The bugeye is a type of sailboat developed in the Chesapeake Bay for oyster dredging. The predecessor of the skipjack, it was superseded by the latter as oyster harvests dropped.
Origins
Between 1820 and 1865, the state of Maryland banned the practice of dredging for oysters. In the latter year, the law was relaxed; the use of steam power remained banned, however, and remained entirely prohibited until 1965, in which year powered dredging was allowed two days of the week. As long as dredging for oysters in the Chesapeake was prohibited, oystermen working from log canoes tonged for oysters. In 1854 the Maryland legislature permitted the use of dredges in the waters of Somerset County, Maryland, expanding the use of dredges to the rest of the Bay following the Civil War. Opening the Chesapeake to oyster dredging after the Civil War created a need for larger, more powerful boats to haul dredges across the oyster beds.
The first vessels used were the existing sloops, pungys and schooners on the Bay, but none of these types was well suited to the purpose; pungys and schooners were too deep in their draft to work the shallower waters of the Bay, the schooners and sloops had bulwarks too high to facilitate handling the dredges, the relatively complex rigs of all three types required uneconomically large crews of skilled sailors, and the vessels themselves were relatively expensive to build and maintain.
The log canoes had none of these disadvantages, but were too small to successfully haul dredges. The result was the development during the 1870s and 1880s of the brogan, an enlarged log canoe. In
brogans, the open hull of the log canoe was decked, with hatches covering holds created by subdividing the hull with bulkheads. Brogans typically used the same sail plan as the log canoes of the Tilghman Island region, a leg-of-mutton (i.e., triangular) foresail, mainsail and jib, with the foremast taller than the main. Both masts raked rather sharply aft, with the mainmast raked significantly more sharply than the foremast.1
Brogans were still too small to effectively haul dredges, and continued to be enlarged and improved. By the early 1880s, or possibly even earlier, the first bugeyes were being built.2 Over the next twenty years, the bugeye became the dominant type of vessel employed in oystering, but by 1893 construction of new bugeyes began to decline with the introduction of the skipjack, which was less expensive to build, operate and maintain yet was very well suited to dredging for oysters. No working bugeyes appear to have been built after 1918, but bugeyes continued to be employed in oystering and freighting until the middle of the Twentieth Century, albeit in ever-decreasing numbers.3
The origin of the name is obscure.
Design
Like the earlier brogan, the typical bugeye, designed by William Reeves who was originally from Nova Scotia, was two-masted, with triangular “leg-of-mutton” mainsail, foresail and jib. By modern standards, this rig would be described as a ketch rig, but it appears that watermen of the time referred to it as simply a leg-of-mutton or a bugeye rig. Unlike modern ketches, the forward-most mast was referred to as the foremast and the after mast was termed the mainmast, although like the brogan and log canoe, the mainmast was shorter than the foremast. As with the earlier brogans and the log canoes, the masts were sharply raked (tilted), although they were set up with stays and shrouds. Unlike the brogan, however, the mainmast was raked only slightly more sharply than the foremast.4 A bowsprit with trailboards was inevitably used.
The hull was beamy (wide) and shallow, with no chine. Initially it was chunked from logs, in the manner of the log canoe; eventually conventional framed construction was introduced as the supply of suitable trees was depleted. The usual form was double-ended, with a sharp stern, and most such boats had a heavy beam called the "duck tail" projecting a short distance from the stern in order to protect the rudder. To increase deck space a "patent stern" was installed after 1893; it consisted of a set of three beams: one across the duck tail, and two joining its ends to either side of the boat. The ostensible purpose, according to the patent in question, was to provide a mounting spot for davits for a dinghy; the whole area, however, could be planked over to provide a considerable increase in deck space. All log bugeyes were sharp-sterned, but some frame versions had round sterns; a very few had a square transom. The freeboard was invariably low, the better to lift the dredges onto the deck.