Deale Live Cam

Are you a boat owner or vacationer searching for a great marina to meet all of your boating needs and more? Take advantage of the award-winning services of Shipwright Harbor Inc.! We offer a variety of awesome amenities in our incredible facility to help you enjoy your boating experience, relax with your family, and keep your boat in peak condition. To keep your boat looking and running its best, we offer a wide selection of repair services, including bottom painting, fiberglass repair, engine repair and installation, and rigging repairs. Our highly trained, skilled staff also offers iron and awl grip repairs and blister repairs, so your boat will be the envy of others.

Comfortably nestled in an excellent location, near great restaurants and grocery stores, we are sure you will love our marina. Our friendly staff is here to meet your needs and answer all your questions, so just let us know what we can do for you. From safe and secure winter storage to cleaning, waxing, and yacht maintenance, we are your one-stop boating facility. Enjoy fun family activities and our fair pricing.

Maryland Itinerary

Tracing the National Road

Follow a historic trail blazed over the centuries by adventurers, settlers and heroes.

America's first national highway follows a trail used by George Washington as a route to link the bustling port of Baltimore with the interior of a fledgling nation. You can still trace its historic route, beginning amid the skyscrapers and attractions of Baltimore's downtown and Inner Harbor and then traveling west along Frederick Road (Route 144) toward a museum celebrating a different chapter of transportation history, the Ellicott City B&O; Railroad Station Museum. Stop for coffee or an early lunch in this historic mill town of shops and eateries in century-old buildings nestled among rocky cliffs, then enjoy a living-history program about Colonial times and life along the National Road at Thomas Isaac's Log Cabin (1780).

Head west through small towns, across country creeks and up gradually rising mountains until you approach Frederick, where the National Road travels through the heart of the city's historic district. Stop to see Francis Scott Key's law office, browse the numerous antiques shops, or visit St. John the Evangelist, the second oldest consecrated Catholic Church in America (and one that continues to make history, considering the discovery of a diary written by a Civil War soldier on an obscured portion of the church's wall).

Have dinner in Frederick, followed by a concert at the Weinberg Center for the Arts or a play at the new Cultural Arts Center. Then settle in for the night at one of the city's small inns or bed & breakfasts.

West of Frederick, the National Road travels along what's now known as Route 40. As you pass through the Appalachian Mountains, you'll pass the Old South Mountain Inn. Take a moment to stretch your legs here and take in the breathtaking view. Your next stop is in Washington County, where you'll want to take the short stroll up to the nation's first memorial to the founder of the National Road (and our first president) at Washington Monument State Park. Continue on to historic Hagerstown, where you can visit the famous City Park, home to the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. Take note of the graceful stone bridge built in 1819 over Conococheague Creek that allowed the Road to reach points farther west.

In the mountain hamlet of Hancock, you'll find a museum devoted to still another important transportation landmark, the C&O; Canal National Historic Park Visitor Center. Its exhibits reveal the incredible effort and ingenuity that went into building the 184.5-mile-long waterway constructed to meet the nation's booming commerce needs. Another bit of man's ingenuity lies a little farther west: the Sideling Hill Exhibit Center, with its fascinating geological and engineering displays related to the effort to carve an easier way across the Allegheny Mountains - it involved using 5.2 million pounds of explosives to remove 10 million tons of rock.

The farthest west the C&O; Canal would reach is Cumberland, a town that grew around Fort Cumberland, where George Washington commanded troops during the French and Indian War. Stroll through the downtown pedestrian mall, visit the replica canal boat or take the dimly lit hike through Paw Paw Tunnel, carved by hand through 3,118 feet of rock. If you want to take a break and see the sights while someone else drives, climb aboard the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad for a steam-engine train ride to historic Frostburg, home of the Thrasher Carriage Museum, the nation's premier collection of historic carriages. Or you could spend the early afternoon just outside Cumberland at the LaVale Toll Gate House, which served the National Road's first generation of travelers.

Your trip draws to a close in Grantsville, where the graceful, single-arch, Casselman River Bridge was constructed back in 1813. Stroll though Spruce Artisan Village or grab a bite at Penn Alps while you ponder the adventures experienced by those sturdy souls who traveled long ago along the National Road.

Cherish African-American Culture

You'll meet legendary figures whose talent and courage embody the spirit of black America.

More than a century old, Annapolis' Mt. Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church, with its elaborate rose stained-glass window is now the home of the Banneker-Douglass Museum, named for two of Maryland's most famous African-Americans (scientist Benjamin Banneker and statesman Frederick Douglass). Begin your exploration here, at the state's official African-American museum, replete with exhibits and artifacts tracing the history of African-American culture in Maryland. Then take a walking tour of the city, stopping at historic homes like the Maynard-Burgess House, owned exclusively by two African-American families for almost 150 years.

At the head of the City Dock is a brass plaque which memorializes the 1767 arrival of Kunta Kinte, brought from Africa aboard a slave ship. Kinte's name became a rallying symbol for African-Americans seeking to understand their pasts when his descendant, Alex Haley, published the landmark book Roots. Haley has now been honored with a life-size statue symbolizing the value of pride in one's heritage.

Two other prominent Maryland African Americans - Thurgood Marshall and Matthew Henson - are celebrated at the Maryland State House. The Thurgood Marshall Memorial outside the State House commemorates the achievements of the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice. Matthew Henson, who reached the North Pole with Admiral Peary, is honored with a plaque inside the State House detailing his achievements.

Head north from Annapolis to Howard County and Columbia, where the African Art Museum of Maryland has a collection of more than 200 works of art covering a variety of cultures and styles. The nearby Howard County Center of African-American Culture concentrates on local and regional history and artifacts.

In Oella, just outside Ellicott City, lies the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum, built on the site of Banneker's birth (and the place where he constructed - entirely from wood - the first striking clock built in America). Learn how this free-born mathematician came to devise the leading almanac of his day and helped calculate the boundaries of Washington, D.C. A short drive away, in Prince George's County, is a tempting spot to grab dinner: BET Soundstage, the flagship of Black Entertainment Television's chain of themed restaurants.

African Americans played a major role in Baltimore's growth, both before and after emancipation. Head for the Baltimore Civil War Museum, housed in part of a former train station that was a documented stop along the Underground Railroad. The Baltimore Museum of Art exhibits both its own extensive African art collection - including many breathtaking masks - and prominent traveling exhibitions from around the world. The Great Blacks in Wax Museum shows moving tableaux re-creating key moments from African-American history. See Henry Brown, the Virginia slave who mailed himself in a crate to freedom, and watch Rosa Parks being escorted from the bus after refusing to give up her seat.

One of Baltimore's newest treasures is the Eubie Blake National Jazz Insti-tute and Cultural Center, where Baltimore's legendary men and women of jazz - like Blake, Billie Holliday and Cab Calloway - are honored with permanent displays. Then head to Northeast Baltimore to see the African and African-American artworks on display at the Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan State University.

Follow the British Invasion

A foreign army invaded our shores only once, landing in Maryland during the "Second War of Independence."

From 1634, when the first large group of European settlers arrived in Maryland, through the War of 1812, Southern Maryland was the scene of many of the state's most pivotal moments. In Historic St. Mary's City, site of the longest running field archaeology program in the country, you can take a trip back in time to one of America's earliest settlements. Scattered over 800 acres, Historic St. Mary's City features many preserved and re-created buildings, and costumed guides stroll the streets, enlivening attractions like the Godiah Spray Tobacco Plantation (still a working farm) and the Woodland Indian Hamlet with its recreated Native American longhouse.

You could easily pass the whole day - and the next - at Historic St. Mary's City, but make time to stop by one of the other museums that draw visitors to St. Mary's County: the St. Clement's Island-Potomac River Museum, the Piney Point Lighthouse Park and Museum, and Point Lookout State Park and Civil War Museum. Spend the night in one of St. Mary's County's inns or B&Bs.

By morning's light, cross the Patuxent River into Calvert County and stop at Calvert Cliffs State Park for an awe-inspiring vista of the Chesapeake Bay. St. Leonard's Creek winds quietly through the landscape just to the north, but things weren't nearly so peaceful in these parts during the spring of 1814. With a British fleet wreaking havoc around the Chesapeake Bay, Revolutionary War hero Commodore Joshua Barney came out of retirement and formed the celebrated "Chesapeake Flotilla," an undermanned fleet that nonetheless kept the English at bay - and away from Washington, D.C. - for four months.

Trapped at one point inside St. Leonard's Creek, Barney's men engineered a dramatic flight into the Patuxent and lived to fight another day. The 500-acre Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum sits near the site of the gun batteries that helped Barney make his great escape and houses exhibits on the history and heroes of the War of 1812. At the museum's Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, experts are at work preserving important artifacts from the so-called "Second War of Independence." The Calvert Marine Museum in nearby Solomons also exhibits artifacts from the war, along with a lighted map tracing the invasion up the Patuxent River.

In August of 1814, a British force of 4,000 soldiers set foot on the Patuxent's shores at Benedict, in Charles County. Today, this riverside town boasts fishing, sailing and seafood restaurants. You might also visit the Maryland Indian Cultural Center, where you can see how the area's original inhabitants lived and how they interacted with European settlers at a replica trading post.

The British army marched north through Charles County, passing through Upper Marlboro on its way to Bladensburg, where a numerically superior but ill-prepared American force awaited. Commodore Barney and his men - they'd scuttled their flotilla to join the land defense - fought a brave but in the end futile rear-guard action on the heights of what's now Fort Lincoln Cemetery. A marker at the Historic Bladensburg Waterfront Park recounts Barney's heroics, which so impressed British General Robert Ross that he pardoned all of the commodore's "Bluecoats" - a decision he'd later come to regret.