your oysters. You Brunswick County 

 old-timers boast on yours too. And 

 down at New River, you all act like 

 you invented the oyster. But even 

 though I know you're all wrong — 

 Newport River oysters are the best — I 

 don't mind people standing up for their 

 homegrown shellfish. I'm glad to argue 

 oysters with anybody so long as it 

 involves plenty of shucking and 

 sampling. 



There's only one problem: Oysters 

 have practically vanished in North 

 Carolina. We're all arguing about 

 oysters that we used to have but don't 

 anymore. A century ago, Carolina 

 watermen harvested nearly 2.5 million 

 bushels of the tasty bivalves a year. 

 Last year, our watermen harvested less 

 than 2 percent of that amount, a mere 

 42,000 bushels. We don't have a single 

 oyster cannery left. Coastal restaurants 

 import oysters from the Gulf of 

 Mexico. And even at the Mill Creek 

 festival, the fire-and-rescue squad has 

 to look beyond the Newport River to 

 feed us hungry hordes of oyster lovers. 



What happened to our oysters? 

 The complicated answer involves a mix 

 of ecological, economic and manage- 

 ment factors. Without question, though, 

 the turning point in our state's oyster 

 fortunes came in the 1890s. You'll 

 never hear a more colorful chapter in 

 coastal history than that of the oyster 

 boom of the 1 890s, but you might also 

 never hear of a period that sounds more 

 like our own. 



In 1880, the U.S. oyster industry 

 was concentrated in the Chesapeake 

 Bay. That year, Maryland watermen 

 gathered more than 10 million bushels, 

 100 times the Carolina harvest. A 

 Norfolk company opened a steam 

 cannery at Ocracoke in 1877, but it 

 was hardly typical. Most Carolina 

 watermen tonged oysters just to feed 

 their families. Outer Banks fishermen 

 did barter them for corn with farmers 

 every fall, and a few wagoners carted 

 oysters to the Piedmont. But oysters 

 still had so few markets that Pamlico 

 Sound watermen raked up small ones, 



not bothering to shuck them, and sold 

 them for a few cents a bushel to lime 

 kilns. 



The Carolina oyster industry 

 began its ascent in the 1880s. With 

 Chesapeake Bay stocks already 

 diminishing, the Baltimore canneries 

 began to look south. The Bair Broth- 

 ers opened a branch plant in New Bern 

 in 1881, but it was the Moore & Brady 

 oyster cannery at Union Point that 

 became the first real success. By 1888, 

 Moore & Brady hired 500 shuckers at 

 peak season, making it New Bern's 

 largest employer. Its workers shucked 

 as many as 2,000 bushels a day. 

 Virginia canneries also began to send 

 "buy boats" south. They bought 

 oysters from Carolina watermen, then 

 carried them back to Norfolk for 

 shucking, canning and selling as 

 "Chesapeake Bay oysters." 



The potential for the Carolina 

 oyster industry seemed limitless. In 

 1 886, a surveyor named Francis 

 Winslow charted 10,000 acres of 

 natural oyster beds in state waters. His 

 report on the Newport River estuary 

 was typical. Winslow described "large 

 and thickly stocked beds ... extending 

 nearly across the river." He counted a 

 whopping 403 acres of oyster beds in 

 the Newport, so many that he found it 

 more practical to sketch where oysters 

 were not than where they were. 



The oyster boom hit like a gold 

 rush in the winter of 1889-90. Spurred 

 by new laws opening up the state's 

 oyster rocks on an unlimited scale, the 

 Baltimore companies built large 

 canneries in Beaufort, Vandemere, 

 Washington, Belhaven, Southport, 

 New Bern and Elizabeth City. 



"Men who had never before 

 used an oyster tong could be seen 

 repairing to our oyster banks," W.T. 

 Caho, the state's shellfish commis- 

 sioner, exclaimed. "And all along the 

 marshes ... could be seen the camps of 

 hundreds and thousands who had 

 never before engaged in the oyster 

 business." 



Continued 



