The buyboat “Peggy of New Point” turned 100 years old this year and on Saturday, June 21, family, friends and old crewmen came together on Gwynn’s Island to celebrate the life of the century old boat.
Just having come off the railway from Hudgins Horn Harbor Marina at Port Haywood, the Peggy was spit-shined to celebrate her 100 years. The boat was built by Mathews County boatbuilder Harry A. Hudgins of Peary in 1925 and is owned today by the Mathews Maritime Museum Foundation.
The style of boat is referred to as a buyboat when being used as a working platform to purchase seafood from watermen out on the fishing grounds. The boats are also referred to as deck boats when decking is installed fore-and-aft over stringers and bulkheads to create a working/standing platform atop the hull.
The Peggy was originally built as an open “trap” boat for the pound net fishery. She was decked over and had a pilothouse installed in 1950 to be worked in Virginia’s winter crab dredge fishery and as a buyboat.
This was not unusual in that many large open hull “trap” boats were converted to deck boats and buyboats. Large boats used in the Chesapeake Bay’s Virginia pound net fishery were referred to as trap boats. The Peggy is unique, however, in that she is one of the last of her kind left in existence that transcended from an open trap boat to a deck boat…