Background

Ringgold Brothers is one of about eight skipjacks built in Oriole, Maryland, in 1911. Others surviving include Nellie L. Byrd and Thomas Clyde. Her builder is unknown, but speculation suggests it may have been William Noble.

She was built for Charles Washington Ringgold who, according to his great-granddaughter, was in the dry goods business and owned the boat until 20 February 1919. Another family source said the boat was owned by Capt. John Ringgold, Charles' brother, but he would only have been 19 years old when the boat was sold. The great-granddaughter suggests John may only have been her captain. And that's about as clear as the record gets until recent times.

By the 1960s or '70s, Ringgold Brothers had been converted into a motor vessel. She apparently was owned at one time by the State of Delaware, running out of Port Mahon, dredging oysters and at times tying up in Lewes, Delaware.

When we found her in 2009, she was unrecognizable as a skipjack and was working as a clam-dredger for Bivalve Packing Company in Port Morris, New Jersey, working the Delaware Bay. They said that she had been a freight boat when they got her and that Bivalve was only about her third owner, although with her long life and her early years so unclear, there almost certainly were more owners than that. Of the three boats the packing company had at the time, their captains reportedly liked Ringgold Brothers the best, saying she handled better than the others.

By 2013, she was back to dredging oysters, but now up in New England where she still can be found. Still owned by Bivalve, Ringgold Brothers is working out of Norwalk, Connecticut, for Norm Bloom and Son in its Copps Island Oysters operation.