UNC Sea Grant ^ August, 1980 



| N. C. 



69, W °°* 



NORTH C^NA STATE LIBRAE J ^ 1Q jgy 



RALEIGH 



A Harkers Island builder works on the "flying bridge" of a sportfishing boat 



Boats as seaworthy as the people who build them 



When Ebeneezer Harker bought what was then called 

 Craney Island in the mid- 1700s, he listed his occupation as 

 "boatwright." But if boatbuilding took root on the island 

 with Harker, it lay sleeping until Brady Lewis started a 

 small boat yard there in 1926. 



The match was made, and boatbuilding spread like a 

 virus. Some people swear it's long since been programmed 

 into the genetic makeup of Harkers Island bloodlines. It was 

 a natural match. Fishermen needed boats. The material was 

 handy — strong, mannerly lumber cut from stands of Atlan- 



tic White Cedar (they call it "juniper") growing in the 

 coastal swamps. 



Boat yards sprouted and refused to die, even in the face of 

 competition from big companies manufacturing boats of 

 fiberglass and metal. There are today 41 people building 

 boats on the island, mostly in their backyards, where their 

 lumber is stacked lean-to-style and their table saws straddle 

 mounds of juniper sawdust, a sawdust so aromatic it will 



Continue on next page 



