Eastport Walking Tour Stops 1-2
Stop #1 is now the Annapolis Maritime Museum. An active oyster-packing and seafood processing plant from 1919 to 1986, this site is the last vestige of a once-thriving oyster industry. Watermen brought boatloads of oysters here to be shucked, sorted, cleaned, packed into cans and marketed all over the East Coast as "McNasby's Famous Pearl Brand Oysters".
Founded in 2000, the museum educated curious visitors of all ages about Anmapolis's rich maritime heritage and the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay, particularly the Bay's all important oyster and it's harvesters. |
Stop #2 is Weems & Plath. Starting in 1919, Captain Philip Van Horn Weems revolutionized navigation for airplane pilots, radio astronomers, polar explorers and even astronauts. He established his own school in Annapolis to teach the Weems System of Navigation. His students included Charles Lindbergh, Admiral Richard Byrd, who was a classmate of Weems at the Naval Academy. German instrument maker C. Plath developed the first gyrocompass installed on a commercial vessel in 1913.
Weems' school for navigation became THE North American source for C. Plath's fine navigational instruments. The company named for this partnership has made it's home in this former sail loft since 2000. |
