Chesapeake Bay Steamers (MD and VA) (Images of America) [Paperback]

Chris Dickon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 27, 2006

Since English settlers first touched the shore of the new country in 1607, the Chesapeake Bay has been a multifaceted engine of American history and commerce. The body of inland tidal water between the largest bay cities, Norfolk and Baltimore, was large enough to be the setting of adventure and close enough to allow smaller towns and cities to grow up on its shores. The common community came to life with the technologies of steamboats that could cover the long distances between North and South relatively quickly. Steamers filled in the nooks and crannies of the bay's geography, and by the mid-19th century, the skies over the bay were lined with dark, waterborne contrails in all directions. Strong machines built to master rough seas while moving gently enough for small harbors, many steamers had life spans that crossed whole eras in American history. Some were drafted into distinguished service in domestic and foreign wars. The steamers plied the bay and its rivers with a feminine grace well into the mid-20th century, when they were overtaken by the rush of modern times. The last steamer sailed into oblivion exactly 150 years after the first of them appeared in Baltimore harbor.

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About the Author

Author Chris Dickon is a writer, historian, and Emmy-winning television producer. His work has been broadcast and published internationally, much of it derived from Virginia's rich past as the original source of American history. Chesapeake Bay Steamers brings together the photograph archives of the Library of Congress and 10 libraries, museums, and historical societies, large and small, from Norfolk to Baltimore.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (November 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073854373X
• ISBN-13: 978-0738543734
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,822,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Dickon is a writer and veteran television and radio producer/reporter/writer with most of his previous work in public broadcasting, and current effort in book and article writing and research. His documentaries, features, reporting and interviewing have been broadcast nationally on PBS stations and on National Public Radio, and internationally on the Voice of America. Awards for his broadcast work have come from Columbia University, Ohio State University, the University of Missouri, the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, and included an Emmy from the Capital Region Chapter of NATAS.

His recent work as a media producer focuses on those traditionally at the margins of society. The documentary project "All of Us," about community inclusion of the developmentally disabled was winner of the 2004 Media Award from the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (formerly AAMR), and media work for the Virginia Department of Corrections has included videos in support of Therapeutic Communities within the prison system, and Motivational Interviewing programs designed to prepare offenders for re-entry into society.

In 2006 - 2008 he published three photo history books with Arcadia Publishing, followed by publication with The History Press of The Enduring Journey of the USS Chesapeake, the story of one America's first navy frigates converted to a watermill still standing in Wickham, England. The book has won finalist standing in the USA Best Books, Indie Excellence and Hoffer Awards, and a Hoffer Da Vinci Eye award for cover design. It is distributed in the US/UK/Canada. Website for the book is www.theusschesapeake.com.

Coming in 2011 is The Foreign Burial of American War Dead to be published by McFarland. The book tells the stories of Americans still buried abroad since the Revolutionary War and narrates the development of American attitudes and practices about its war dead over more than two centuries. The appendices name and locate all known to be still buried abroad since the Barbary Wars in 1804, with the exception of those buried in the American Battle Monument Commission cemeteries who can be found from other sources.