Explore the Historic 1902 Stanley Norman Skipjack
Step aboard the Stanley Norman Skipjack and you are stepping into more than 120 years of Chesapeake Bay history. Though she is the newest addition to the Inn at Perry Cabin fleet, she is almost certainly the oldest vessel on the Miles River. Built in 1902, her deck, hull, and single mast carry the marks of a working life spent dredging oysters on the Chesapeake Bay through every season the Bay could throw at her. Today the Stanley Norman Skipjack has traded her days on the oyster reefs for something equally valuable: a life as a working teaching vessel at a Forbes Four-Star waterfront resort on the Miles River in St. Michaels, Maryland, where she introduces a new generation of guests to the maritime traditions that shaped this entire region.
Contact our Concierge Team at 443-258-2228 or [email protected] to make your reservation.
The Stanley Norman is also available for private charter bookings. For each ticket purchased on any Stanley Norman experience, $10 is donated to 4ocean, directly supporting their mission to remove plastic waste from our oceans and protect marine life. Every voyage aboard her is a step toward preserving the Chesapeake Bay for generations to come.
$3,100 for private charter.
*Subject to Maryland sales and amusement taxes.
The Stanley Norman is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the last surviving skipjacks of the thousands that once worked the Chesapeake Bay. Sailing aboard her is not a recreation of history. It is history, still moving under sail on the same waters she has always known. Guests can choose from several experiences aboard the Stanley Norman, including the Skipjack Legacy Voyage, the seasonal Oyster Dredging Experience on the Half Shell, and the Rum Running on the Skipjack evening with Lyon Rum.
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, once home to a booming 19th-century oyster industry that served as the economic engine of the entire Mid-Atlantic. At its peak, thousands of traditional skipjacks worked these shallow waters under sail. Today, only a small fraction of these historic vessels survive.
Crafted by master boat builder Otis Lloyd of Salisbury, Maryland, this surviving skipjack now serves as a living museum on the water. Her placement at Inn at Perry Cabin—founded in 1815 by Navy officer Samuel Hambleton—is a natural homecoming. Sailing directly from the Inn's private dock on the Miles River, guests can experience a profound, firsthand connection to the Eastern Shore's maritime legacy that no stationary museum exhibit can replicate.
