Seafood Capital of the World
The Biloxi tribe lived on this peninsula long before Europeans arrived, and three centuries of newcomers have layered onto it since. What made Biloxi a city was seafood. In the late 1800s and early 1900s a modern seafood industry took hold here, strong enough that the town took to calling itself the Seafood Capital of the World.
Workers came by train from around the country to staff the docks and canneries. By 1903 Biloxi led the world in canning oysters, and the factories along the water ran on whole families. That habit lasted. The 2025 Shrimp Queen told WLOX her great grandfather worked the industry, three of her cousins had worn the same crown, and her aunts and uncles all put in time in the shrimp factories.
Casinos and military bases have since passed seafood as Biloxi's biggest industries. The boats still tie up, though, and the town still sends them out each season with a priest's blessing and a wreath on the water.
Schooners and the blessing
The Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum on the eastern tip of the peninsula has kept the working story since 1986. Its atrium is built around the Nydia, a 30 foot wooden boat made on Biloxi's Back Bay in the late 1800s. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the old museum in 2005, and the new building also covers Hurricane Camille. The museum built two full size replica Biloxi schooners, which take visitors out on the water.
The Blessing of the Fleet goes back to 1929. It opens with a Mass for fishermen who have died, crowns a Shrimp King and Queen on Saturday night, and finishes Sunday with a festival and a boat parade, as a Catholic priest blesses each boat that passes. A wreath is dropped into the Sound for shrimpers lost at sea, and the blessing marks the official start of shrimp season.
