Steamboats & Oyster Wars: The News Reader

The life of Ethan Aaron Douglas is chronicled as the ten-year-old joins his grandfather for a life on the Chesapeake Bay. With his grandfather as captain of a steamboat traveling between Norfolk, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, the boy learns quickly about life on the water. From hurricanes to blue crabs, life on the Bay changes quickly. Learning Shakespeare and witnessing a hanging are just part of the life along the river.

Life in the Chesapeake region for the family of Ethan Aaron Douglas, from steamboats to newspapers, struggles of immigrants and the changes brought by the industrial revolution. The simple life of watermen and challenges of weather, fire and disaster in the era of 1880 to 1910 brought to life for the reader from a life-long resident of the Tidewater region. Catch up on the latest events from around the Chesapeake as told by the News Readers on the steamboats of the Old Bay Line to the passengers.

Roaring into the 20th century, the Ethan Douglas family faces new challenges with furious weather on the Chesapeake Bay, oyster wars, Titanic and Lusitania sinkings, new changes with women's suffrage, a world at war dragging America into conflict, and drug and alcohol addiction causing dozens of states to adopt Prohibition.