A Boat for All Seasons

In 1875, a Connecticut businessman named George Ives moved to Morehead City, North Carolina, to open a wholesale fish and oyster business. Ives owned an oyster keg and barrel factory in New Haven. The Ives family had a long history in New England’s oyster fishery, but by 1876, the natural oyster reefs of Long Island Sound and Great South Bay had been seriously depleted.

Before Ives left Connecticut, he had two Long Island sharpies built and shipped by schooner to Washington, North Carolina. They sailed on their own bottoms to Beaufort.

Ives used both as oyster boats in winter and carried passengers to Beaufort and Bogue Banks during summer. The unlikely appearance of the sharpies piqued the interest of Daniel Bell, a local man who owned a much larger, round-bottom boat named Sunny South. Bell’s boat was considered fast.

Bell put the Sunny South against Ives’ boat, Lucia, in a race from Harkers Island to Beaufort Inlet. A stiff breeze was blowing and a sea running on the day of the race, but the flat-bottomed Lucia won handily. The following year, Daniel Bell built the 32-foot sharpie Julia Bell. She was among the first of thousands of sharpies built on the Carolina sounds. [1]

Sharpies were notably fast. A large sharpie was reported in Forest and Stream, having run 11 nautical miles in 34 minutes. A big sharpie schooner was said to have averaged 16 knots in 3 consecutive hours of sail. Smaller tonging sharpies with racing rigs supposedly achieved 15 and 16 knots in smooth water. Of course, sailors are prone to exaggeration. [2]

The 32-foot sharpie Julia Bell, 1880s. Technically, she appears to be rigged as a ketch, the fore mast taller than the mizzen. The foresail is a leg-o-mutton, the mizzen triangular.  [3]

Shape of a Sharpie

The sharpie had distinct characteristics that remained throughout numerous iterations of the design: a flat bottom, plumb bow (vertical or nearly so), a hard chine (the acute angle between the bottom and the sides), a balanced rudder, a narrow beam, low freeboard, and a rounded stern.

They were fast and weatherly but tended to pound sailing to windward in a seaway.  The narrow beam resulted in inherent instability that required adept handling in heavy weather. But they were inexpensive to build, easily handled by one or two men, and shoal draft, a characteristic appreciated by oystermen who tonged in the shallow water of Pamlico, Albemarle, and Core Sounds. It was said that a sharpie could float on a heavy dew.

Tonging for oysters demanded standing on the edge of the boat and wielding heavy, awkward oyster tongs. The tongs resembled long scissors with a rake and a basket on the ends. The tongs were scissored together, and the oysters scraped from the bottom.

A variety of oyster tongs used in the 1880s. [4]

The shallow draft and low freeboard of the sharpie allowed oystermen to work the shoal water in the Sounds effectively, but the nature of the tool prevented them from working the oyster reefs in deeper water.

North Carolina oyster harvesting was allowed only in the winter months. During the off-season, oystermen would sometimes fill their boats with oyster shells and sail up the Pamlico River, trading their shells for corn grown on farms along the river. The farmers would burn the shells to make slaked lime for their fields.

Sharpies were also used to haul freight and passengers, much like Ives' first sharpies carried passengers to Beaufort and Bogue Banks during the summer.

The Oyster Schooner

North Carolina had only allowed tonging for oysters but as the demand for oysters exploded and Chesapeake Bay’s oyster beds were depleted by overfishing, the profit potential changed the law. Virginia and Maryland boats were excluded, but North Carolina boats could begin dredging.

Dredging, called drudging by oystermen, involved towing heavy metal nets that scraped the oysters from the bottom. It was an efficient means of harvesting in water deeper than tongs could reach. The dredges were streamed from both sides of the boat and retrieved by hand windlass, backbreaking work carried out throughout the winter.

A typical oyster dredge and windlass used on oyster schooners. [5]

A more powerful boat was required to haul the dredges.

The oyster schooner shared many of the characteristics of the smaller sharpies—plumb bow, flat bottom, hard chine, balanced rudder—but were substantially larger, commonly 40-45 feet, sometimes as much as 60 feet. Oystermen experimented with a variety of sail plans, but the gaff-rigged schooner—main mast taller than the foremast, often with a topsail carried above the main mast—proved the most versatile. The shallow draft of the sharpie was essential in the shoaling waters of North Carolina’s inlets, sounds, rivers, and streams.

Sharpie schooner anchored near Beaufort, 1905. [6]

In the 1890s, two canneries operated in Washington: J.S. Farren & Company and H.J. McGrath Canning Company. To remain profitable, they had a voracious appetite for oysters. When the canneries were operating, oyster schooners arrived daily at their wharves throughout the winter.

In November and December 1890, 27 oyster schooners unloaded their catch in Washington, many of them repeatedly. They averaged two days between arrival and departure and two weeks before returning. [7]

The river opposite Washington was often crowded with schooners at anchor. The Farren Company eventually hired a tug to move their schooners more quickly into and away from their berth at the wharf. [8]

The J.S. Farren Company cannery docks, Washington, circa 1890s. [9]

The oyster fleet in Washington circa 1890. Castle Island is on the right. [10]

Washington’s Shipyards

All of those schooners needed repairs. Two shipyards were operating in Washington in the 1890s: Joseph Farrow and John Meyers’ Son. Both were equipped with marine railways; Farrow’s yard had two. [11]

A marine railway was a cradle that ran on rails. The rails extended into the water. The cradle ran down the rails until the boat could float into position and was then hauled ashore for repairs. A turnstile and a donkey powered Farrow’s original railway.

Washington’s shipyards provided work for ship carpenters, blacksmiths and mechanics, riggers, block makers, and caulkers. Most of their work was repairs, but numerous schooners and sloops, some of them sharpies, were built in Washington.

Remnants

Sharpies were eventually made irrelevant by railroads, propellers, and trucks. Very little now remains of those that sailed in the 19^th century.

Vessel #3, identified in underwater archaeology at Castle Island in the Pamlico River opposite Washington, was very likely a sharpie. The remnants of 10 vessels were researched on the upstream side of the island. After Hurricane Floyd, only one vessel remained. It wasn’t #3. [12]

The vessels in the Castle Island Ship’s graveyard were likely abandoned or possibly wrecked in the 1913 hurricane that devastated Washington.

There are few bones left of the once ubiquitous sharpies. Vessel #3 is the only sharpie from the time period that has been examined in situ. [13]

The sharpie schooner Alfonso with a load of fertilizer at the Saunders Cotton Press, Beaufort. [14]

Still, working sharpies persisted well into the 20th century, many stripped of their sails and converted to power or made into yachts. They survived because wood for their construction was readily available, and they were easy to build. But also, because they were loved.

“The knowledge and designs of the fishing and oystering vessels had been passed down through generations. The traditions of each locale still persist today, where you can still see men constructing their own wooden vessels like their fathers and grandfathers did before them. In these coastal cultures, the wooden sailing vessels, particularly the sharpies, are part of their heritage. These vessels are not simply built for use, but as a connection and in respect to the culture that formed them.” [15]

In the 1960s, the Alphonso was still on the shore in front of the Beaufort Post Office, serving as a museum. “The Alphonso was ultimately a victim of the Beaufort Historical Society, which, in a curious fit of pique, had her burned by the local fire department to be rid of the old girl.” [16]

Notes

[1] Cecelski, D., Sonny Williamson and the Core Sound Sharpie, August 25, 2017.

[2] Chapelle, H., Migrations of an American Boat Type.

[3] H. H. Brimley Collection, North Carolina State Archives. Colorized using AI.

[4] Ingersoll, E.: The History and Present Condition of the Fishery Industries: The Oyster-Industry, Government Printing Office, 1881.

[5] Ingersoll, E., ibid.

[6] North Carolina State Archives. Colorized using AI.

[7] Derived from Washington Progress reporting of maritime arrivals and departures, June – December 1890.

[8] Washington Progress, October 28, 1890: 3.

[9] George H. & Laura E. Brown Library, Washington, NC.

[10] H.H. Brimley Collection, North Carolina State Archives. Colorized using AI.

[11] Still, W.N. and Stephenson, R.A., Shipbuilding in North Carolina 1688—1918, 2021.

[12] Rodgers, B.A. and Richards, N., The Castle Island Ships’ Graveyard: The History and Archaeology of Eleven Wrecked and Abandoned Watercraft.

[13] Rosted, L.A., The Migration of the Sharpie: Economic, Environmental, and Archaeological Aspects, 2015

[14] Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center. Colorized using AI.

[15] Rosted, L.A., ibid.

[16] Celeski, D., ibid.