A buyboat, sometimes referred to as a deckboat, is a long wooden boat with a large open deck, a rear mounted deck house, and a mast and boom to load/unload that makes them perfect for hauling cargo. Often times, that cargo would be fresh fish or oysters, collected from local watermen and then delivered to market. The buyboat Winnie Estelle, currently housed at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) in St. Michaels, MD, is one such buyboat with quite the interesting story.
The Winnie Estelle was built by Noah T. Evans in 1920 in Crisfield, MD. Evans was a native Smith Islander, and he named the boat after his two daughters, Winnie and Estelle. Originally equipped with a 12-horsepower engine, it was eventually upgraded to 35-hp by 1931. She operated on the lower Chesapeake Bay for more than 50 years, with different owners, hauling fish and oysters purchased directly from watermen and taking them to city markets or to big seafood packing houses for sale. Winnie Estelle also transported shells and seed oysters for private planters and the State of Maryland oyster program.
Her last Chesapeake owners were Smith Islanders Watson Marie Marshall, known as “Shug,” and his son Eugene “Gene” Marshall. They bought Winnie Estelle in 1960 and frequently took the vessel across the Bay to pick up fish scraps for rendering, to sell oysters, or to travel to the waterfront fish market in Washington, DC. When sold by the Marshalls in 1975, Winnie was taken to the Caribbean as a cargo boat and, years later, was rebuilt for use as an island trader, carrying lumber from Honduras to Belize.
In 1985, in need of an enormous amount of work, the buyboat was scuttled and abandoned. She was found by Capt. Roberto Smith who decided to restore the historic boat, and he even traveled to the Chesapeake to learn more about buyboats in general before undertaking the five-year restoration process. Belize proved to be an excellent source of durable rot-resistant woods, and Smith stayed true to the vessel’s traditional form during the refit.
In 1990, the newly restored Winnie Estelle headed to San Pedro and was used as a tourist charter vessel for more than a decade. But by 2012, Smith was considering retirement. He moved the boat to Guatemala, and around that same time later owner Michael Whitehill of Centerville, MD, was in search of a buyboat to purchase. Word got around that there was a buyboat in Guatemala that had undergone an extensive renovation, and it wasn’t too long after that that Whitehill and Smith sealed the deal. In May of 2012, Whitehill and Smith “set sail” for the passage to Key West. Once there, a delivery captain took over for Smith for the remainder of the journey up the Intracoastal Waterway and back to the Chesapeake.
Whitehill then began the process of making Winnie Estelle Coast Guard compliant. And in that span of time, word spread to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum who was looking to find a replacement for its long-time passenger vessel, Mr. Jim, as Winnie was both a classic Chesapeake vessel type and a comfortable passenger vessel. An anonymous donor purchased the vessel from Whitehill, and the Winnie Estelle was donated to CBMM in 2014.
Today, Winnie takes students out for educational programming and CBMM guests and private parties out for Miles River cruises. CBMM’s shipwrights are continually working to preserve the legacy of this remarkable buyboat. Some of the restoration work includes the removal, fabrication, and replacement of Winnie’s structural timbers, including the original keel laid by Evans as well as chines and bottom planks that date to the boat’s time running charters in the Caribbean.
In May of 2024, it was a special day when a group of 10 ancestors of builder Noah T. Evans visited CBMM’s shipyard to learn more about the work being done on the vessel. CBMM’s staff offered a few small pieces of the now-removed keel that was the last original section of the wooden boat left after all the years of work to keep it on the water.
Restoration work will continue at CBMM’s shipyard for much of 2025, with plans to have Winnie Estelle back in service as a passenger-carrying vessel in the spring of 2026. To keep up to date with the progress, visit cbmm.org.
By Staff