On June 20, 2025, the Richardson Maritime Museum welcomed the Peregrine to its facilities in Cambridge. This single-masted day sailor skipjack was built at James B. Richardson’s boatyard around 1972 by his son-in-law, Jim Brighton.

Originally intended for pleasure sailing on the Atlantic Ocean, it spent decades away, including on the Western Shore of Southern Maryland, and it was even reconfigured into a workboat. The Peregrine has now been donated by Craig Haynie of Deale to the Richardson Museum, where it will undergo reconstruction.

The event on June 20th featured appearances by Brighton, Haynie, and Robert “Bunny” Joyce, the latter of whom did the early renovations on the skipjack.

The video is approximately six minutes in length.

At the Tuckahoe Equestrian Center in Queen Anne on May 24, the Eastern Shore Jousting Association held the Mid Atlantic Joust Tournament. People came with campers and RVs to settle on folding chairs and watch some enthusiastic horse riders tilt at small rings with their handmade, steel-tipped lances. The participants were named Knight of the Little Woods or Maid of Rabbit Hill Road or something else equally colorful.

When the announcer called out, “Ride, Dear Maid (or Sir Knight), ride,” the competitor galloped down the 80-yard dirt track beneath three arches, from each of which was suspended a metal harness ring wrapped with white cord. The rider had eight seconds to charge through the arches and try to spear the metal rings that varied in size from 1/4″ to 1-3/4″ in diameter, depending on the skill level of the knight or maid.

One of the announcers for the event was Karen Callahan, the secretary of the ESJA. She had started riding in horse shows as a child.

“A lot of my family members would joust,” she explained, “so I started going to the different tournaments held on the Shore to watch them and support the state sport. I would participate in different skits put on by the members at the tournaments back in the late 80s, early 90s. In 2015, I started jousting in the Leadline Class here locally and on the state level.”

Callahan is involved with an activity that has a storied tradition. Jousting is, in fact, the oldest equestrian sport in the world. Its creation is usually credited to a Frenchman named Geoffori de Pruelli. It spread from France to Germany and then England between the 10th and 12th centuries. During the Middle Ages it was used in waging war, but with the invention of gunpowder the art of jousting a man from his horse became an outmoded battle strategy.

The tournament field became a place of sport, and the knights turned their lances to the more sophisticated task of spearing small metal rings, making jousting a civilized game of skill and sportsmanship. When Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, founded the colony of Maryland on the shores of St. Mary’s County in 1634, he introduced jousting there, and tournaments became a favored pastime of the settlers. This sport has survived wars and flourished in times of peace.

Over the past 100 years jousting has evolved from private contests to public competitions aiding civic and church organizations and raising funds for Civil War monuments. Rather than just being popular among the “landed gentry,” the sport is now enjoyed by suburbanites, city dwellers, and rural landowners.

In 1950 some dedicated jousting enthusiasts founded The Maryland Jousting Tournament Association, which was instrumental in establishing riding rules adopted throughout Maryland. The organization has members in every corner of the state as well as neighboring states and the District of Columbia.

During the February 1962 session of the Maryland General Assembly, the Honorable Henry J. Fowler, a St. Mary’s County member of the House of Delegates, introduced House Bill No. 80, which would recognize jousting as the Official State Sport. It was passed through both chambers of the Maryland Legislature, and on April 6, 1962, Governor J. Millard Tawes signed the bill into law to become effective on June 1 of that year.

On December 11, 1969, a group of local jousters met at the Queen Anne Fire House for the purpose of organizing the Eastern Shore Jousting Association; officers were elected and a membership fee of $1.00 was established. At a February 2, 1970, meeting, the purposes of the organization were defined and a standard set of riding rules were adopted. It represented riders from Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot Counties.

The first ESJA Championship Tournament was held on September 27, 1970, at Herman Callahan’s field off Route 404 in Queen Anne. The first banquet was held at the Talbot Agricultural Center on November 14. ESJA holds nine tournaments from May to September, and they also participate in local parades. The banquet is held at the close of every jousting season.

Members of the ESJA, approximately 28 families, proudly promote jousting on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as well as in Delaware and Virginia. They show a genuine interest in the Associations well-being and that of jousting itself. Karen Callahan is among them, helping with fundraising and promotion.

“Jousting is a fading sport as not many people participate anymore,” she said, “so I try and promote it as much as possible to educate people.”

Indeed, the audience at Queen Anne on May 24 was not large, and the atmosphere was at times sadly quiet. There wasn’t the pageantry of old, and the riders’ outfits were not elaborate or stylish. Rather than horns announcing the triumph of a knight or maid, country music blared over scratchy speakers when someone lanced the rings. But it was obvious that the skilled participants loved what they were doing, and a good time was had by all. It’s a tradition worth maintaining.

The exhibits of the Richardson Maritime Museum sit crowded in the top floor of the red brick building on Byrn Street in Cambridge. They await their moment to once more face the admiring public as they did at the old Dorchester National Bank Building on High Street. And that moment may be closer than some people think.

“My goal is to have it before the end of 2025, to have us at least open one day a week with volunteer docents to do that,” said Debbie Usab, executive director of the Richardson. “We have a docent manual, but it’s not appropriate to this exhibit. So, to refurbish the docent manual, I have a history intern who is going to be graduating, and this is their internship, and they’re going to be working on that docent manual.”

A new manual is necessary because the museum will be considerably altered from its earlier form. Not only will the main space be different, but there is also the Boat Works next door, which the staff calls “the living museum” because vintage vessels are worked on there. That’s a component the founders of the endeavor probably didn’t envision when they started.

Back in the early 90s, a group called the Committee of 100 was formed to try to revitalize Cambridge by bringing in tourism, and they knew they needed to have some kind of “draw.” Fortunately, a number of people had maritime artifacts that had belonged to the renowned boatbuilder Jim Richardson, and they made those artifacts the basis for a museum of the maritime history of Dorchester County. The bank building downtown was donated along with private funds, and the Richardson Maritime Museum was begun in 1992.

Years later, they acquired part of the property on Byrn Street. Someone else had the other part of the property, next to the waterfront. The museum’s board of directors took out a substantial mortgage to purchase that part of the property. The Earl Brannock Maritime Museum was placed in the red brick building when Earl donated his artifacts and archives to the Richardson in 2013. By 2019, they were dealing with the cost of maintaining the bank building, the red brick building, and the Boat Works.

“It just made more sense to sell the bank building because we really wanted this campus to be our main location,” explained Usab. “Covid happened along with that.”

Everything was photographed, inventoried, and cataloged. But, because of the pandemic, no one could go to Byrn Street to begin work on any of it. During that time, they let their executive director go because there was no more funding for that position. They were able to pay their other bills to keep the endeavor from folding, but they couldn’t move forward.

“And,” said Usab, “we kind of just sat.”

However, something they weren’t able to pay was the heavy debt on the property and had no idea how they ever would. Meanwhile, Cambridge Waterfront Development, Inc., was proceeding with plans for the Cambridge Harbor project. By 2023, the CWDI board was very nervous about the condition of the museum, which they felt was a vital part of their vision. The board feared that the Richardsons’ debt would force them to sell the property to a developer who would put new housing on it.

“So, they worked with us and with the private mortgage person who we owed money to, to kind of negotiate down that debt and purchase the property for what was owed, leased the property back to us for a dollar a year, gave us funds to try to get us more than just paying the electric bill,” said Usab. “Also, their executive director at that point became the CWDI board appointee to our board and helped with beginning the beginnings of a strategic plan and getting us really refocused on where we needed to be.”

The Richardson’s board received a private donation to fund the hiring of Katie Clendaniel for a contractual short-term position to help with the business plan and operational plan and to get some events going. Her contract ended in January 2024, at which point the board held their annual meeting and elected Usab to be chair. They also had another board donation to help them hire a bookkeeper, and Usab stepped up to also take on the role of executive director.

“Earl and Shirley Brannock were my second parents,” said Usab. “Earl walked me down the aisle when I got married 34 years ago. I promised him on his deathbed that I would come back onto the board and do whatever I could to make sure that his legacy continued. So, I’m not here for me, you know, I’m not here because this is–I wouldn’t say it’s not fun. It is. Some of it is fun. I was a teacher for 24 years and so I’m used to, you know, talking in front of a class.”

While she admittedly has little knowledge about the actual vessels, Usab does know how to facilitate a group of people to get an outcome. She hopes to build a more diverse board of directors and to generally get more people involved, especially as committee members. She’ll even take people to do short-term projects, because then they may decide they want to take on more as a board member. There are, in fact, two new board members–Natalie Chabot and former state senator Addie Eckardt. Usab is currently negotiating with someone else to join the board in July.

“We really need to be strategic about, as every board needs to be, as to what type of person you have on your board,” she explained. “[We have a] lot of people working on boats on our board, and that’s great because we need that historical reference and that knowledge. But we also need an accountant and we need a lawyer and we need, you know, somebody who has financial knowledge. So those are people that we’re still looking for.”

Meanwhile, Usab is working on grant applications and preparing for upcoming events like the Legends of the Sequoia reunion dinner and the Second Annual Boatyard Bash. It’s a lot of work, but she has high hopes for the future success of the Richardson Maritime Museum.

“I think it’s a huge value to the community,” she said confidently.

The historic House at Handsell, near Vienna, sits on land inhabited by the Nanticoke tribe of Native Americans for at least 2,500 years. In the mid-1600s, the Englishman Thomas Taylor claimed ownership of the territory, and the natives ended up collected on reservations. Eventually, they were forced by the British government to move north, away from their ancestral home. At that point, the land became the property of Henry Steele, who built the first real house at Handsell.

Steele was a revolutionary patriot, and British privateers burned his house, leaving only part of the structure. In the 1830s, the land, with the remains of the house, came into the hands of John Shehee. It was he who rebuilt the structure into its smaller, present form. All during this time, Black slaves and freemen worked the land.

The Webb family won Handsell in a card game in 1892, and they continue to farm most of the land to this day. By the 1930s, no one lived in the boarded-up house, but the descendants of freemen and enslaved people continued to live on and near the property into the fifties.

In 2004, David and Carol Lewis bought the house at Handsell, along with two acres around it, with the intention of preserving it. Toward that end, they sold it to the Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance in 2009, and that group began the great task of fixing up the place. The NHPA emphasizes the three cultures who called Handsell home—the Native Americans, English, and Black people—and they plan to expand the tourism and educational opportunities on the property with a Three Cultures Center.