In this companion to his book Greetings from Baltimore, Bert Smith takes us on a tour of summers past in Ocean City, Maryland, and the nearby Delaware beaches, where vacationers have been going for more than a century to find sun, surf, and souvenirs. Down the Ocean offers a wonderful selection of charming postcard scenes of the early days of these resort towns, when visitors held tight to safety lines and bravely entered the water dressed in heavy woolen bathing suits. It also takes us through the decades that followed, when automobiles and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge made jaunts to the ocean more convenient and brought changes that transformed the mid-Atlantic coast.Accompanied by Bert Smith's engaging account of local history and lore, the images assembled here document not just the appearance of beach towns but also the feel of beach life from years gone by. Read Less