Tangier Island

We spent the day on Tangier Island today. It is a bit of a throwback…essentially no cars (I did see 3 small pickup trucks), lots of golf carts, NO cell phone service, white picket fences, great seafood…The majority of men on the island are watermen. Generally that means a person owns a boat and crabs for a living. Crabs (and soft-shell crabs) are the major industry. The watermen have crab shanties that are accessible only by water. While they are important for their livelihood and many spend much time collecting the soft-shelled crabs, they seem to function as man-caves as well (per video at museum!).

The locals have their own dialect that dates back to the 1600s. I have seen it described as Restoration Era English and Elizabethan English; I believe it is thought to be related to the dialect found in Cornwall, England (where the original inhabitants of the island came from).