Roanoke Island's Boating Heritage

By R. Wayne Gray and Nancy Beach Gray

Those fortunate enough to live on Roanoke Island have always depended on boats. In exploration-era sketches, Native American Algonquins were depicted in their dugout canoes. English settlers took the native concept a step further, developing kunners and, later, periaugers. Sloops and schooners made it possible to trade with far-off lands. Shad boats allowed fishermen to catch enough fresh product to ship to northern markets. Shrimp boats, crab boats, and trawlers brought about a new level of financial independence. Charter boats went past the limits of sound waters to the deep sea, carrying sport fishermen who were ready to pay for the chance to land a Gulf Stream trophy. Today's luxury yachts would boggle the minds of 20th-century backyard boatbuilders. Whether the need for a boat was transportation, subsistence fishing, making a living, or recreation, boatbuilding became a skill many residents picked up out of necessity. This skill matured into a trait that many believe runs deep in the genetic makeup of the local population.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: May 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781439660676

R. Wayne Gray

R. Wayne Gray and Nancy Beach Gray are researchers, writers, and historians who continue to document their beloved Outer Banks.

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contributor.

INTRODUCTION

A fascination with the sea and its boats was dominant in Native American culture long before the first settlers came to the Outer Banks. This love affair with the local waters evolved into a continuing intertwining with early Roanoke Islanders and their isolated environment.

These men of Roanoke, living on an island, inset and protected from the Atlantic’s harsh nor’easters and storms, began building every kind of boat out of necessity to meet the needs of their ever-changing environment. Boats were built to suit the regional conditions—shallow waters, narrow inlets and bays, and rough seas. Different boats were built to accommodate transportation, trade, and fishing. And boats were adapted to the waters they sailed.

Traveling before the advent of highways and bridges, every family had some kind of boat to journey to other villages for weddings, funerals, camp revivals, and other needs. Early Roanoke Islanders built schooners for trading with the West Indies, carrying lumber products and often returning with rum, molasses, and sugar. George Washington Creef, in turn, designed and built fat-bellied shad boats to work the shallow waters, carry heavy loads, and travel with speed through rough seas to meet the rising demands of heavy catches during the shad runs.

The geography of the Outer Banks and rising industries lent itself to the study of different boats. Also, the first Roanoke Islanders surely studied the hulls of the many shipwrecks for boatbuilding ideas, much like the Wright brothers watched gannets for endless hours for flying ideas. It is certainly possible that shipwrecks had a direct effect on the critical thinking of men destined to build boats for their pleasure and livelihood.

The ocean is an integral part of Roanoke Islanders’ lives. Its salt flows through their veins. Many of them are boatbuilders, known for their ingenuity and quality of their work. At present, more custom-made fishing boats and yachts are built on Roanoke Island than any place on the Eastern Seaboard. This represents a unique boatbuilding heritage that is internationally recognized. Boatbuilding on the island has become an Outer Banks tradition and legend based on the early pioneer builders like Omie Tillett, Sheldon Midgett, and Warren O’Neal.

In some manner, every family on Roanoke Island is affected by boatbuilding, whether their family claims the heritage of building early shad boats or they are employed by the current multimillion-dollar yacht industry. Boatbuilding has transitioned from the simple, functional commercial and sportfishing boats to the development of yachts with amenities, space, electronics, and design for global sailing. Nearly all the contemporary builders are locals who were guided in the boatbuilding craft by the early pioneer builders.

Boatbuilding on Roanoke Island is a way of life that is like a thread running through the families of the community. The boats, like their builders, not only link the past to the present, but they also represent the very finest in construction and attention to detail, making them internationally recognized as boats constructed by superb designers and craftsmen who have taken boatbuilding to a higher level. These boatbuilders are people of the water: Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business on great waters; they have seen the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep (Psalm 107:23–24).

Publisher Theodore De Bry’s engravings fascinated Europeans curious about the secrets of the New World. De Bry transposed John White’s drawings onto copper plates to illustrate Thomas Harriot’s chronicle, Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. On this map, Algonquin fishermen from the native village of Roanoac are seen paddling their dugout canoe toward a weir. (Courtesy of OBHC.)

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DUGOUTS, KUNNERS,

AND PERIAUGERS

As an explorer and artist, John White illustrated the process Carolina Algonquins used to make a dugout canoe. They chose a tall, straight tree, perhaps a swamp or white cypress. Scientist Thomas Harriot wrote that the canoe could be made onely with the helpe of fire, hatchets of stones and shels. (Courtesy of OBHC.)

As vital members of the 1585 voyage to Roanoke conceived by Sir Walter Raleigh, White and Harriot