Oyster buy-boat

Similar in function to sardine carriers, buy boats circulated among the harvesters collecting their catches, then delivered their loads to a wholesaler or oyster processing house.

[1] Some Chesapeake Bay buyboats such as the William B. Tennison began their lives as sailing vessels that were converted for power when internal combustion engines became available.

Many buyboat captains also used their vessels to transport freight such as fresh produce, grain, livestock, and lumber to market during the off-season from May to August when they were not buying oysters.

Most dredgers who still harvest native oysters bring their catch directly to the docks themselves and seafood is hauled to distant markets in refrigerated trucks.

[3] By 2013 only one buyboat, the Delvin K,[4] operating out of remote Tangier Island, Virginia, was still buying oysters on the Chesapeake Bay, but many of these sturdy but largely obsolete wooden vessels remain afloat.

[citation needed] Most of the vessels of this type that are still afloat have found completely new lives as museum pieces, yachts, floating classrooms, and dive charter boats, a few in places far from the Chesapeake Bay such as the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and Belize.

Nearly forty are listed by the Chesapeake Bay Buyboat Association, broken into Northern, Southern, and Far South fleets overseen by a pair of vice commodores.