By Kim Dacey, WBAL-TV.
BALTIMORE — Living Classrooms is working to preserve the country’s first Black-owned shipyard in Fells Point. Down by the Inner Harbor in Fells Point, crews are hard at work on the Lady Maryland ship, making sure she’s seaworthy.
“At the shipyard, they would caulk ships, fix ships, help to haul ships out of the water so you could do all the work necessary to keep a ship in floating good order,” said James Piper Bond, the president and CEO of Living Classrooms.
Issac Myers and 14 other free Black men opened the dock in 1866 as the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Co., just one year after the Civil War ended.
“You can imagine coming out of the Civil War and all the racial strife and challenges,” Piper Bond told 11 News. “It’s quite courageous for these men to step forward and start a business that employed primarily Black men, but also was integrated — there were white men who worked there as well.”
The owners had quite a mentor in Maryland-native Frederick Douglass. As an enslaved teenager, Douglass worked in Fells Point as a caulker on boats for his master before escaping to freedom at the age of 20.
“After the Civil War, he came back to Baltimore. He owned four homes on Dallas Street, which is right around the corner from where we’re standing in Fells Point. And he was the mentor for Isaac Myers and these 14 other prominent Black men who came together to start this first Black-owned shipyard in the country,” Piper Bond told 11 News.
It was a successful business for 18 years before closing in 1884, but the people at Living Classrooms, who preserved this history with a museum exhibit, said the story and the message it sends is one of empowerment.
“We bring thousands of kids through this site, tell them this story. It’s important for the children of Baltimore — whether you’re Black, whether you’re a white male, female, young, old — to have inspirational stories like this to move forward with their own lives and do great things,” Piper Bond told 11 News.
People are welcome to come visit the museum at the Living Classrooms building at Maritime Park, or they can walk to the waterfront and see the actual marine railway anytime. Visit the following website for more information on the museum.
This news article originally appeared on WBAL-TV on February 5, 2025.
