school, and the visitor center (a place representing a painful memory). Most of all, he spends time with the watermen on their boats, especially James "Ooker" Eskridge, mayor of Tangier and the town's spokesperson when the media come calling. Up before dawn, we get a sense of how hard the work of crabbing is, and how precarious this existence always has been, even before declining catches.

Perhaps the most riveting part of the account is that of Ed "Eddie Jacks" Charnock and his son Jason, who are stranded on a sinking boat during a blinding, gale force storm on the bay, and the urgent rescue efforts mounted by the other islanders who hear the one distress message they were able to send out. It is a story that represents the tightly knit character of this community as well as the deep biblical faith that undergirds their life.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Swift is his ability to portray the islanders on their own terms. There is no deprecation of their religious faith or their avid support of President Trump and denial of climate change (islanders attribute all the loss of land to erosion and dismiss evidence of island subsidence and water level rise.) He even affirms that Ooker Eskridge bests Al Gore in a discussion with his straightforward assertions that he has seen no water level changes at his crab shack.

At the same time, he describes an island that is slowly dying, no matter what the islanders believe. Youth are moving to the mainland, and the elders are dying and the population continues to decline. Properties are abandoned, and despite the religious rectitude, there is evidence of drug use among a portion of the population. There are tipping points approaching for sustaining everything from the local school to the grocery.

Swift calls his book a requiem. While Tangier has not yet died and its residents have not given up, the book helps us to appreciate on a small scale what it would mean to this beautiful place and its tight knit, beautiful, and productive community, to be lost. He helps us care for these people and their place. 

I find myself also thinking that this might be the first of many requiems, or perhaps a more hopeful image is that Tangier is the canary in the coal mine, a warning of how much more we might lose if we fail to act. The factors that endanger Tangier are the same ones that put our naval station at Norfolk at risk, and even our nation's capitol, as well as the coastal cities of the world. Perhaps the irony that the islanders themselves dismiss climate change and its effects is also salutary. It is one thing to have to relocate under 500 climate refugees. Potentially this could be multiplied by millions in the years ahead. Will we close our ears to this requiem until catastrophe is upon us, or take prudent steps now? If the trends at Tangier are any indication, we may know the answer within a generation.

[Maureen Caupp · Rating 4 out of 5]

journalist Earl Swift spent a over a year visiting and living on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Chesapeake Requiem tells about past and present life on the island and introduces to the hardworking individuals that live there. Due to subsidence and rising sea levels the island has been shrinking since the nineteenth century, but has been losing even more land to the Chesapeake this century. Islanders who have mostly made their livelihoods crabbing and harvesting oysters will sadly likely lose their home in about 25 years or less. Tangier's story is or will likely be the story of many islands and coastal communities around the world if sea levels continue to rise as they do now. This book is an interesting look at a disappearing, unique island and its way of life, and makes us think about the coming loss and chaos as people are forced to leave communities because of rising oceans.

[George Shirer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island is an interesting book, but it is not particularly engaging. I don't think I've read anything by Mr. Smith before and I doubt I will go out of my way to do so again. At times, Chesapeake Requiem was a real slog to get through. It would have been nice if he had spent more time painting a more comprehensive picture of the residents of Tangier Island. As it stands, most of them come across like angry grandparents. He does go into some history of the island and its residents, but mainly in the context of painting a picture of how global warming, erosion, etc. have influenced the island.
Overall, I found the book dry and dull, ironic considering its telling the tale of a drowning island.

[John Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I had never heard of Tangier Island, Virginia before reading this book, I very much enjoyed finding out about the island and its 400+ inhabitants from Earl Swift who spent more than a year getting to know them. The island, located in the center of Chesapeake Bay, is slowly being eaten away and may not be around to see another century. I liked the evenhanded way that Earl Swift told their story. While he himself believes in climate change, is fairly irreligious and liberal, he allows us to hear the voices of the inhabitants who are very religious and conservative and do not believe that they are losing their island to the changing climate. He tells their story in a very empathetic way but also shares his own research and opinion on the issues that confront them. He formed deep friendships and left the island very fond of the residents of the island. Most make their livings catching crabs and oysters and this part of their lives is brought out very well. I am glad that Earl Swift allowed me to get to know these people, their island and their way of life fully.

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since I’m from the DMV area, I chose this b/c it’s a local area that I don’t know much about.

It was a well researched book but it wasn’t for me. It was a fascinating look into a different lifestyle and it does make you want to visit Tangier before it disappears.
But overall, I found it dry b/c it’s not really a subject matter I’m too invested in.  

I’d recommend it to those who are more attracted to the subject. (ie. crab fishing, fisherman,isolated island life, water, nature, current environmental effects, the Chesapeake area)

[Dane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the author did a great job of reporting, without bias or judgement, on the history of this island and the inhabitants. I also thought Swift fairly portrayed the challenges these people face in this century. I agree with Swift's assessment, "So in answer to whether we should save Tangier, the responsible citizen in me says we have to decide how to decide and proceed accordingly." I'd be curious to hear if any of the island population read the book and if they feel they were fairly and accurately portrayed?
On another note, I made the mistake of reading some other reviews while I was still reading the book. I was shocked and disappointed to see how many people have used this platform to, rather than review the book, tear down and mock the subjects on Tangier. To write that the population on the island eventually "will get what it deserves" is appalling. No matter how you feel regarding the politics that shape the conversation surrounding climate change, having read through Swift's book, I have zero doubt that anyone on Tangier denies that they are facing a serious challenge in the disappearance of their land. As a native noted, "I don't care if you want to call it erosion or sea-level rise or Aunt Sadie's butt boil. It doesn't matter what's causing it. The point is this disaster is happening and these people need help." I hope that disaster never comes knocking at the door of the authors of these terribly cynical reviews.

[Jay Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would have been a better book had he just covered Tangier Island. He does a very good job. However, instead of listening and reporting, the author lies the blame on global warming. "All told, sea levels have risen on average 1.6 millimeters (0.063 inches) per year between 1900 and 2018."The quote comes from a NASA publication. This would not be a serious problem for Tangier. The serious problem is erosion as the islanders point out. I think the author is a bit condescending, but he does have a real affection for the people. His coverage of life is at times very good thus the three. I have fished for over 40 years in the water around Tangier. The Bay is better today than it was 40 years ago. The water quality is much better and the underwater grasses have returned to the bay. The land continues to sink and erode away. It is true Tangier does not have long nor does the life of a waterman. Also, small towns are hurting. It does not look good.

[Haley The Caffeinated Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

full review here: https://thecaffeinatedreader.com/2025...

The premise of this book isn’t how to save the island or what will be done to help it, it’s what’s occurred, what will occur without aid and if it should be aided or not.
The best part of hearing Swift talk was how he integrated himself enough but still maintained that necessary distance and hearing him speak of how the island fares now. Bleak, but still information I wanted to know going into this talk after reading the book.
Swift poses this to us, if it can be, should Tangier be saved? They’re being called the first possible Climate Change Refugees (whether they see it that way or not) and we have to wonder, if Tangier is the first step for us (at least in the USA) then what’s next?

[Julie Richert-Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlightening. Fascinatingly thorough. Endlessly frustrating.
As well done as the journalism is, I could not find the story of Tangier or its people compelling. Prepare for some serious soul-searching as to your own views on climate change, human responsibility vs. government responsibility, our use of natural resources and even consumerism in the United States. Prepare to be a great deal uncomfortable.

[Colin Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does a lot of different things, which, combined with the island references and crabbing terminology, can make it hard to follow. But in sum it offers a holistic view of the island, its culture and community, and what stands to be lost as it sinks into the Bay. The book mostly takes the forms of little vignettes from the author's time on the island, with details taking him tangents explaining variously the island's history, the science behind its erosion and sinking, the finer points of the crabbing industry and other fisheries, and the people and culture of the island. I think in many ways this book is what Hillbilly Elegy tried to be, as it offers a frank portrait of a way of life that seems to be incompatible with the changes approaching the modern world, but with more sympathy for the people and less blaming of them for the larger, societal problems that affect them. Swift makes it easier to understand how a community so threatened by climate change could overwhelmingly support someone who called climate change a hoax, as they saw him as someone who could finally cut through the red tape that has held up so many projects intended to save their island. All in all, I really enjoyed the book and Swift's background as a journalist definitely helps give the island a vivid description, so I'd definitely recommend this for anyone interested in reading about the community who will likely become America's first modern climate refugees.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know that I've ever gotten through a book this long and detailed about a subject that I barely have a passing interest in. I can only credit Swift's writing style for this accomplishment. The audio narrator (Tom Parks) did a fantastic job also.

For the majority of the book, Swift did a fantastic job of presenting what is essentially an anthropologic look at the crabbers on the vanishing island of Tangier in Virginia. He spent a good amount of time with the people on the island and that really shows in the way he's able to present a group of people that I'd normally be dismissive of, as sympathetic. Towards the end of the book (I would say the last 25%) Swift's frustrations with the islanders' viewpoints on climate change and erosion on the island sort of come to a head but I'm honestly impressed that he made it as far as he did.

This was a very good look in to the life of the watermen who provide much of the East Coast with their blue crabs, be they hard shell or soft, as well as their oysters. It's a rough life and a simple life all at the same time and with Swift's writing it was poetic to watch it unfold. I remain impressed that I made it all the way through what I would normally consider a slog through a book.

[James Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In all seriousness this book is phenomenal and made me very emotional about the future of the people and places of the Chesapeake Bay.

[Sandi G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The residents of Tangier Island off the eastern shore of Virginia have the dubious distinction of being likely the first climate change refugees in the United States. For two hundred years, hard working people have made a living off the water, fishing for crabs and oysters. Because it’s so remote, their culture, language and beliefs have evolved or failed to evolve with the rest of the nation, and certainly with the rest of the world.
The people’s unique traits have both helped them survive and hindered them from adapting to change. This nonfiction journal of life on Tangier Island over a year’s time became very interesting once it turned more to sociological observations and a little less about the business of crabbing. I now know more about crabbing than I ever really wanted to know.
The problem with staying on an island for so many generations is that it encourages passivity and resistance to help from outsiders. When there are only a few hundred of you and you’re all somewhat related, everyone else is an outsider. And when facing a danger as serious as climate change, you need outside help. Oh, and by the way, you need to believe in climate change.
So, is this place special enough for us to spend millions of dollars to try and save it? Whatever we do will set a precedent for how we respond to all the other coastal communities that are going to be threatened. It’s time for us to be thinking about this.

[Shruts · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5* actually. I'll tell why later.

This is a sad and somber book. Swift chronicles the death of not only one of the islands elders, but also a way of life, a community, and what was once a thriving commercial enterprise.

Tangier Island has a history reaching back centuries, over which the inhabitants by and large subsisted on the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay: crabs, oysters, and varieties of fish to numerous to name. In one astounding revelation, after the railroad reached the adjacent mainland after the Civil War, Tangier literally looted the bay's oyster beds and shipped millions of bushels to NYC in only one winter!

It's all collapsing, literally, under their feet.

The island will be gone in a generation, giving in to the inexorable sinking of the Mid-Atlantic shelf, rising tides from global warming, and increasingly potent storms from climate change washing away their shores. Their children go to college on the mainland, and come back only for Thanksgiving and Christmas

Compound that with the fickle behavior of their life support, the fisheries, which seem to be also suffering from the erratic bay temperatures and storm disruption, but also development on the adjacent mainland shores which impede the environment.

The watermen themselves seem to be unanimous in their denial of global warming and climate change. I'll leave the politics aside, then, other than to comment that their belief that our current president will build them a protective "wall" around their own island is, well, DOA.

I salute the author. He spent weeks every month for over a year, living among the residents doing research, working the boats, gaining their confidence, making friends, and at the end of the day respecting them 100%

Why not 5*? Too many genealogical diversions. My head spins still about the infinite family interconnections on an island where there are still basically only 3 or 4 family names after 300 years