Deadrise boats get recognition

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin named the month of June 2025 as “Chesapeake Bay Deadrise Month” through a proclamation read to a crowd on Sunday, June 1, at the Yorktown Workboat Races.

The Chesapeake Bay deadrise is the official “State Boat” and has been built throughout the Tidewater region since the 1880s. For many years the community of Deltaville was the self-proclaimed deadrise boatbuilding capital of the Chesapeake Bay in the days when there were wooden boatbuilders, building deadrise boats around every corner of the village.

The proclamation read by Virginia Commissioner of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) Jamie Green from the governor states that “the Chesapeake Bay Deadrise, ruggedly built to navigate the bay’s winding waterways and shallow inlets, was locally designed and developed to work shoal water while withstanding its ever-changing weather, standing as a testament to the ingenuity, resilience, and industrious spirit of Virginia’s watermen” and is recognized as the Virginia State Boat.