A Chesapeake Bay Maritime Tradition: Burning of the Socks

As the legend goes, the winter of 1977-78 was a particularly cold and snowy one on the Chesapeake Bay. Boatyard worker and sailing enthusiast Bob Turner had decided he had enough of the cold weather. Leaving work on the first day of spring that year, he gathered some colleagues to celebrate the end of winter by burning their socks after work, a symbolic farewell to winter as the group of boat builders, sailors, and watermen intended to forgo wearing socks until the cold weather returned. “I told them, ‘I’m not putting them on again until next winter. Period,” he later recalled to Baltimore Magazine. Bob’s defiant gesture ultimately became a Chesapeake Bay tradition celebrated every year around the Vernal Equinox, the day signaling the beginning of Spring and for Chesapeake Bay mariners, the start of boating season.

Each Spring, Herrington Harbour Marinas celebrates the tradition and welcomes warmer weather with a Sock Burning event.