Dogfish Head Brewing and Eats is sponsoring a showing of a documentary about Delaware’s oyster industry. The Restaurant, along with the Rehoboth Beach Historical Society will present the documentary on Sunday, October 20 at 6pm at Dogfish Head Brewing & Eats, 320 Rehoboth Avenue, Rehoboth Beach, DE.
While there is no charge for the screening, viewers will order from the restaurant’s menu, which will include oyster appetizers. Limited seating is available. Reservations are required. The evening’s special guest will be filmmaker, Michael Oates. Please call the Historical Society at 302-227-7310 to reserve a seat.
White Gold recounts Delaware’s past and present oyster industry, the attempts to revive it, and the efforts of one waterman to bring a wooden schooner back to its former glory. 100 years ago, Leipsic, Little Creek, and Bowers Beach were among Delaware’s flourishing maritime communities, relying on huge harvests of Delaware Bay oysters, commonly called “white gold.” Stately wooden schooners plied Delaware Bay, dredging as many as 900,000 bushels annually. Stories abound of local captains lighting cigars and buying new Cadillacs every year.
Yet today’s annual oyster harvest is limited to less than 15,000 bushels with oyster beds decimated by a succession of deadly diseases and all but one of the sailing schooners gone. These bay shore communities, and the commercial waterman who built them, somehow endure.
This event is sponsored by Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats on behalf of the Rehoboth Beach Historic Society and Museum. White Gold was written and produced by Michael Oates, 302 Stories, Inc.of Wilmington, DE. It was funded by 302 Stories, Inc.; the Delaware Humanities Forum; and Berkana Center for Media and Education.
