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Help Locate the Mattie F. Dean in Back Creek
he schooner Mattie F. Dean was born to Norfolk, and bringing tobacco home on the return trip. In her spare time, she in the Dorchester County shipyard competed in workboat races. of Joseph W. Brooks on Madison For 70 years the Mattie F. Dean was Bay, just off the Little Choptank River a frequent sighting on the Bay, finding a on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She was one of the later models Brooks built in his lifetime, using local ##Photo courtesy Back Creek Conservancy lumber hewn in the sawmill he built adjacent to the boatyard. Her ironwork came from a Cambridge blacksmith, and her ornate figurehead (a gorgeous woman) was likely carved by an African American simply known by the name Cook, who took on multiple projects for Brooks. The Mattie F. Dean was special in many respects. All of Brooks’s boats stood out on the water with their extensive ornamentation, but the Mattie F. Dean was also home in Annapolis when she wasn’t in use. And that’s where she came to be scuttled, fast. She got into the oyster business later in 1954, three years shy of her 70th birthin the game, when single-masted sloops day. and bugeyes were starting to be the preA few months ago, Nicole Trenholm ferred workboat, so she soon moved on to running a transportation line up and down of the Ocean Research Project approached the Bay, carrying lumber from Baltimore Back Creek Conservancy’s David Barker
about a possible search for the Mattie F. Dean shipwreck, which is thought to be in Back Creek. Trenholm, working with partner Matt Rutherford, will attempt to use side-scanning sonar and a magnetometer to locate the shipwreck (as well as any others hidden away) and create online memorials, incorporating genealogy, underwater photos, and images of artifacts saved and recorded. Trenholm and Rutherford are working with a team comprised of Alex Dulude, a Naval Academy graduate and scuba diver, as well as Dr. Sally Langdon, a Maryland State Underwater Archaeologist, to identify the wreck and collect data. The project is set to start in November, once algae levels are low enough to see anything underwater. If you’re interested in helping out financially with this project, or would simply like to learn more about the whereabouts of the Mattie F. Dean, visit backcreekconservancy.org.
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