Washington & the Oyster War

Charles Thrasher
Sep 18, 2025
9 min read

Updated: Sep 29, 2025

It was rumor that ignited North Carolina’s oyster war, rumor that spread as fast and fierce as a prairie fire.

“…the Virginia men are down here and have taken entire possession of all the oyster grounds; their boats are much larger than those here, and when these are at work the Virginians will run down upon them and tear them up,” Sam Whitehurst wrote on January 5, 1891, “ and when they try to retaliate it is useless, for they are armed to the teeth with Winchester rifles and some have 36 lb. guns.”¹

There was no evidence of an invasion by armed oystermen, but the history of the Chesapeake Bay oyster wars was enough to fuel public hysteria.

During the 1870s and 1880s, oyster pirates on Chesapeake Bay used fast schooners to evade government patrols. The pirates were often armed with rifles and shotguns. Captain Hunter Davidson hunted them with a Gatlin gun. Other patrol boats mounted small cannon.

Lt. James T. Hulings, commanding a Maryland state patrol boat, was shot and killed by an oyster pirate. There was a pitched battle in Broad Creek, Maryland, where the gunfire lasted more than an hour.

Ernest Ingersol, author of the government’s 1881 report on the oyster industry, had a low opinion of Chesapeake oystermen. “…These men, taken as a class, form perhaps one of the most depraved bodies of workmen to be found in the country. They are gathered from jails, penitentiaries, workhouses, and the lowest and vilest dens of the city… Returning from a trip, the men take their little pay and soon spend it in debauchery, amid the lowest groggeries and dens of infamy to be found in certain ports of Baltimore.”²

The reputation of Chesapeake Bay oyster pirates cast a menacing shadow across the North Carolina sounds when their own oyster beds were depleted, and they began sailing south into the Pamlico Sound. It was enough for Governor Fowle of North Carolina to declare war.

*Governor Fowle, North Carolina, 1889-1891. Photo credit: North Carolina Museum of History.*

David Gould Fowle was the son of S. R. Fowle and a member of one of the most powerful merchant families of Washington, N. C. to have survived the Civil War intact. His family had extensive maritime interests, and he was a keen supporter of coastal fisheries conservation.

When rumors of depredation by Chesapeake Bay oyster pirates became incendiary, he acted abruptly, if without authority.

Early in January 1891, Governor Fowle chartered the steamboat Vesper, mobilized Colonel J. E. Wood and the Pasquotank Rifles of the North Carolina State Guard, and borrowed a Hotchkiss gun, a light artillery piece, from the governor of Virginia. Fowle didn’t inform the Virginia governor of the purpose for the artillery. The irony of Virginia artillery aimed at Virginia oystermen later came to haunt the Virginia governor, Phillip McKinney.

Only after the Pasquotank Rifles and their artillery were in place onboard the Vesper did the Governor sign the temporary oyster law authorizing him to take the actions he had already taken.

A War Where Nobody Died

The Vesper cruised the Pamlico Sound from January 21-28, 1891. She encountered numerous Chesapeake oystermen on the Pamlico Sound, but none were armed. When informed of the North Carolina law excluding non-residents from the oyster fishery, they passively returned home. The Vesper never fired a shot.

She also encountered North Carolina oystermen on the sound; the Vesper’s crew warned them of the dangers of violent Northern oystermen. Some of those North Carolina oystermen later wrote Governor Fowle and asked after the source of the rumored violence. They had seen no weapons on the Chesapeake dredge boats, but the Pasquotank Rifles said they were armed.³

At the end of the Vesper’s cruise, Colonel Wood wrote the governor: “I investigated the reports that men had been killed and robbed in the lower sound by men engaged in taking oysters and I found that none of them had substantial foundation or any foundation but that of rumor.”⁴

Then, as now, rumors can be more powerful than reality.

Captain Adam Warner

The temporary oyster law of 1891 that launched the Vesper also empowered the governor to establish a state Shell Fish Commission. Fowle chose W. H. Lucas, Chief Shell Fish Commissioner, and Captain Adam Warner, Assistant Commissioner.

Adam Warner was a resident of Washington, NC and deeply involved in the Fowle family’s fortunes.

He had been captain of S. R. Fowle & Company ships sailing to the West Indies and coastwise before the Civil War. It’s likely he was in command of the Fowle schooner Ocean Wave, returning to Washington from New York, when it was captured by the Federal blockade of Hatteras Inlet.⁵

Nellie B. Day

*Nellie B. Dey, Menhaden steamer chartered to North Carolina Shell Fish Commission, 1891. Photo credit: North Carolina Maritime Museum.*

When the charter of the Vesper expired at the end of her January cruise, the state chartered the Nellie B. Dey, a Menhaden fishing boat, from Charles A. Dey, Dey & Brothers, of Beaufort, N.C. John Dudley, employee of Dey & Brothers, served as captain during the charter. Adam Warner was placed in charge of the oyster patrolmen onboard.

Early February 1891 the weather was foul, cold with strong winds and fresh gales, a low-pressure system moved up the East Coast. The Nellie B. Dey waited for the weather to improve, but on February 20, 1891, she encountered a Maryland schooner, the Sailor’s Return, illegally dredging near the mouth of Jones Bay.

Realizing they were about to be boarded, William Wheetley, the mate of the Sailor’s Return and the only white man onboard, rowed the schooner’s oyster dredge ashore and hid it in a marsh on Brant Island. The mate’s skullduggery was observed by local oystermen and reported. The schooner’s captain and owner, J. F. Beacham, of Crispin, Maryland, was not onboard at the time but ended up forfeiting his schooner to the state.⁶

It was the first arrest of the new oyster patrol onboard the Nellie B. Dey. It was also the last.

Charles Dey wanted his boat back. It was the beginning of menhaden season and the Nellie B. Dey was a menhaden boat.

It was time for North Carolina to buy its own oyster patrol boat. They bought the steam yacht Lillie.

Lillie

The Lillie was Adam Warner’s choice. Her steam engine could drive her at 16 miles per hour, and she drew only four feet of water.⁷

In September 1891, the Lillie was hauled at Farrow’s shipyard in Washington.⁸ She was fitted with a Hotchkiss breech-loading cannon and various small arms.⁹ By October, she was on oyster patrol of the Pamlico Sound, Captain Adam Warner, commanding.

Unfortunately, the boat wasn’t paid for.

S. R. Fowle

Governor Fowle died in office in April. The temporary legislation that had appropriated $6,500 for purchase of the patrol steamboat had expired and the appropriation returned to the general fund.

When Commissioner Lucas asked Governor Holt, Fowle’s replacement, for reimbursement of the cost of the Lillie’s purchase, he told the Governor to make the payment to Samuel Fowle who had funded the purchase.¹⁰

Samuel Fowle was Governor Fowle’s father. He was concerned about the oyster industry’s financial impact, especially the impact on Washington’s two oyster canneries. During a mass meeting in Washington in February 1891, incited by the recent legislation severely restricting oyster dredging in North Carolina waters, he was among several local businessmen designated to present the town’s objections to Senators, Representatives, and the General Assembly in Raleigh.¹¹

S. R. Fowle & Company was also a significant supplier to the Lillie, charging $1,800 for services in 1891.¹²

By the time Commissioner Lucas asked Governor Holt to reimburse S. R. Fowle for the purchase of the Lillie, there was no money left.

Tangled Finances

*Thomas Michael Holt, North Carolina governor, 1891-1893. Photo credit: North Carolina Museum of History.*

Lucas lobbied Governor Holt with a ten-mile cruise down the Neuse River onboard the Lillie. Apparently, Holt was pleased with the trim little yacht.¹³ The Governor still didn’t have the funds to pay for her, but he allowed the Shell Fish Commission to take a short-term loan from Citizens National Bank. It's unclear from the historical record whether the loan went to repay Samuel Fowle’s initial purchase.

The Citizens National loan came due in October 1892 and would be paid by oyster taxes.¹⁴

Even worse, there were no oyster taxes to pay for the loan. The oyster season of 1891, November through March, was a bust. The canneries didn’t open because the anti-dredging laws prevented the volume of oysters necessary for them to operate profitably. Few oystermen purchased licenses for the 1891-1892 season. The inspectors didn’t have many oysters to inspect and tax.¹⁵

“I have done my best,” W. H. Lucas wrote to Governor Holt on April 15, 1892, “but the oyster business has been so flat that our calculations have all fallen through. When we passed the law we expected some fifteen thousand dollars from the inspection of oysters when I have only received twenty-six dollars and sixty-six cents.”¹⁶

The Shell Fish Commission couldn’t even afford insurance on the Lillie. To make ends meet, they chartered her to M. J. Fowler, owner of the Ocracoke Hotel, to run passengers between Washington and Ocracoke from July through September 1892. Adam Warren was retained as captain and paid $60 a month.

M. J. Fowler had been Washington’s chief of police for some time before being employed by the J. S. Farren & Company oyster cannery.¹⁷

Money from the charter was used to pay Lillie’s overdue insurance bill but nothing was left over to pay against the Lillie’s loan.

But before the Citizens National note came due, W. L. Lucas and Adam Warner were charged with misconduct in office.

Hinder & Harass

The charges came from P. Winslow and M. Makely, men who represented corporate oyster interests with large leases of Pamlico Sound oyster grounds. Commissioner Lucas was an outspoken opponent of the corporations and their “monopolistic schemes.”¹⁸

Winslow and Makely claimed that Lucas incited the oystermen of Vandemere to pull up the stakes marking private oyster grounds; that he threatened violence against private oyster growers who used dredges on their own plots; and that he unlawfully prohibited the taking of oysters during the summer months in water less than eight feet.

Adam Warner was accused of pulling up stakes around private oyster plots and telling oystermen that they could take oysters from private plots.

The charges concluded with “…Lucas and Warner have so administered the duties of their offices as to hinder and harass the growers and planters of oysters, thus preventing the promotion of the industry contemplated by the law.”¹⁹

The Hearings

Three hearings were held. One in New Bern for the convenience of Winslow and Makely. The hearing was almost entirely composed of testimony from plaintiff’s witnesses. The second was in Vandemere, where Lucas’ witnesses refuted any accusation that he had incited violence. The third was in Washington and remains a mystery.

In all three hearings Alfred Haywood, Governor Holt’s son, presided. A stenographer named Dobbin took notes. Mr. Dobbin transcribed his notes for the first two hearings and supplied copies to both parties. After the third hearing, he became suddenly ill.

Other stenographers were unable to decipher Dobbin’s shorthand. Before he could dictate them, he died. There was no record of the Washington hearing.

Rather than act based upon incomplete testimony, Governor Holt took no action at all. Neither Lucas nor Warner was disciplined.²⁰

The political landscape changed dramatically when Governor Elias Carr took office on January 12, 1893. He replaced Chief Shell Fish Commissioner W. H. Lucas with Julian S. Mann, a former Representative from Hyde County. Adam Warner was reappointed as Assistant Shell Fish Commissioner.

Financial troubles for the Lillie didn’t end with Governor Carr’s election. The Commission couldn’t afford an engineer for the boat. J.S. Mann had to take out a loan for $150 just to get the Lillie to Ocracoke to arrest a Maryland oysterman. And during the winter of 1893, her pipes froze and burst, requiring a $570 loan for repairs.²¹

Adam Warner’s Death

On March 11, 1894, after only a day’s illness, Captain Adam Warner died at his home in Washington. He was 63 years old. Newspapers across the state printed eulogies, admiring his life, character, and membership in the Masonic Lodge, but made no mention of the accusation of misconduct.

By February 7, 1895, Governor Carr was still asking the legislature to pay Warner’s widow, Emeline, the $1,252.20 due him for unpaid wages and out-of-pocket expenses to keep the Lillie operational. It wasn’t until March 21, 1895, that the bill authorizing payment was finally passed.²²

When Emeline died, her children were surprised to discover that their Washington house at 227 East Second Street wasn’t really theirs. The house where they had been born and raised, the house where their parents lived, didn’t belong to their parents at all. It was owned by S. R. Fowle. He had permitted Adam and Eveline Warran to live out their lives there but retained ownership of the property.

By February 1904 when Eveline died, S. R. Fowle was also dead. Even Fowle’s inheritors didn’t anticipate the arrangement.

In the end, S. R. Fowle’s children (James, Samuel Jr., Thomas, Mary and Annie were still living in Washington in 1904) deeded ownership of the property to Adam Warren’s children (Harry, John, Annie, and Sarah). It seemed only fair.