CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY: GOIN' TO (NORTH) CAROLINA IN MY MIND

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY: GOIN' TO (NORTH) CAROLINA IN MY MIND

We’re sitting on the dock of Casper’s Marina in Swansboro, sandwiched between two trawlers, In My Element and Field Trip. A lot of trawlers, sailboats and cats showed up at little used Casper’s yesterday afternoon, because the Onslow Beach Bridge failed to open for many hours. That’s the last bridge we had to request an opening – it only opens once an hour even when it’s working – and it actually opened for us the day before yesterday. But Wednesday it simply stopped opening. I’m sure glad we didn’t have to try to tread water for hours surrounded by trawler captains with itchy fingers on their gears, sailboat helmsmen who can spin around on a dime, and catamarans that fill up the entire channel. The Admiral’s blood pressure would have skyrocketed. And Slo Mo’s engines would not have fared well. As it is, we have a constant clicking or ticking sound on the port side, emanating from the propeller perhaps. My worst fear is that something is hitting one of the propeller blades repeatedly – you know how kids used to put clothes pins in the bike wheel spokes to make that neat clicking sound? Maybe it’s not a clothes pin in this case, but whatever it is could be doing real damage to one or more propeller blades. The Admiral went to a major boatyard this morning to see if we could have Slow Motion hauled out early next week to find the source of the clicking sound and to stop it, if that’s mechanically and financially possible.

In the meantime, Carol V. and I have made two forays into Historic Downtown Swansboro, and she has found some neat gifts for friends, as well as some stylish accessories – earrings, purse, glittery ball cap – for herself. I found a handmade quilt with lighthouses of the Atlantic Coast embroidered in each square. The quilt shop here is chock full of handmade beauties at reasonable prices. The owner says they have to be reasonable because their main customers are the Marines and their relatives, who are apparently not known for pulling down big bucks. That’s what makes this society so bizarre – Marines who defend us, give their lives for us, make a pittance. Yet, hedge fund operators, who serve no useful societal purpose (in fact, they often destabilize the economy, according to Krugman), make billions. The top 25 hedge fund operators made $21 billion dollars last year, more than twice what was earned by ALL the kindergarten teachers in the entire country. Now who is really more valuable to our communities – the guy (all 25 were guys) who bets other people’s money (or his own huge inherited fortune) and gets fat fees for doing it, or the guy/gal who introduces our children to reading, writing, arithmetic, socialization, creative thinking, and being a productive citizen? By the way, these hedge fund guys are not “job creators” – they play with money all day, theirs or ours. Many of them got the money from their parents, so one can’t even herald them as “hardworking” or “self-made".

We’re all sitting on pins and needles here in North Carolina waiting for all the votes to come in to determine whether Clay Aiken is the Democratic candidate for Congress from the Second District (central North Carolina and Fayetteville). He’s ahead by 369 votes – there will probably be a recount. Will he come in second again? Even if he carries the Democratic Party standard into the general election, his chances of winning the seat are slim. It’s a very, very Republican district. Give props to Clay for jumping into that race in hopes of making a difference for children with special needs.

We have not left Casper’s Marina in Swansboro, and we will not leave this safe haven until Tuesday at the earliest. Carol V. is leaving us tomorrow to return to Allentown, via Alexandria, Virginia and a visit with her nephew. I think she has made most of the Swansboro merchants very happy. At this moment she is trying to get back to all of them one more time to see if there is anything she missed on her first two passes through all the stores on Front Street.

I drove to Beaufort (“bow” fort – long “o”) this morning to visit the North Carolina Maritime Museum. I arrived with 40 local high school students. They were all instructed not to yell, scream, drink, eat, push, shove, break anything – and have a good time. This is another great regional museum. Beaufort was instrumental to the Union blockade in the Civil War, and the Museum does a good job summarizing that historic event. The following description of the blockade and related events is taken directly from the story boards placed throughout the Museum. According to the Museum, it was President Lincoln’s determination in 1861 that a blockade of the ports of the Confederacy would be a key part of the Union winning strategy, given that the South was still primarily an agrarian society and sorely needed its ports to export the raw products and import needed manufactured goods. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles called home overseas ships to blockade the 3000 miles of Southern coastline. The US Navy also bought or commandeered every steamer available. The Naval leaders quickly figured out that Beaufort North Carolina was a critical base to the success of the Union blockade. In order to use Beaufort as a base for the blockade, the North had to capture Fort Macon. So on April 25, 1862, just after dawn, Brig. Gen. John G. Parke’s troops fired on the Confederate soldiers at the Fort, using the newly manufactured rifled cannons, which sent 90 pound cannon balls far greater distances and penetrated the walls of the Fort right next to the Fort’s main gunpowder magazine. At 4:30 p.m. on the same day Colonel Moses J. White raised a white flag in surrender, and the cannon bombardment stopped. The Confederates formally surrendered Fort Macon the next morning. Loss of life: seven Confederate soldiers and one Union soldier. The rifled cannon replaced the smoothbore 32 pounder cannon, which fired a 32 pound round ball for a distance of only 3 miles accurately. The rifled cannon fired a 90 pound ball accurately for 5 miles.

Beaufort did indeed become a critical part of the blockade. Rear Adm. Goldsborough said: “Having a depot of supplies at Beaufort will greatly facilitate the maintenance of the blockade at Wilmington.” Beaufort resupplied the blockaders at Wilmington, North Carolina with coal, food, and ordnance. Beaufort also provided a new home for Black men and women who escaped slavery by taking to the water off the coast of North Carolina and seeking freedom with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Many of those who escaped joined the Union Navy and were stationed in Beaufort and served as crew on various naval ships, such as the USS Penobscot, a blockader; the William Badger, a whaling ship used for floating storage; and the Arletta, which carried ammo to the blockading ships.

Union soldiers had a relatively easy time taking Beaufort for the Northern Army. On March 26, 1862, before the assault on Fort Macon, Union soldiers rowed past For Macon and entered and occupied Beaufort peacefully. General Ambrose Burnside’s troops commandeered a lot of local property. The Atlantic Hotel became a hospital during the war. Private homes were used as barracks, officer’s quarters and the Provost Marshal’s office. The taking of Beaufort without force was attributed in part to the fact that many Beaufort residents were Unionists before the war. They had to accede to the secession by the State in April 1961, but they did not abandon their Union sympathies. Money always talks in these situations, and the local businesses made a lot of money with the Union occupation. More than three dozen Beaufort men joined the 1^st and 2^nd North Carolina Union Infantry Regiments, which were raised in 1862 and 1863 in this area. However, there were also “closet Confederates” (term used by the Maritime Museum) in Beaufort. The Maritime Museum included this note from the diary of James Rumley, a “Confederate sympathizer”: “Now a recruiting office is opened on Front Street, where traitors are invited to enlist. Over the door hangs a sign, I would add the words which David saw over the portals of Hell: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” The place is indeed none other than the house of Satan and the very gate of Hell. Some poor deluded wretches enter there, and are induced, by false representations, to sell themselves to the public enemies of their country!” But how did he really feel about joining the Union Army? It turns out that Rumley was on the wrong side of history in this Civil War. And talk about selling oneself, what did he think his fellow Confederates were doing with the buying and selling of Black people for all those years? It’s hard to imagine so many people being morally crippled, nay bankrupt, who were actually willing to secede from the Union and lay down their lives (or the lives of their young men) to preserve and maintain their moral bankruptcy of enslavement of fellow human beings.

Even as Rumley was fulminating about the “traitors” in his backyard, thousands of African Americans were escaping Rumley’s corrupt society and exulting in their freedom from slavery. They sought sanctuary among the Union troops in New Bern and Beaufort North Carolina. By the end of the Civil War, in 1865, 3200 free African Americans called Beaufort home. This was almost five times their prewar population. The free Black men and women worked for the Union navy and army, or farmed, or became free artisans. Black families encouraged education for their young, who attended schools taught by Northern “missionaries”. (That’s the term used by the Museum). One African American, George W. Jenkins, wrote to a “missionary” from Vermont, Sara D. Comings, on June 29, 1864, the following: “We will never forget the kind teachers for bringing light to our land when she was dark at night. They came in spite of the rebs. Their reward is not in this world, but a world to come.” Gosh, even back then, teachers apparently did not make much money – and these low paid teachers had to fear the wrath of the remaining Rumleys of the South who still thought Blacks should be enslaved, not educated.

The entire Southern economy came to a crashing halt during the Civil War, and it took several decades to rebuild. New developments in transportation and manufacturing advanced the process of rebuilding. Also, northern capitalists looking for new markets came to the South to invest, as well as to sell their manufactured goods. Two new boat types were created to meet the increased demand for North Carolina seafood and fish products. They were the Shadboat and the Sharpie. George Washington Creef of Roanoke began building the first shadboats around the mid-1870’s. The shadboat sailed well and was designed to carry heavy loads, even in shallow waters. This was ideal for the many small, shallow creeks and rivers and the treacherous inlets along the North Carolina coastline. Creef shared his design with other boat builders and the shadboat became very popular throughout northeastern North Carolina. The first shadboats were sailboats, but later models were built for gasoline engines. In 1988 the North Carolina General Assembly made the shadboat North Carolina’s official boat. (And that was the last positive act of this legislative body – kidding!) George Creef was a native of East Lake, North Carolina – his father immigrated from England. In 1860 Creef moved his family to Manteo and Roanoke Island and his reputation as a master boat builder grew. Then in the 1870s he moved his boat works to Wanchese, where he built his first shadboat.

The second most popular post-Civil War boat in North Carolina was the Sharpie, introduced to North Carolina by Connecticut businessman George Ives, who moved to Beaufort in 1874. The Sharpie had become a staple in Long Island Sound, and Ives was convinced this boat would do the same work as the shadboat in the Carolina waters. He had to persuade the locals that the Sharpie was suitable for their purposes. To this end he hired a New Haven boat builder to build a Sharpie, which he raced against the best boat the locals owned, and the Sharpie proved faster in a race behind Shackleford Banks in 1876. The Sharpie was a sailboat, at first a two sail boat, then later with the addition of a foresail, it had three sails which gave it more driving power. The Maritime Museum has great models for both the shadboat and the Sharpie and a narrative which explains how each boat was built to meet the needs of the watermen on the northeastern coast of North Carolina.

While the shadboats and Sharpies were used by businesses to carry goods, North Carolina watermen used other boats to go about their business of whaling and catching menhaden. Both of these “industries” were prominently featured in the Museum. As to whaling, according to the Museum story board, it has a three hundred year history in North Carolina. As early as 1666, New England whalers hunted for sperm and right whales off the Carolina coast. From 1726 to 1916 shore-based Carolina whalers captured right whales off the coast, as well as (sob!) bottlenose dolphins in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The Museum writer says that the whaling industry’s demise was caused by the availability of petroleum based products which became cheaper than whale oil and by the spread of electricity. I prefer to think that environmentalists played at least a small role in stopping the killing of whales. At any rate, the dolphin fishery in North Carolina ended in 1916 and the ocean whaling ended in 1925. By that time, whales had been hunted relentlessly for decades and their numbers had dwindled all along the Atlantic coast. The first international agreement to regulate whaling came in 1931, when it was apparent to most leaders that the only way to save the whales from extinction was to control the whaling industry. The landmark legislation for the protection of whales came in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and this significant law was followed in 1973 by the Endangered Species Act. The ESA lists all the great whales as endangered species and makes it illegal to kill, hunt, collect, injure or harass whales, or to destroy their habitat in any way. It also makes it illegal to buy or sell any whales. I don’t know how Sea World and other tourist attractions which hold whales in captivity to put them in shows get out from under the ESA, but it would be an interesting issue to explore.  At least the wholesale killing of whales by this country is over – just reading about the manner of whale killing is sickening. Read what the Maritime Museum has written on a story board:

“North Carolinians used double-ended oar-propelled pilot boats for shore whaling. They threw barbed harpoons, attached to long lines, to secure their boat to the whale. The drag of the boat eventually exhausted the whale so they could close to kill it with a lance and tow it ashore for processing. From the 1860s they also used hand-held shoulder whale guns that fired explosive bomb lances into the whale.”

That is truly barbaric.

On to the menhaden industry. There are no great novels about menhaden, and we don’t have a lot of “Save the Menhaden” bumper stickers on cars, but menhaden should be saved. Marine biologists say that there are now huge “red tide” algae blooms which starve a body of water of sunlight and oxygen because of a dwindling menhaden population. The menhaden has always served as a filter feeder of algae and phytoplankton. The fewer the menhaden, the more prolific the red algae which can kill an entire bay. There is basically a monopoly in the menhaden reduction industry today. Omega Protein of Houston has the monopoly. They operate primarily in Virginia and North Carolina, because these two states allow “purse-seining”, the corralling of whole schools of thousands of menhaden at once. The other states on the Atlantic Coast have outlawed purse-seining. Talk about your competitive advantage. But, of course, no State will maintain a competitive advantage where they permit their natural resource, the menhaden in this case, to be fished into extinction. During my limited research on the menhaden fishery in North Carolina, I came upon the phrase “tragedy of the commons”. This is an economics theory developed by Garrett Harden which posits that individuals who are acting independently and rationally according to their own self-interest in fact behave contrary to the group’s long-term best interests by depleting a common resource. This is what happened to the North Carolina menhaden fishery, which according to the Maritime Museum, “flourished into the late 1960s”. At its peak there were 7 major reduction factories in North Carolina, 4 in Beaufort, 2 in Morehead City and 1 in Southport. But in the 1970’s the menhaden fishery started to decline – fewer and fewer menhaden were caught and all seven reduction factories were closed. Always resilient, the North Carolina watermen headed to New Jersey and the Gulf of Mexico to see if they could also deplete the menhaden populations in those locations. Recently, the menhaden fishery has been on the rebound, but with the ongoing purse-seining the “tragedy of the commons” will no doubt occur again – and the menhaden fishery will go the way of North Carolina’s whaling industry. Already the menhaden fishery in the  Chesapeake Bay is in danger due to depletion. It’s only a matter of time before the “tragedy of the commons” kicks in again. Unless, unless -- unless the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission puts some teeth into enforcement of its harvesting cap – and things are looking up right now for that to happen. Stay tuned. For your information, the menhaden fish is used for fertilizer, fish meal, oil and bait. It is probably the fish that Squanto told the Pilgrims to plant alongside their seeds to fertilize their plants. I hope this brief summary has motivated just one person to print a bumper sticker that proudly states: “SAVE THE MENHADEN”.

In case you were wondering, I spent less than an hour at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, but that time was well spent. In Factory Farm, the book that Sandra gave me, I read about the horrific hog farms in North Carolina which are polluting the streams, creeks, rivers and bays with their manure run-off, as well as cruelly raising hogs in tiny cage-like areas where they can’t even turn around, with one hog’s face in the next hog’s butt. I thought that North Carolina had its hands full with that environmental disaster. Little did I know that they had already killed off the whales and were fishing the menhaden into extinction just off their coastline. Gee, what a lovely State to live in. There are strong environmentalists in this State trying to avoid another tragedy of commons, but it’s a long row to hoe with such a history of poor stewardship of the land and the water resources. I wish them well. Maybe a little less emphasis on Duke basketball and a little more time and money spent on cleaning up the environment and preserving the natural resources – how about it, Dukies? There sure are a lot of brilliant people hanging out in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area – I’m sure they’ll figure out how to save their state’s resources in the next century or so – if there are any left.

“Are we finally through with the offerings of the North Carolina Maritime Museum?” you may be asking. Not exactly. There was a huge display in the exploits of Blackbeard the pirate, who menaced all the commercial ships along the East Coast in the early 1700’s. He captured a slave ship, Concorde, in 1717 in the eastern Caribbean and renamed it Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR). He built up to a fleet of four ships and a total crew of 300 to 400, at which point they captured about two dozen ships before blockading the port of Charleston. After this success, Blackbeard and his fleet headed north to Topsail (now Beaufort) Inlet. He took a very small crew with him on the QAR and ran the ship aground. Many historians say this was intentional. Somehow he gained a pardon from the King, but that didn’t stop his piracy for long. And so, on November 22, 1718 he lost his head in a battle at Ocracoke Inlet with Lt. Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy. Literally, he lost his head, which Maynard attached to the bowsprit of a captured sloop and sailed triumphantly back to Virginia with this ghoulish trophy. Why is the Maritime Museum touting the exploits of Blackbeard (born Edward Thatch or Teach))? They’re helping the exploration and salvage teams to work on recovering 600,000 artifacts from the QAR, which was found in 25 feet of water near Beaufort Inlet just off the coast of North Carolina in 1996. This project is understaffed and underfunded. So this is my plug. Contribute to the Friends of QAR – Aargh!

If you have not had enough history for one reading, I suggest anything by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Thus ends my tour of the North Carolina Maritime Museum.