![]() ![]() An empathetic portrait of a small and unique community and its plight under environmental stress. Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the islands past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangiers people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. ![]() Swift tempers his melancholy over the fact that Tangier and the way of life it supports are in inexorable decline with information about possible ways to stem Tangier’s physical erosion with jetties, seawalls, and landfills. Back on Tangier Island, he attended social gatherings, church services, funerals, and a graduation ceremony and discovered what various individuals think about their island’s future. For starters, he accompanied crabbers on their boats and learned about collecting and marketing fresh crabs. So Swift decided to embed himself in Tangier society from 2016 to 2017, and this work recounts his observations. Tangier Island is measurably shrinking and will, absent remediation, disappear by 2100, according to environmental studies. Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay has attracted journalists for decades owing to its genealogy-most inhabitants descend from the island’s original settlers its variety of English, which is linguistically traceable to those 1700s settlers its Methodist religiosity its oyster and blue-crab fishery and for Swift, its role as bellwether for rising sea levels. ![]()
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