Robert Cannon, Cambridge waterman, turns 86.

Robert Cannon, Cambridge waterman, turns 86.

By Richard Kendall

CAMBRIDGE - Recently, an article was published in this newspaper regarding Crawford Windsor, Sr., of Crocheron, who was said to be the oldest known waterman still working in Dorchester County.
The following day, Charlotte Robinson of Cambridge contacted the Banner to report that her father, Robert H. Cannon, a waterman older than Mr. Windsor, was still working long hours every day on the Choptank River. A reporter investigated.
On Thursday, Mr. Cannon was found at the docks on Trenton Street, in Cambridge. He sat on his boat, the Charlotte Ann, attaching fresh chicken necks to white, braided rope, one after another, in preparation for Friday’s trot line.
With a warm smile and contagious laughter, he continued baiting his line as colorful details emerged of his long, productive life. He spoke of his upbringing on Academy Street in Cambridge and joining his father to work on the water; of military service in World War II along with a group of fellow Dorchester County enlistees who served together in the South Pacific.
He recalled the plight of his pet monkey who found a watery grave; and a mysterious illness that plagued him upon his return to the States; and the joy of meeting and marrying the love of his life, and of close friends he has met along the way including Crawford Windsor, Sr., of Crocheron.
At age 15, Robert H. Cannon followed his father and grandfather to a career on the water. The elder Cannons, Ogle B. and Burgoine, respectively, had been dredge boat Captains, harvesting oysters present in abundant quantities at that time.
“I worked with my father until 1943,” Mr. Cannon recalled. “Then, a bunch of us from
Hoopers Island, Fishing Creek, Toddville, Wingate, Crocheron, we all enlisted in the Army.” Mr. Cannon was 18.
“When the Army found out that we were all watermen, they put us in the same unit: Amphibious Engineers, Company B.”
After boot camp in Hyannis, Massachusetts, the young soldiers were sent to amphibious training in Florida. After that, Company B from Dorchester was shipped to the South Pacific, near Manila. They would serve there for two and a half years.
“I was the Captain of an LCM,” Mr. Cannon said. He described the LCM (Landing Craft, Mechanized) as a barge type vessel which allowed quick deployment of troops and vehicles and tanks by landing on a beach and lowering the hull for rapid deployment.
“We lived right on the boat, Mr. Cannon said. “Jim Mills, of Crapo, he was one. Rodney Robinson, of Wingate, was another. Oselee Lewis and Marvin Parks of Wingate were with us. Roger Shockley of Hooper Island was too.”
“Rodney Robinson was the boat’s Engineer,” he recalled. “He kept those two engines running and polished like they just came from the factory.”
Mr. Cannon also recalled another valuable asset (the late) Rodney Robinson brought.
“He was one heck of a cook,” Mr. Cannon remembered. “He made donuts and candy, all kinds of stuff. This was a time when you couldn’t get food like that. He’d fix it right there on the boat.”
While shored up on a Pacific island, Mr. Cannon picked up a small, playful, grayish-black furred monkey and found that the creature was gentle and tame. When it came time for the soldiers to return to their LCM and return to sea, he took the monkey along as a pet. He called it Pete.
“He was a nice little monkey, just as friendly to me as can be. Mr. Cannon said.

About 6 months passed and the war ended. In February, 1946, Mr. Cannon and his Dorchester army buddies received new orders: they were going home. Pete was brought along, headed for Maryland.
The first leg of their return to the U.S. involved being transferred to a state-bound ship. It was not long before an officer spotted Pete frolicking on a bunk bed.
“The officer asked where the monkey came from,” Mr. Cannon recalled. “I told him it was mine that I had as a pet for 6 months and I was taking him home.”
“He (the officer) said the monkey had to be thrown overboard, that Pete could spread disease,” Mr. Cannon said. “They took the monkey and threw him out a port hole. I was pretty upset about that. I thought about that monkey for a long time.”
Upon Robert Cannon’s return to Cambridge, there was little time for celebration before he found himself curled up in bed, too sick to eat or even use the bathroom.
“I got deathly sick, couldn’t walk or do anything,” he recalled as he looped another chicken neck onto his trot line. “Dr. Bunker, our doctor back then, was call in.”
“The doctor told me he didn’t know what was wrong, said he didn’t think he could do anything for me,” Mr. Cannon recalled.
“I told the doctor I had an idea of what was happening,” Mr. Cannon said, continuing:
“For a long time, during the war, I was taking handfuls of Adabrin, a drug that kept us from catching Malaria from the Mosquitoes. After I got back here and stopped taking the Adabrin, that’s when I got sick.”
Relief soon came in the form of Adabrin, fetched from the local pharmacy. Within days
of ingesting the tablets again, Mr. Cannon was feeling better. Within weeks, Robert Cannon felt like himself.
“I weaned myself off of it, a little at a time, and I never had another problem with any of it,” he said.
When it came time to go to work, Mr. Cannon learned from his father that crabs were at that time scarce in the Choptank River. In order to make a living, he and Ogle B., as his father was know, ventured to South Dorchester County where crabs were plentiful in Fishing Bay and the Honga River.
They met Austin Windsor and his son, Crawford, and other watermen from South Dorchester.
“Those people were just as nice to us as they could be,” Mr. Cannon said. “There was never any competition between Cambridge and South County watermen, nothing like that. After a while, it was like we were brothers.”
In 1947, Robert Cannon met and married Margarite “Peggy” Anderson, of Deal Island.
“We were married for 47 years,” he said. “She was the first love of my life.” Mrs. Cannon passed away in 1994. In addition to their daughter Charlotte, they had a son, Robert, Jr.
Through his friendship with the Windsors, Mr. Cannon met Crocheron based boat builder John Elliott.
“In 1954, I asked Mr. Elliott to built two boats for me,” Mr. Cannon said. “During that summer, he built a pretty, little 18 foot boat of white cedar of me and he built the Charlotte Ann which was the last boat he ever built.”
“I’ll tell you, that John Elliott was quite a man,” Mr. Cannon said. “He didn’t have any blue prints to go by. He’d stand back a ways and have two fellows hold boards, telling them to lower the aft, raise forward, that’s how he designed the shape and sheer of this boat ” (referring to the 36’ x 9 ½’ Charlotte Ann).
“Mr. Elliott had a (disabled) wife who he took care of every morning before he’d start his work,” Mr. Cannon said. “I never did see her, but he was an amazing man.”
On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel ripped through the Mid-Atlantic. Robert Cannon recalled that his newly complete vessel, the Charlotte Ann, was nearly lost that day.
“The storm hit and I was up here in Cambridge,” he said. “There was no way in the world I could get down to my boat, tied up in Tedious Creek, in Crocheron.”
“Crawford Windsor’s boat was tied behind mine,” Mr. Cannon said. “He was down there, making sure his boat was tied when he saw that my boat had broken loose.”
“Somehow, Crawford got up in my boat, trying to get it tied up,” he recalled. “The wind was blowing a gale to the East, toward the Bay and Crawford was caught in my boat.”
The vessel drifted helplessly beyond the normal confines of Tedious Creek, over what had been dry land the day before, following a strong current to the Chesapeake.
“When he got to where the old (Crocheron) road is, he hopped out into waste high water.
There was nothing else Crawford could do. The Charlotte Ann kept going with the wind, toward the Bay.”
And then, a twist of fate.
“Don’t you know, after another 15 minutes, the wind shifted to the West North West,” Mr. Cannon said. “And the Charlotte Anne blew right back up into Tedious Creek.”
She was found aground behind a house nearby and later returned safely to her mooring in the creek.
“I never will forget what Crawford Windsor did, trying to save my boat,” he said.
Robert Cannon went into the business of buying oysters and crabs during their respective seasons.
“I’d buy oysters at Long Wharf, paid cash money for them,” Mr. Cannon recalled. He would then transport the delectable, shelled creatures at points West of the Bay Bridge and elsewhere.
“In the summer, I’d buy crabs at Nanticoke Harbor,” he explained. “I’d sell my culled crabs in Cambridge and carry the fat ones to Washington and Baltimore. I did that for 35 years.” In the mid-1980’s, he returned to working full time as a waterman.
Robert Cannon was asked if he agreed with his friend Crawford Windsor Sr.’s regarding the prosperity of future waterman.
“I do,” he said, shaking his head. “A young person can’t come out here anymore and expect to pay for a boat, a house, a car, and raise a family from what he pulls out of the water. Its not like it was when guys like me and Crawford (Windsor) and the others could come out here and make a career out of this.”
Currently, Mr. Cannon works on the water in the summer months, crabbing his trot line in the Choptank River.
“In the winter, I might go out and catch a bushel or two of oysters for myself or to give to friends and neighbors, nothing commercial in the winter. I’m sort of retired, you know?