CHAPTER EIGHTY SIX: WHAT’S THE BLOODY POINT?

CHAPTER EIGHTY SIX:  WHAT’S THE BLOODY POINT?

As the Admiral and I cruised northward on Monday from Solomons to the world renowned Bay Bridge (because a 22 year old woman was knocked off this bridge last Friday night by a Canadian semi truck driver, and lived to tell about the 40 foot drop), the Admiral suddenly turned to me and asked “What’s the Bloody Point?” As I prepared a profound philosophical answer to his existential question, he added: “You should look up the history of that place and find out why it’s named Bloody Point.” The Admiral loves the history blogs. So here goes another history blog about a place called Bloody Point on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay at the southern tip of Kent Island in Maryland. Enjoy, all you history buffs. This means you, Marlea.

There are at least four historical explanations for the naming of Bloody Point. At the end of this summary, you can vote on which explanation you find the most compelling, and if we come up with a clear winner, we’ll send it to the Maryland Historical Society and ask them to adopt it. Or we could ask Speaker John Boehner to pass a resolution in the House adopting it. This would be one of his greatest legislative accomplishments, right up there with his 37 acts trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But this resolution would certainly be his most positive contribution as Speaker.

Historical Door Number One: King Charles 1 was in the habit of gifting land in the colonies to noble persons. He was also quite a mischievous royal who liked to see a good battle, where lots of people kill each other. The story goes that he gave the southern tip of Kent Island and in fact, the entire island to William Clairborne, an early Virginia colonist, who was also the secretary of state for Virginia in 1627. Clairborne named the island Kent Island in 1631, picking the name from the area of England he came from. Clairborne set up farms and villages in newly minted Kent Island and provided for the island to have representation in the Virginia Assembly. Unbeknownst to Clairborne, Charles 1, that impish monarch, had granted title to the same parcel of land to George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore. Upon George Calvert’s death, his heir Cecilius (most popular male name in 1632), who studied the maps of the lands the king gave his daddy and determined that the Baltimore clan owned what Clairborne named Kent Island. Both sides asked King Charles to resolve this land dispute, but he just stood on the sidelines and watched the Clairborne and Calvert factions verbally fight over ownership of the island. Finally, in 1635, the word war escalated to violence. Clairborne sent a sloop, the Cockatrice (too much testosterone?), and the Baltimores sent two ships, Margaret and St. Helen, and the Cockatrice crew was captured by the Maryland ship crews in the Chesapeake Bay right off the southern point of Kent Island. Three of the Kent Island crew members were killed. This was thought to be the first blood shed in the waters off the new Kent Island settlements. And, dear friends, this is how Bloody Point got its name. Or is it?

Historical Door Number Two: Prior to the bloodshed between the land barons, there was a widespread rumor that the first European settlers at the southern tip of Kent Island had massacred a group of Indians. This story is more in keeping with the history of our country. According to the “rumor”, a group of Native Americans were invited to an “interview” with the settlers who “slaughtered them without warning”, even as the Native Americans were still in the greeting stage of the “interview.” This unprovoked slaughter is said to be the genesis of the name “Bloody Point”, for all the blood shed by the Native Americans at the hands of the colonists. Or is it?

Historical Door Number Three: In the History of Maryland (1967) the writer, Thomas Scharf reports that a pirate was tried and convicted of overtaking and killing three crew members of a small boat. For these murders, the historian relates, the pirate was hung in irons and left to hang at the southernmost tip of Kent Island – Bloody Point. His skeleton remained hanging at the Point for several years. Do you trust this historian that the settlers named this point “Bloody” because of the blood the three murder victims shed at the hands of the pirate and the blood the pirate in turn shed when he was hanged? Is this the origin of the name Bloody Point? What do you think?

Historical Door Number Four: As recently as the year 2000, the last explanation for the naming of Bloody Point started getting “legs”. It was rumored that slave boat captains, who found that certain members of their slave “cargo” who were too sick to do the hard labor expected of them or who were, God forbid, rebellious, threw them overboard to their death in the Chesapeake Bay waters right next to the point now called “Bloody”. There are even some names for the offending slave ships. The French ship Rodeur in 1819 and the British ship Zong in 1781 are both documented to have thrown men and women intended for slavery overboard to their watery, bloody deaths in the Bay waters. This heinous treatment of human beings by these slave trading boats was portrayed in Spielberg’s Amistad and in Alex Haley’s Roots. The Zong travesty is included in Susanne Everett’s History of Slavery (1991). She writes that in September 1781 near the African Coast, Luke Collingwood, the ship captain, decided over the course of three days during the transatlantic crossing to get rid of 132 sick people he had taken from Africa to sell to slave owners. In Everett’s words, this callous captain had decided “to save the owners of his ship any unnecessary loss by throwing his whole cargo of sick wretches into the sea.” And he did just that. Adding a huge insult to a major act of mass homicide, the ship owners tried to get insurance as compensation for their “lost property.” But in the first ruling of its kind, an appellate decision reversed the initial decision awarding an insurance payment to the ship owners, based on the finding that “slaves were human and not just merchandise.” Is this most recent explanation for the name Bloody Point the most believable, the truest to the history of our nation? You be the judge.

So there it is – battling land barons, cretinous massacring colonists, a murderous pirate, or treacherous slave traders (are there any other kind?). Make your pick known in a blog comment or by email directly to me. They are all plausible in my mind, particularly the mass killings of Native Americans and of persons being sold into slavery. Unfortunately, our American history is overburdened with accounts of the mistreatment, abuse and murder of members of both groups. And that’s the Bloody Point.