22 CRAB INDUSTRY OF CHESAPEAKE BAY. 
rooms. They are placed on a water front and have a wharf at 
which the crabs are unloaded from the boats. The apparatus for 
cooking the crabs is located either on the wharf or immediately 
within the house. Next the cooking room is the largest room in 
the building, where the picking is done. Smaller rooms where the 
meat is packed, office rooms, etc., usually adjoin. 
In case a dealer handles both soft and hard crabs, the packing is 
done in a house devoted to both cooking hard crabs and the buying 
of soft crabs and peelers. The floats are tied to stakes in the water 
near by, in an inclosure such as is shown in Plate IV, figure 8. A board 
walk is usually built from the house out over the water to the float 
pound. To this are tied the small boats used in fishing out the 
crabs from the floats. 
Surppinc.—Hard crabs are to some extent shipped alive, packed 
with or without ice, in barrels. The large male crabs, called 
‘‘Jimmies,”’ are selected especially for such endl Sometimes, 
for shipments going only a short distance, twigs or branches with 
the leaves still fresh on them are packed about the crabs in the 
barrel and no ice used. Peach or fruit baskets are sometimes used 
in such cases. The great bulk of the hard-crab catch is steamed or 
cooked, the meat picked out and shipped on ice or after canning. 
Some cooked crabs are shipped whole on ice, the meat being picked 
out at the market. 
METHODS OF cooKING.—For cooking, the crabs are usually placed 
in circular iron baskets about 3 feet in diameter and 16 inches in 
depth (Pl. VIII, fig. 1). The basket is lifted by a hand-operated crane 
and lowered into a circular metal tank or ‘‘cooker”’ (Pl. VIII, fig. 1). 
This is just large enough in diameter to accommodate the basket and 
deep enough to allow two or three baskets at once to be placed therein. 
A heavy iron lid is clamped on the cooker and steam passed through 
it, usually for about 25 minutes. The crabs are thereby killed and 
cooked, their shells being bright red in color when removed. 
One firm at Hampton, Va., places the crabs in iron cars about 7 
feet long by 2 in width and depth, and rolls these cars on a track 
into rectangular, horizontally placed cookers which will hold two 
cars at once (Pl. VIII, fig. 2). The cars are made basket fashion of 
iron strips. 
Various forms of wooden cookers are used also, especially at points 
in Maryland (Pl. IX, fig. 1). One of the commonest sorts is simply 
a box made of pine boards from 1 to 2 inches thick. The box 1s 
usually about 8 feet in length by 4 in width and depth. A grating 
made of wooden slats is placed about 4 inches from the bottom of 
the box. This holds the crabs up off the bottom and allows the 
steam to have free access to them. No baskets are used, the crabs 
being dumped directly into the box. Steam is admitted through a 
pipe from the boiler, the pipe entering the box near the bottom at 
one end. A lid of planks covers the box during the cooking. 
Small holes in the bottom allow the escape of the water from the 
condensed steam. After the cooking is completed, the box is 
turned upon one side by lifting on a wooden bar guna? along the 
side, and the crabs dumped out upon the floor of the cooking house. 
In some cases there is a door along one side of the box near the 
bottom to allow the crabs to be removed without having to turn the 
entire box over (Pl. IX, fig. 1). In other cases there are two large 
