Earl Swift is a Virginia-based journalist and the author of Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, from which this article is adapted.

As the summer of 2016 enters its final weeks, the upcoming presidential election looms ever larger on Virginia’s Tangier Island. Tourists travel a harbor channel lined with TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT signs, then step off the boats into a gantlet of them. Golf carts display Trump bumper stickers at bow and stern. One café and cart-rental business is so adorned with Make America Great Again placards and Trump flags that it looks more like a campaign headquarters.

The election even snakes its way into church. “Now, I’m going to get political on you for just a minute,” Pastor John Flood announces in the midst of his sermon at Tangier’s Methodist church one Sunday. “How you vote is between you and the Lord. When you close the curtain, that’s up to you.”


Soon enough, he gets to a but. “There is one party that believes that there should be same-sex marriage,” he says. “How can a Christian vote for that? How can a Christian vote for anything goes?” Many heads nod. “Who would have ever thought that there would be a party pushing the point that you could go in any bathroom that you want to?”

The larger message, the pastor says, is that “The world is still rejecting Jesus Christ. The world is not mourning the pierced savior, or the pierced prince. Right now, the world thinks that it’s doing great. The world thinks that it’s in control. But one day, and I’m afraid that it’s going to be one day soon, they’re going to mourn, because they’re going to see that they’ve made an eternal mistake.” He wraps up with a tacit endorsement of Dr. Ben Carson, whose candidacy ended months ago: “The man, I believe, knows the pierced savior.”

Such talk comes as little surprise on deeply religious Tangier, where faith intersects with virtually every aspect of daily life. Mapped by John Smith in 1608 and settled during the Revolution, the island has never been an easy place: This whisper of marsh and mud in the Chesapeake Bay’s middle, 12 miles from the nearest mainland port, is among the most isolated communities in the East. Its primary industry is chasing the prized blue crab, which Tangiermen fish up, weather be damned, in shallow-draft boats that toss like carnival rides. The nearest doctor is 30 minutes away by helicopter. Prayer matters here.

Now more than ever, for the very water that has long sustained the place is poised to erase it. Tangier has lost two-thirds of its land mass to the bay’s erosive force since 1850. Acres more are carved from its shores each year. The onslaught is projected to worsen in the coming few years, as the bay rises along with the planet’s seas, and the island—like much of the mid-Atlantic coast—subsides.

This one-two punch makes relative sea-level rise in the lower Chesapeake among the highest on Earth. And of all the towns around the bay, none is so wide open to the whims of weather, so vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as Tangier.

Except that most of the island’s 460 residents don’t see it that way. Distrustful of scientists (with whom they’ve often disagreed on matters of bay ecology), staunchly patriotic (Tangier contributed more of its young men to fight in World War II, per capita, than any other town in Virginia), and biblically literalist (man is too puny to so affect the works of God), old-school Tangiermen see their dilemma not as a product of man-induced rising seas, but wind-driven waves that have smacked into its flanks since the Creation.

The solution is as simple as the problem, they figure. They want the federal and state governments to build a protective wall around its perimeter. The response has been tepid. Even a simple stone jetty to guard the harbor, promised since the 1990s, has failed to materialize. Confronted with such bureaucratic torpor, the islanders’ impatience peaked in 2016, when more than 87 percent of them voted for Donald Trump—a man who’d labeled climate change a hoax.

They back Trump, and they pray. And for a good many of those listening to John Flood’s sermon, the first might be a form of the second.

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time on Tangier, and to get to know the wonderful people there. And make no mistake: They are that. You’d be hard-pressed to find a community that better lives up to that term. Marooned from the rest of America by 18 trillion gallons of often tempestuous water, they rely on one another to a degree most of us cannot fathom. They are loving, generous and willing to die for their neighbors.

I first stepped ashore on Tangier in 1999. I later passed Y2K there—and given that it’s a dry island, and that the island’s watermen are up before winter dawns to fish up oysters, I experienced what had to be the quietest millennial celebration on the planet. Those brief visits ushered a deeper dive: In 2000, I lived there on and off for six weeks to report a newspaper feature. Finally, I returned 15 years later to live, this time with a book in mind. I stayed 14 months.

Near the end of my residency, I stole home to see to some mainland business. In early June 2017, when I returned, the island was enjoying a burst of press attention, thanks to a most unusual crab that a waterman found in his pot: a female, or sook, with two oysters that had attached themselves to its face in almost perfect symmetry. A photograph of Tangier Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge holding the creature had been picked up by newspapers around the world.

But aside from that little thrill, the island’s crabbers had little to cheer about. Peelers, or crabs about to molt into softshells—and find their way onto menus up and down the coast—had all but vanished in the shallows around Tangier. The underwater grasses that typically grow so thick in the island’s lee were slow to show up, and crabs ready to molt had sought safe territory elsewhere. Some watermen had little to show for their efforts of the past three weeks—Leon McMann, at 86 the island’s oldest active crabber, complained of catching no more than a dozen peelers total over three days on the water and had even considered the unthinkable—parking his boat.

The ruins of Canaan, a Tangier settlement abandoned about 1929 and since consumed by the Chesapeake. | Earl Swift

Crabs are central to the Tangier economy, as they have been for generations. Everyone was nervous. “There ain’t no crabs, and they’re hurting,” Leon’s daughter Carlene said of the island’s watermen, during prayer requests at church. “We will praise him. The Lord knows we have need of crabs, and he’ll provide.”

Leon’s woes were compounded the next day, when the hydraulic steering on his boat, the Betty Jane II, failed while he was out on the water, leaving him adrift until another boat towed him in. “I went out,” he told me later at the afternoon coffee klatch of old-timers in the abandoned health center, a daily gathering its participants call the “situation room.” “But I had a lot of trouble.”

We heard the outside door open, movement in the hall and into the situation room stepped four people from CNN: Two videographers laden with enormous cameras and tripods, a producer and one of the network’s on-air meteorologists, Jennifer Gray. Ooker had been talking to the network for weeks about this visit and invited the crew to join us here. What was about to happen would propel Tangier into the news to such a degree that everyone soon forgot about the weird crab.

Jennifer Gray, several months pregnant, surveyed the room. “It’s cool,” she said, taking in the cracked tile, the tacked-up pictures, the fruit flies circling over the trash can. “I like it.”

“So do we,” George “Cook” Cannon, a former waterman who works for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told her.

“The more I see of the outside world,” said boatbuilder Jerry Frank Pruitt, “the more I like it here.”

“I know, right?” Gray said. “Your own little place.” She looked to Ooker. “So, is this like the city council?”

“This probably has more authority than the city council,” the mayor deadpanned.

The producer had everyone switch seats, so that retired schoolteacher Bruce Gordy, Leon, Jerry Frank and Ooker were lined up along one wall. Cook, who said he didn’t want to participate, took a seat next to the coffee maker and behind one of the cameras. I sat off-camera about two feet from Ooker.

Gray asked whether they’ve noticed signs of the bay rising. Jerry Frank spoke for the group. “I’ve been living here for 72 years, and it hasn’t changed much at all,” he said. “This here argument about sea level rising, I don’t go along with it at all, because your sea level depends on the way the wind is blowing.” He launched into an explanation of how the wind affects tides and water levels.

Ooker jumped in. “What we focus on is erosion,” he said. “Sea-level rise is at such a slow pace that erosion will get us long before sea-level rise does.”

This is an article of faith on Tangier. Islanders tend to consider erosion as separate and distinct from sea-level rise, while scientists point out they’re interlinked—the higher the water, the more destructive the incoming waves.

“The island’s problem, the erosion problem, it’s on your mind when you wake up in the morning,” Ooker continued, “and it’s on your mind when you go to bed at night. It’s something we think about all the time. It’s always in the back of your mind.”

“Always,” Jerry Frank said.

“It causes people to hold back from investing here,” Ooker said. “You find yourself thinking, ‘Should I invest here, when it might not even be here?’ ”

Gray: “What makes the place special?”

Jerry Frank: “The history alone is worth saving.”

Bruce: “That it is.”

Ooker: “Lots of history here. Lot of military service. And now we need help from Washington.”

Gray shifted the focus to Trump. “If you could say anything to him or his administration today, what would you say?” she asked.

“I would say ...” Ooker began. He paused for an instant, and Leon, who had been silent until now, blurted out: “Build us a wall!”

“Yeah, build us a wall,” Ooker said, as Cook chuckled off-camera. “They talk about a wall—we’ll take a wall. We’d like to have a wall all the way around Tangier.”

The subject turned to the island’s affinity for the president. Ooker said he liked the man’s willingness to slice through red tape: “He’s gonna cut down on the time it takes to study something. We’ve been studied to death. We just need something done.”

He did not stop there. “I love Trump,” Ooker declared without the hint of a smile, “as much as any family member I got.” Even after 14 months of exposure to Ooker’s strident political views, I was goggle-eyed. Two thoughts immediately crossed my mind. First: There was no way CNN wasn’t using that. And second: Trump was bound to take notice.

Gray wrapped up the interview by asking again what her panel would like to say to the president. “Donald Trump, if you see this, I mean, anything you can do—we’d welcome any help you can give us,” Ooker said. “If Donald Trump would come out here, I’ll take him out crabbing and take him out for a good crab cake dinner.”

The segment aired four days later, on Friday, June 9. Gray’s report juxtaposed the island’s steady inundation, its support for Donald Trump and Trump’s characterization of climate change as a hoax—and included a brief interview with me toward the end. In the first minutes after the story ran, several Tangiermen posted Facebook comments lauding the piece and congratulating Ooker for his comments.

But almost immediately CNN’s Twitter account blew up with comments from viewers astounded that the island voted overwhelmingly for a man who derides the science behind sea-level rise. “I have NO sympathy for the people of Tangier Island,” one wrote. “If they voted 87% for that IDIOT, they are getting what they ASKED FOR! GOOD LUCK.” “Dear Tangier Island, Va: Be swallowed by the sea,” another read. “You’re all #Trump supporters and deserve what Nature gives you: submersion.”

So they went, screen after screen: “What do you call a sinking island of Trump supporters? A good start.” And: “Hard to be empathetic for residents, who are objectively stupid and proud of it.” And: “Hope they know how to swim.” And this: “Tangier Island in MD?? Seriously. It’s a test tube for inbreeding.”

Crabber and Tangier Mayor James "Ooker" Eskridge, under way in his boat in the waters off the island's east side. The seagull's name is Yellow Bill. He's a regular hitchhiker aboard Ooker's boat. | Earl Swift

The islanders I spoke with, and those whose Facebook accounts I follow, were dumbstruck by the ferocity of this invective from strangers, and confused—heartsick, disgusted, alarmed, even—that their support for Trump had moved fellow Americans to wish them dead. Barb Baechtel, who moved to Tangier with her husband, Rob, in 2013, was furious when I spoke with her in the midst of this storm. “They have been asking for 20 years or more for help with a natural disaster,” she said of her neighbors. “It’s a slow-moving natural disaster, but it’s a natural disaster. If it was a fast-moving natural disaster, like a wildfire, everyone in the country would be saying, ‘Oh, those poor people! They need our help!’

“We’ve actually got people sitting around debating whether these people are worth saving. How is that OK?” she said. “I don’t care if you want to call it erosion or sea-level rise or Aunt Sadie’s butt boil. It doesn’t matter what’s causing it. The point is that this disaster is happening, and these people need help.”

We soon learned that fallout from the CNN report was just getting started. Three days after the story aired, Ooker was out potting when he saw his son, James, racing across the water toward him. His son pulled his boat alongside the Sreedevi and said, Dad, you have to come in. The president’s trying to call you.

The president of what? Ooker asked.

It took James a minute to convince him that the White House had been calling. Ooker motored into port, waited for a call, decided to check on his peelers—molting crabs won’t wait—and when he again came ashore, the phone rang. A woman told him the president wanted to know whether he could speak with the mayor. Yes, Ooker replied. He sure can.

Trump came on the line, introduced himself and, as Ooker later recounted it, told him: You’ve got one heck of an island there. This is Trump Island, Ooker replied. We really love you down here. He told Trump that he believed the president stood for the workingman, and that he wanted to put people back to work. That he was for the military, and Israel, and protecting religious liberties. That he was the right man at the right time for the country.

Trump told Ooker he appreciated that. He commented that Tangier looked like a beautiful place, and that if Ooker was ever in Washington, he should stop in for a visit. He called Ooker his kind of guy. He said that he and his family loved the citizens of Tangier. And he provided fodder for headlines around the globe. As Ooker described it to a reporter, “He said not to worry about sea-level rise. He said, ‘Your island has been there for hundreds of years, and I believe your island will be there for hundreds more.’”

Many islanders were reassured by this.

The world at large found it preposterous.

Foreign reporters descended on Tangier—I encountered Norwegians, Russians, French and Brits on the roads. Stephen Colbert made the island the centerpiece of his “Late Show” monologue. “Now in the unlikely event that Donald Trump’s words didn’t calm residents of the soon-to-be-lost city of Tangier,” Colbert said, “their mayor believes there is a solution to coastal erosion. They need a jetty, or perhaps even a seawall around the entire island, and ... Trump will cut through red tape and get them that wall.

“Yes!” he said over laughter and jeers. “Trump is going to get them that wall and then make the ocean pay for it!”

This did not go down easy on the island. But it was forgotten soon enough, because Tangier was again propelled into the news: The mayor was invited to appear at a televised “town hall” moderated by CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper and featuring former Vice President Al Gore, whose efforts to sound the alarm on global warming earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Cooper introduced Ooker about a third of the way into the hourlong program. The camera closed in. The mayor was wearing his Sunday clothes: a fresh-looking Tangier souvenir ball cap and a button-down plaid shirt. “Vice President Gore, Mr. Cooper, I’m a commercial crabber, and I’ve been working the Chesapeake Bay for 50-plus years,” he said into a handheld microphone. “And I have a crab house business out on the water, and the water level is the same as it was when the place was built in 1970.

“I’m not a scientist, but I’m a keen observer, and if sea-level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it?” Those familiar with Ooker’s usual easygoing manner could detect that he was nervous. But he had great presence. He came across as unpretentious and intelligent, and the slight tremor in his voice lent him an endearing humility. “Our island is disappearing, but it’s because of erosion and not sea-level rise,” he said. “Unless we get a seawall, we will lose our island. But back to the question: Why am I not seeing signs of the sea-level rise?”

Sounding supremely confident, the former vice president asked, “What do you think the erosion is due to, Mayor?”

“Wave action,” Ooker replied. “Storms.”

Gore: “Has that increased any?”

Ooker: “Um, not really—”

Gore: “So you’re losing the island even though the waves haven’t increased.”

“Yes,” Ooker told him. “This erosion’s been going on since Captain John Smith discovered the island and named it. It’s got to our doorstep now, and we focus on it more.”

Gore nodded. “Won’t necessarily do you any good for me to tell you that the scientists do say that the sea level is rising in the Chesapeake Bay. ... And that the forecast for the future is another two feet of—what, if there was another two feet of sea-level rise, what would that mean for Tangier Island?”

“Tangier Island, our elevation is only about four foot above sea level,” Ooker said. Which is true of only the high spots.

“Yeah,” Gore said.

“And if I see sea-level rise occurring, I’ll shout it from the housetop.”

Gore, nodding: “OK.”

“I mean, we don’t have, you know, the land to give up,” Ooker concluded. “But I’m just not seeing it.”

“Yeah. OK,” Gore said. He held a finger to his chin, seemingly deep in thought. “Well, one of the challenges of this issue is taking what the scientists say and translating it into terms that are believable to people, where they can see the consequences in their own lives. And I get that, and I try every day to figure out ways to do that.” At this point, Gore might have explained that day-to-day eyeballing, even over decades, provides an unreliable perspective on incremental change. That by contrast, hard scientific evidence leaves no doubt that the water is climbing. That just because Ooker had not noticed the water coming up doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

Instead, he took a tack that showed he understood something about Tangier culture but addressed Ooker’s question only obliquely.

“Reminds me a little bit of a story from Tennessee,” he said, turning to Cooper, “about a guy who was trapped in a flood. He was sitting on the front porch and they came by in an SUV to rescue him, and he said, ‘Nope. The Lord will provide.’ And the water kept on rising. He went up to the second floor, and they came by the window in a boat, and they said, ‘Come on, we’re here to rescue you.’ And he said, ‘Nope. The Lord will provide.’ Then he went on up to the rooftop as the water kept rising, and they came over in a helicopter and dropped a rope ladder. He said, ‘Nope. The Lord will provide.’

“Well, he died in the water,” Gore said, “and went to Heaven and said, ‘God, I thought you were going to provide.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean? I sent you an SUV, a boat and a helicopter.’”

So ended the exchange. The consensus on Tangier was that Ooker had “won” the face-off, and I, watching at home on the mainland, drew the same conclusion. The world’s pre-eminent spokesman for the perils of climate change had failed to answer a question compelling in its simplicity, asked by a plainspoken crabber with a high school education. In so doing, he had enabled anecdotal folk wisdom to persevere as a competitor to bona fide science. Mighty unfortunate, this.

Islanders were also angered by Gore’s joke, which they believed mocked their religious faith. I didn’t read it that way—he was making a point, even if it was lost on his intended audience. The Lord provides the islanders with minds for recognizing the danger that faces them. That might be the sum of what the Lord plans to provide them with, this time around. Denying that the danger exists—or expecting a miracle to chase it away—might not be what the Lord has in mind.

Alas. As in so many conversations these days on weighty political issues, Ooker and Gore talked past each other. The two were as distant as Stephen Colbert or that CNN studio were from dwindling Tangier.

For the rest of the summer and into the fall, the global media maintained its fascination with the island. A British network sent a team ashore, and crabber Lonnie Moore raised some eyebrows by telling its reporter, “I don’t care if ISIS supports us and puts a seawall around here. Put any name you want on it, just so we get the seawall.” In the same report, Ooker questioned the infallibility of science by noting: “Scientists also say we evolved from apes, too.”

Over those same months the island was alert to the appearance of helicopters out on the runway. Rumors swirled that choppers from Andrews Air Force Base were casing the place for a presidential visit. It didn’t come, which did nothing to temper the general enthusiasm for Trump.

George “Hambone” Thomas died. The population dropped by one.

Both Ricky and Nick Laird, father and son watermen, moved to Crisfield. Another two down.

Caleb Cooper, a young waterman, died unexpectedly, and Gail Smith, a volunteer at the museum, passed. The head count continued to slip.

My landlady, Cindy Parks, married a mainlander and moved off the island. Another loss. Cindy sold her house to her son, Jared. She was fortunate: Some Tangier houses linger on the market for years. Fourteen months after moving in, I gave up my quarters on the island.

In time, life settled back into a routine dictated by the seasons and the blue crab. The new schoolyear started with 60 students at Tangier Combined, the only school on the island and the only K-12 school left in Virginia. Ooker, Leon and Tangier’s other crabbers quit for the winter, and rigged their boats for cold-weather oystering.

Down in Norfolk, 65 miles to the south, the long-discussed jetty project ground its slow bureaucratic course through the Corps of Engineers, as it had for more than 20 years.

From the book, CHESAPEAKE REQUIEM: A Year with the Waterman of Vanishing Tangier Island Copyright ©2018 by Earl Swift. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.