As German submarines torpedoed merchant ships out in the Atlantic, one of the islanders was assigned to search the beaches for corpses. Others, when they heard the explosions offshore, had the duty of taking their boats far out into the Atlantic to search for survivors and the dead. (Photo-essay #18 in my "Working Lives" series.)
Commercial fishing
Mending Net at Hatteras, 1939
In this fourth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, we can see a quartet of Hatteras fishermen getting their gill net ready for fall fishing: patching holes, mending tears. The date is August 1939.
“A Collection of Log Huts, Inhabited by Fishermen”: Stumpy Point, 1888
Traveling down Pamlico Sound in 1888, a New York Times correspondent found "a collection of log huts, inhabited by fishermen" at Stumpy Point, N.C. He wrote, "The ground on which these huts are built is so boggy that the lowest tier of bunks . . . is generally half full of water."