Qualla: A. J. Meerwald

A. J. Meerwald: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, CC0. The schooner was built on September 7, 1928 - a workboat, plain and pragmatic, ordered from Charles H. Stowman & Sons at the small shipyard in Dorchester, New Jersey, by a Delaware Bay oysterman named A.J. Meerwald. She was a tool. Her job was to spend her days bouncing across the chop of Delaware Bay, hauling iron dredges across underwater oyster beds, and her nights tied up in Bivalve, New Jersey - a hamlet whose name says it all. What no one in Dorchester could have known on launch day was that her career would carry her through three Americas: the late-Prohibition oyster fleet, the post-Prohibition decline, and a third act as a school ship and the state symbol of New Jersey.

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A. J. Meerwald: The Oyster Capital

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, CC0. By the time the Meerwald slid down the ways, the Delaware Bay oyster industry was already past its peak but still enormous. The little settlement called Bivalve - on Maurice River Cove in Cumberland County - had once been the busiest oyster port in the world. Hundreds of similar ...

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A. J. Meerwald: Prohibition Cargo

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, CC0. In 1928 Prohibition still had five years to run, and any sailing vessel that knew the bay's deep channels and shallow marsh creeks was potentially useful for something other than oysters. The Meerwald has long carried a local legend that she ran liquor during Prohibition - taking...

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A. J. Meerwald: Clyde A. Phillips

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, CC0. Over the decades, the schooner changed hands and changed names. She was rerigged. She was rebuilt. By the postwar period, the Delaware Bay oyster industry was collapsing under the pressure of overfishing and a series of devastating parasites - first MSX in 1957, then Dermo - that...

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A. J. Meerwald: Rebuilt to Sail

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, CC0. In the late 1980s a community in Bivalve formed around the idea of saving her. The Delaware Bay Schooner Project rebuilt the schooner over years - hull, deck, rig, interior - and relaunched her under her original name. She was added to the National Register of Historic Places on ...

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A. J. Meerwald: A Floating Classroom

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, CC0. Today the A.J. Meerwald is the flagship of the Bayshore Center at Bivalve. She sails out of her home port for the entire warm season and visits ports throughout the Delaware Bay region - New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware. School groups come aboard for half-day sails that mix sai...

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Image: Smallbones | CC0