I found a photograph at my new favorite website that really touched my heart. It is a photograph taken on the Beaufort, NC waterfront just a matter of feet where I dock SPARTINA when passing through town. The boat in the foreground is the Nettie B. Smith, a 35-foot-long boat built for local freight hauling. Behind the boats - there are three there including a sharpie, a kunner (the small dinghy in the foreground) and the Nettie - is the intersection of Front and Turner Streets. You will see that same intersection in the satellite image below, the X marking the site where the old photograph seems to have been taken and the O marking the floating dock where the dock hands typically direct SPARTINA. Just being able to see the history there makes me smile. If you are interested in Mid-Atlantic maritime history it is worth reading the entire entry. Below is the description of the freight being hauled by the boats, written by Michael B. Alford and David Cecelski.
"One of the boat’s hands is unloading split firewood, undoubtedly cut somewhere close by. A pair of high-wheeled drays pulled by mules wait to carry the firewood into town. Evidently the draymen are quite confident that unloading cargo is not their job. Barrels of naptha also lay on the shore.
The naptha— possibly just crude oil, but more likely a light petroleum distillate like kerosene or one that was even lighter—of course was not distilled anywhere near Beaufort.
The destination of the naphtha is anyone’s guess. Locals commonly used kerosene lamps in their homes, but in this quantity the oil might have had an industrial use. Perhaps they are bound for a local menhaden factory, where heavy presses and furnaces turned the fish into fertilizer and oil.
Another, rather more romantic possibility, is that the Nettie B. Smith’s master intends to ferry the naphtha barrels to the Cape Lookout Light."
My good friend Barry - boatbuilder, photographer, videographer, writer and connoisseur of oysters - asked me if I had ever heard about the web page. I had not, but I knew well of David Cecelski, the man behind the collection of new writings, essays and observations about life on the North Carolina coast. I had read two of his books, The Waterman's Song, Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina, and the more personal A Historian's Coast, Adventures in the Tidewater Past.
Cecelski's site looks at the social, racial, economic and environmental history of the sounds, creeks and rivers of North Carolina. That may sound a little on the dry side but it is not. He weaves together rich stories of the coast, bringing historical characters to life and putting them into the context of the times. Cecelski's books have changed the way I look at the shore as I sail by. I see thriving communities that are no longer there, hard working fisherman and boat builders now long gone. It is strange and sad how along the marshy shore villages and towns disappear, quickly pulled back into the bog and covered by vines. Those places, people and lifestyles may be gone but I thank David Cecelski for keeping them alive.
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