William B. Cronin, a retired marine scientist at the Johns Hopkins University's Chesapeake Bay Institute whose adventures exploring the Chesapeake Bay, its tributaries and shoreline towns resulted in numerous articles and two books, died June 21 of respiratory failure at Greenway Manor assisted living in Ellicott City.
The Silver Spring resident was 100.
The son of Dr. Thomas Arthur Cronin, a dentist and pharmacy owner, and Jessie May Baker Cronin, a homemaker, William Baker Cronin was born and raised in Aberdeen, where he graduated in 1936 from Aberdeen High School.
He began his college education at what was then Western Maryland College and transferred to Washington College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1940 in chemistry.
Mr. Cronin worked for the old Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River until 1947, when he became one of the founders of Hopkins' Chesapeake Bay Institute.
For more than 30 years until retiring in 1979, Mr. Cronin was a staff oceanographer and captain of its research vessels, Lydia Louise I and II and Maury. In that role, he roamed the bay from Cape Henry, Va., to its Susquehanna River headwaters and rivers, gathering scientific data.
When he wasn't onboard the research vessels, he continued his waterborne travels on his 25-foot sailboat Ginger, named for his Chesapeake Bay retriever, exploring bay beaches, islands, tributaries, coves and salt marshes.
He also gathered information and memories from those who lived along its shores and the watermen who derived their livelihoods from its waters.
Mr. Cronin visited libraries, historical societies and museums, where he immersed himself in studying historical material and documents relating to the bay. In the course of his research, he became an expert on the log canoes and pungeys that watermen once used for oystering, and historic vessels such as the Peggy Stewart and Defence.
Mr. Cronin developed a deep affection for the bay's islands — more than 500 have vanished — that once stretched from Havre de Grace to Norfolk, Va., which he called "ragged bits of land."
He gathered historical photographs and maps and studied land records of the islands, which no longer even appear on nautical charts.
In 2005, Johns Hopkins University Press published his "The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake" to critical acclaim.
Mr. Cronin said the vanished islands were casualties of erosion and rising bay waters. Until 1900, he wrote, the bay rose at a rate of about 3 feet every 1,000 years, which translated to about 31/2 inches per century.
During the last 100 years, it rose a foot, eventually taking Holland, Sharps, Three Sisters and Turtle Egg islands, which once boasted flourishing communities. Now only Maryland's Smith Island and Virginia's Tangier Island are inhabited bay islands that are unattached to the mainland by bridge or causeway.
Holland Island, once home to 250 residents, is a textbook case, Mr. Cronin wrote, of what happens to Chesapeake Bay islands.
"In 1900 the island had its own post office and post mistress, a church and resident preacher, a doctor, and a midwife who brought many a new islander into the world. More than a hundred children attended the Holland island school," he wrote.
Years of storms and northwest winds gnawed at Holland's western edge and by 1910, when erosion began to threaten residents' homes and businesses, they began to abandon the island. A summer gale drove the last resident off the island in 1918.
"In 20 years, I think most people will have left Smith Island," he told the Associated Press in a 2005 interview. "Smith and Tangier islands were completely overrun in the last hurricane. Every storm washes a little more of them away. It will be most uninhabitable out there before too long."
He even made the predication that in several centuries, Kent Island, the bay's largest island, would go the way of its predecessors.
"It'll be many years, but it's only a matter of time," he told the AP. "The sea always wins."
Mr. Cronin was well into his 90s when he began working on his second book, "Cities and Towns of the Chesapeake," which was published in 2013 by Tidewater Publishers.
It is perhaps the most comprehensive survey of Maryland and the bay's cities, towns and villages since Hulbert Footner's "Maryland Main and the Eastern Shore" was published in 1942.
"We visited 100 towns and I learned so much. I didn't know all of these things about Maryland. It was just wonderful," said his daughter, Wendy Anne Cronin of Ednor Gardens, who drove her father on his research. "He was such a character and out of another time.
"On those journeys, I met the people of the bay — the watermen, local fire and post office officials, the marine managers, storekeepers and ordinary citizens — who generously shared their memories and stories with me," he wrote in the book's preface.
He also wrote articles for Chesapeake Magazine.
Mr. Cronin was a man of vast interests. He enjoyed astronomy, woodworking, painting in watercolors, photography, and building models of historic Chesapeake vessels. He had an American Flyer model railroad and later converted to HO-gauge and built several layouts.
Mr. Cronin lived in Annapolis from 1952 to 2001, when he moved to Riderwood Village in Silver Spring. He had been a resident of Greenway Village since June.
His wife of 49 years, the former Dorothy Anne Wells, died in 1991. His wife of 19 years, the former Elizabeth Harries, died in 2013.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Calvary United Methodist Church, 301 Rowe Blvd., Annapolis.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Cronin is survived by a son, Thomas Wells Cronin of Oella, and two grandchildren.