Every day is a new adventure on the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry.
Around 9:45 on a Tuesday morning in mid-May, Nancy and Doug McCorkindale drive their Range Rover onto
The Talbot, the 42-ton steel ferry that shuttles passengers and vehicles three-quarters of a mile across the Tred Avon River from Bellevue to Oxford and Oxford to Bellevue. The couple is on their way to a marina in Oxford where Doug will pick up their powerboat and bring it back to their house on the Choptank River.
Accompanied by their dog Lucy, a Golden Retriever-Australian Shepherd mix, the McCorkindales stroll around the deck during the 10-minute ride and chat with deckhand Jim Daffin, who is in his 10th year working on the ferry. It is a trip they have made about four times a year for the last five years, Nancy tells me. “We take the ferry to save the 30 minutes it would take to drive the extra 20 miles by land.”
Established in 1683—the year that the Port of Oxford also was established—the privately owned ferry service has been saving passengers time and miles for 332 years. There have been approximately 20 ferryboats during that time, four since 1900: the
Vivian, the
Tred Avon (three-car capacity), the
Southside (six-car capacity), and the
Talbot (nine-car capacity). During the 1980s both the
Southside and the
Talbot sailed the route carrying folks to jobs in boatyards and canneries and school buses to the local school, says Capt. Judy Bixler who, with her husband Capt. Tom Bixler, owns and operates the ferry service.
Today there is not enough traffic to operate two vessels. “Eighty percent of the passengers on the boat today are tourists,” she says. “There are no true commuters anymore.”
The Bixlers are in their 14th year of transporting people, bicycles, cars, motorcycles, fire trucks, RVs, and trailers across the river on the 30-foot wide, 65-foot-long, flat-bottomed boat built in 1980 by Blount Marine in Warwick, RI. The vessel has two of everything: two wheels, two throttles, two engines, two propellers, two rudders.
“It is a true double-ended ferry,” Judy says. “It has no bow or stern; it depends on the direction you are going.”
At 10:15, on the Bellevue side, a small group from St. Paul’s Preschool in Trappe board the boat for their annual cruise. Led by teacher Lori Hemming and escorted by Glenn Saulsbury, grandfather of three-year-old Samantha, the group also includes four-year-old Nathan. Capt. Tom invites the youngsters up to the pilothouse where they are given the opportunity to drive. Nathan, who comes from a powerboating family, clearly has done this before. He keeps his eyes on the water and his hands on the wheel, taking care not to over steer. With Capt. Tom’s assistance, he takes the boat all the way into the dock.
Tom obtained his 100-ton captain’s license while he was in college and living on Shelter Island, Long Island; Judy earned hers on Shelter Island in 2001. They once lived in Canton, NY, 12 miles from the Canadian border, where they owned an auto dealership and raised their family. The business gave Tom ulcers, so he decided to sell it and retire early. The couple spent the next four years sailing from Maine to the Bahamas on their 41-foot Nauticat sailboat before they bought the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry in late 2001. They sold their sailboat and now have a 26-foot Shamrock diesel powerboat named
Ferry Tale.
They employ six or seven captains and 15 to 20 crew members at the ferry, which operates from 9 a.m. to sunset seven days a week April through October and weekends in November.
By 11:15 the temperature has climbed into the 80s and the wind has picked up. A local firefighter comes onboard and climbs up the ladder on the side of the pilothouse marked “crew only” to say “hi” to Capt. Tom before the next departure. At 11:27 we are back in Oxford. There are two cars and four passengers on deck as we approach the landing. After docking, Capt. Tom takes a few minutes to show me the engine room, which we reach by ladder through a narrow hatch.
I am amazed to find the entire engine room—one of the ferry’s five watertight compartments—totally spotless. Everything is painted with epoxy to prevent rust, and there’s no rust, dirt, grease, or grime in sight. Even the Detroit Diesel 371 engines look brand new. No wonder the boat has a certificate hanging on one of its bulkheads noting that it has had 15 perfect Coast Guard inspections.
With the ferry in service all day long, any maintenance is done at night, Judy says. “We have an extra engine and an extra transmission. They can be switched out at any time.” Major maintenance is done over the winter.
One of the scariest moments during their ferry ownership came in September 2003 when Hurricane Isabel came through, Judy recalls. Tom stayed on the boat at Easton Point during the storm and slept on an air mattress in the engine room. At one point he got up and turned on the radio to hear a report that the Bellevue dock was moving and in danger of being lost. If the dock was lost, ferry service would end. Fortunately, though the dock did pop off the pilings, it came back down in and was able to be repaired fairly quickly.
Exceptionally windy conditions have also caused some challenging moments, like the time Judy was about to dock the ferry when a microburst came through. “The pilothouse, when it catches the wind, is like a giant sail,” she says. She was able to abort her approach, come around, and dock without incident.
It is 11:46 a.m. The gates are shut, and the ferry is about to leave the Oxford landing when Judy spies regular passenger Diana Headlee waving at her from behind the gates. She calls to Tom to hold off and runs to open the gate to allow the bicyclist to come aboard. “I come once a week with my bike,” a grateful Headlee says. “I work for the (Washington) Nationals (baseball team). When they are away, I am here.”
Bicyclists can ride the ferry for just $4 one way, $7 round trip. (Walk-on passengers pay $3 one way, $5 round trip; car and drivers $12 pay one way; $20 round trip). It is seven scenic miles from the Bellevue landing to St. Michaels.
Ferry passengers come from New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and many foreign countries and have included public figures such as former Vice President Dick Chaney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The 2005 film, “Swimmers,” an independent drama by Doug Sadler, was made on the ferry.
Once a year the Bixlers donate the ferry to charity. Habitat for Humanity, the community center, and the fire company all have had fundraisers on board the ferry. In 2009, The Talbot raced with the sternwheelers from Choptank Riverboats at Suicide Bridge, raising more than $40,000 for charity.
Over the years people have celebrated anniversaries on the ferry, dancing on deck to the anniversary waltz; and gotten engaged and even married on the ferry.
Most years the Fourth of July events in Oxford are confined to the Bike Parade for Kids and the Tred Avon YC fireworks. One year, on the Fourth of July, a group of locals “stole” the ferry and left a ransom note pieced together from bits of newspaper, asking for $100 to be paid in marked, single dollar bills. Tom went to breakfast with the $100 in cash and was given the location of the boat (at the fuel dock at Mears) after the ransom was paid.
Do Judy and Tom ever get bored, shuttling three quarters of a mile across the river and three quarters of a mile back, three or four times an hour, day after day, seven months of the year?
“NO! We never get bored,” says Judy. “The people onboard are different, the boats we see on the river vary along with the creatures we encounter—ospreys, eagles, rockfish, and skates. We have even had dolphins on three different occasions. How could you possibly get bored?”
“Hell, NO!” Capt. Tom says. “I love running the ferry! Every trip is different. What could be better than spending the day on the water?”
For more information, go to
oxfordferry.com or call (410) 745-9023.
About the Author: Jean Korten Moser is a freelance writer who boats out of Rock Hall.