Fells Point's 1858-59 Caulker Riots Lead to the Birth of a Black-Owned Shipyard

The Caulker Riots of 1858 and 1859 were a series of violent labor disputes driven by white Know-Nothing party gangs targeting free Black ship caulkers in Fell’s Point and Federal Hill. The mobs, known as “Tigers,” used violence to break the nearly twenty-year economic monopoly that Black caulkers held. Caulkers made wooden ships watertight by filling the gaps between planks with loose fibers from old rope (oakum) and sealing them with pitch. A beginning caulker trained under a master caulker for five years, which was why the Black caulkers were so highly skilled. The Colored Caulkers’ Trade

Association controlled who could work as

a caulker, negotiated wages with

employers, and provided support for injured or sick members.

In April 1858, a Federal Hill shipbuilder hired white workers to caulk his ships, paying them fifty cents less per day than he paid Black workers. Most were untrained, earning less than the Blacks, but still made more than most other white workers. The use of untrained white workers escalated into mob violence. Armed gangs of forty to fifty white men, known as the Tigers, began terrorizing, beating, and stabbing Black workers, forcing them to stop working. As a result, the Black Caulker’s Association lost much of its work. It turned out that hiring untrained white caulkers was not a good idea. Because of their poor workmanship, the ship they built after the riots, the Virginia, began leaking heavily after two months at sea and had to return to the shipyard for repairs.

After the Civil War, Isaac Myers and other Black ship caulkers pooled their resources to found the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company in Fells Point in 1866. It was the first Black-owned shipyard in the U.S. They employed hundreds of Black workers and built a profitable business that competed directly with white-owned, white-controlled shipyards in Baltimore.