Virginia Watermen’s Heritage Tours, a program established by the Gloucester-based Chesapeake Environmental Communications, received a boost recently with a $15,575 grant from the Virginia Tourism Corporation’s Marketing Leverage Program.

The tourism program, which was developed in 2012 using Blue Crab disaster relief funds from Virginia Sea Grant, offers watermen a chance to earn some extra income by conducting tours for visitors who want to learn about and possibly even experience the workaday life of a waterman.

Chesapeake Environmental, in close partnership with Rappahannock Community College, has trained around 20 watermen to conduct the tours, said the firm’s president, Paula Jasinski, but only five watermen are currently offering tours under the program’s auspices, and only one of those—Captain J.C. Hudgins of Mathews—is on the Middle Peninsula. The others are on the Northern Neck.

According to the tour website, Hudgins offers his guests sev...