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.)
Harkers Island N.C.
A Ghost in a Phosphorescent Sea
Around midnight on the night of July 1st, 1916, Russell Coles and his crew were returning from Cape Lookout Shoals when what seemed to them to be a strange glowing specter rose up in the sea before them.
From Harkers Island to Rockyhock– More Photographs from the National Fisherman
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has recently made available more than 20,000 photographs of America's commercial fishing industry that originally appeared in the pages of National Fisherman. Last week I highlighted several of the magazine's photos from Beaufort, N.C., in the 1930s and '40s. Today I want to share photographs that take us to Hatteras, Buxton, Harkers Island, Wanchese, Belhaven, Rockyhock and several other parts of the North Carolina coast.
A Harkers Island Christmas
“I remember when the biggest joy of Christmas for me was getting to ride the mail boat over to Beaufort and just look at the five and dime and the drugstore. We'd go down on the shore, bundled up, head and ears, and the mail boat came from down at the center of the island. We'd get in the broom grass and watch for it, and they'd come pick us up.”
The Fishermen’s Revolt– Southport to Swan Quarter
The more I looked, the more I got the impression that the period from 1947 to 1953 was one of considerable labor unrest throughout the fishing industry on the North Carolina coast.
Reflections on Ulrich Mack’s Inselmenschen – Island People
I want to thank you all for inviting me to join in your celebration of this beautiful new museum’s opening and its inaugural photography exhibit, Ulrich Mack’s “Island People.”
The Lighthouse’s Last Keeper
I was recently a guest at the beginning of this official celebration for the Cape Lookout Light Station’s 150th year of service that ends tonight. That was three weeks ago and I imagine that many of you were there. For those of you that could not make it, I want to tell you that it was quite a day.
David Cecelski 