Captain Ed and the Midnight Ride

Captain Ed and the Midnight Ride

Gotham Pilot Capt. Ed Sheridan, 1948

The Gotham crossing canal to North Side in 1945

Captain Edward O. Sheridan was my best friend’s father and a distant cousin of mine. He also happened to be the best ferryboat pilot we ever had during the seven years the Gotham ferry served our town. If our country had had a king or queen, The Captain, as our family and others called him, would certainly have been knighted for the quality of his long, competent service. Sir Edward has a fine ring to it, an appellation that befits his abilities as a master who could pilot any vessel that sailed the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Old timers still tell a story about how he got his job as captain of the Gotham. When they first brought the ferry to Chesapeake City from New York, men were running it back and forth across the canal, giving it test runs, you see. Well, Ed had his tug boat tied up at Rees’ Wharf (now Pell Gardens), and was standing there watching the ferry go across and back, and during that particular that day the wind and current were especially bad. In fact, during most days, when vessels would go out of the Basin—out into the canal into that current—they didn’t know whether they were going to wind up far to the east in Bethel or far to the west, near the boat yard.

 At any rate, on that day, Ed was watching them struggle with the ferry, and one time as it was coming over from the North Side to the South Side, cutting all kinds of capers, our Ed hollered at the captain: “What the hail’s the matter with you that you can’t handle that thing any better than that?” And the fellow yelled back: “If you can do any better than this then come the hail over here.” So Ed went around to the ferry slip, went up into the pilot house, and took her across and showed them how to do it. So … they hired him right then and there. And The Captain piloted that ferry for the whole length of time she ran, till the bridge was finished in 1949. After that he was the pilot of the Port Welcome, a large touring boat which ran out of Baltimore.

Aside from these remarkable skills, The Captain was one of the most colorful characters I’ve ever known. He was a guy whom you just liked to be around because you never knew when one of his off-beat quips would make you shake with laughter. Townspeople relish tales about The Captain and his antics. One story they tell is when he was a Chesapeake City High School student. Years ago, all of the schools in the county would get together for Rally Day, which was a track and field event held in Elkton. They held the event near Railroad Avenue and the Armory.

The kids competed in all kinds of sports: sprint racing, distance runs, broad jumping, high jumping, and all kinds of other activities. Anyway, Ed was in one of those races, one of the sprints, and he ran it and broke the county record. He didn't have any track shoes or sneakers so, believe it or not, he ran on that cinder track in his bare feet. I didn't see the race, but Cousin John Sager did, and he told me that Ed would have run even faster if he hadn't stopped and turned around to see who was shot when the gun went off.

     The referee came up to him and said, “Son, you’ve just broken the county record!” And Ed, still panting from the race, said, “Well, my gosh, I certainly am sorry; I didn’t mean to do it! How much do I owe you? My pop’ll pay for it”

Now, years later, a few years after our lift bridge was destroyed, The Captain’s son, Dick, and I, as teenagers, used to stay overnight at each other’s houses. After hours of basketball practice until dark, and after strutting around on Postell’s corner, we would eventually get to bed, where we’d talk and listen to radio music long into the night.

Well, one night, when we had finally drifted off to sleep (after midnight as I recall), The Captain came in from work and yelled up the stairs: “Get on down here boys; get on down here.” So Dick and I trudged on down, so tired that we could hardly keep our eyes open. We stood there in a daze and Ed looked at me and said, “What’s the matter, Wheeeezle?” He pretended to have a speech defect: my name, “Hazel,” came out, “Weasel.” “Now get out there boys; let’s go,” he demanded. Fully awake now, Dick and I went out and got into the back of Ed’s old Chevy.

“What’s up?” I asked Dick.

“Sharptown,” he said. “Mom’s down there and we have to go pick her up.”

“At this hour?” I asked, astonished. Sharptown is on the lower Eastern Shore, about 100 miles away. Then, our Ed got into the car, fired her up, and took off down George Street. He hung a left on Saint Augustine Road, motored past my farm, swung around old man Mc’Natt’s curve, and headed towards Sam Caldwell’s S turn.

It was at this S turn that it started: Ed couldn’t keep the car on the road. He’d swerve off to the right onto the grass, wake up from the jolt, keep her straight for a while, and then swerve off to the left and wake up again. I’ll tell you, Dick and I were afraid we were going to die. But Ed kept going, and somewhere past Middletown he plowed into a ditch and got stuck. After the three of us pushed the car back onto the road, Ed said, “Weasel, can you drive?”

“Sure,” I was quick to answer. I was 15 and thought I could do anything. I didn’t have a license and I had never driven on the highway before. I had driven my Model A around the farm a good bit, but that was a far cry from driving at high speed in traffic.

“Get in there then, Weasel,” Ed said, so we took off with Dick next to me and Ed stretched out on the back seat. I realized later that he had not slept for 24 hours or more. Now, you might imagine how excited I was, steering on down Route 13 at 65 with my nervous buddy next to me. And do you know, I almost crashed into the back of a slow-moving dump truck. Dick yelled, “Geez, slow down for crap sake; slow down!” But from the back seat I just heard a long sleepy moan. From then on I kept that old car at about 50.

Something else happened that morning that I’ll never forget. That 1940 Chevy had a metal rim running around the inside of the steering wheel. It was the horn, and I was driving with both hands at the top of the wheel. Well, at every red light my arm would sound that horn accidentally, and every time Ed would wake up from the back seat and say something like, “My God, what was that.” Then he’d moan for a while and fall back to sleep.

          At any rate, that’s the way we finally got to Sharptown. My first driving experience at 15 was a 100-mile night drive on a major highway, with no license. Later the next day, at a baseball game we attended, The Captain was full of jokes and having fun, and at one point he asked us: “What makes you boys so danged droopy-eyed today, anyhow?” We knew . . . but were too tired to say.