A Bluebird Day: Milton Styron Recalls the Charlie Mason Menhaden Steamer
Milton Styron of Davis was interviewed in 2009 by B. Garrity-Blake for the project Raising the Story of Menhaden Fishing. Mr. Milton passed away in 2015. Photo by Milton Styron by Scott Taylor, Photo of Charlie Mason Pogie Boat courtesy of Philip Howard. Reprinted from Tradewinds Magazine, 2019.
“Usually menhaden fishing cut out before Christmas. If it was warm and the weather was right there would still be fish here, so after Christmas they’d start back and fish then as long as they could. They’d go to Ocracoke and Hatteras. Back then the boats were small enough that they could go out Ocracoke Inlet. They didn’t have to depend on going around the shoals.
“That day I was on the Mississippi. Farley Styron was captain. That was my first day! I was twenty-four years old, just a young’un to most of those men on there. But I had been fishing here in the Sound on a striker boat and so that’s how I got the job. I had that experience. On that day, January 1st 1948, we went out Ocracoke Inlet, went through Wallace’s Channel, Ocracoke Inlet, and we headed north towards Hatteras, towards the bight. There was us and Roy Goodwin on the Fernandina.
“We were going along and it was calm and the sea was almost flat. Several of us were standing up on the bow and we heard fish flipping. So Farley stopped the boat and I got off on the striker boat and went out there looking. It was early enough you couldn’t see too good, but I could hear them. And when I got right in them I could see them flip, too. And not only that, I saw the bubbles arising. Back in the 40s that’s the way they’d find the fish, by bubbles. You’d go see solid bubbles arising everywhere around you.
“I knew that those fish were there. So the crew got off in the purse boats. And I hollered and told them that fish were there. When they got right there, I set them. I went to the back of the net, tied the corks up on the striker boat.
“And not a sign of a fish! They started to pursing that net and not a sign of fish. And the old pros, I could hear them grumbling. Now I’m just a twenty-four-year-old, a young’un, and here he has gone and set us all ‘bull’ the first thing. When you didn’t get no fish it was called a bull set.
“But directly the fish broke on her. All at once here they come. The whole net shaking, the water, everywhere. It was those roe shad. The last ones, I reckon, caught that year. And we caught about 175,000. That set kept me out of trouble!
“Then we headed back towards Ocracoke Inlet. It was getting up close to the middle of the day when we got up there. And the fleet, I don’t know how many boats there were there, eight or ten or twelve boats were fishing. I remember the Whitehurst was one of them and J.B. Weeks, I believe was there. And you could see solid black beds of fish. They’d go set and after they got them pursed up and boats come alongside, and it would take two crews to raise them up so they could bail them. See, you did everything by hand then.
“We went alongside of the Whitehurst and helped them get their fish. And then we went and set and we couldn’t handle them. The fish were hard workers. And for some reason Wiley Lewis on the Charlie Mason came and helped us get our net up. And we deck loaded her right there. Had to put the boards up and deck load her.
“Now, it was a bluebird day. Not a cloud in the sky. Just as pretty, shirt sleeve weather in January. Just a light air a’blowing and no swell, either, then. But it started to rain about the time we went in the Inlet and started through Wallace’s Channel. Those clouds, the weather moves fast that time of year in the wintertime. So we went in the Ocracoke Inlet and headed right on for the mouth of the river, Adam’s Creek. It started to sprinkling and it was foggy. And when we got up in Adam’s Creek between the head of the creek and the steel bridge, a squall come out of the south a’thundering and lightning. I mean, it was one of them times. It was rough, the wind was. We had to stop right in there until that went by.
“If we had been in the ocean it would have been bad, see. And evidently the Charlie Mason, something happened to the purse boats when they were hoisting them. And the net went overboard and got around the wheel, propeller. And that’s the reason they didn’t have any power. She washed up on the beach on Ocracoke. I believe it was the striker boatman, something happened and he fell in the fish hold. He was killed that night. That was January 1st, 1948.
Words to Charlie Mason Pogie Boat (Lyrics by Charles Stowe of Hatteras, Courtesy of Connie Mason); you can hear Stowe sing the song here.
It was the first of January in the new year ‘48
While fishing off the Loop Shack, Charlie Mason met her fate.
It was a pretty day that morning, with a light southerly wind
In the evening it looked different, the cap thought he should come in.
He give orders to pick up port boat and the starboard, too.
When the falls broke on the starboard side, the net went in the screw
Now, Wiley called the coast guard, “Nan Mike Nan 2-9
Send your 83 footer and your best piece of line.”
The crew they man the patrol boat immediately left the station
Proceeded through the inlet, up to the Charlie Mason
They got the line made fast when the bit broke like a match
Then Wiley knew he’d lost his boat, and all of his catch.
I’m coming ashore Coast Guard, you better make a start
Then the crew of the Coast Guard Station broke out their old beach cart
They backed up the bomb service for the beach cart to hook
There was nothing but Core Sounders anywhere that you might look.
And then Van Henry said, “Stanley hear my plan
Harvey Smith says he’ll pay us thirty grand
He’ll pay that sum if we can float,
That Charlie Mason pogie boat.”
Now Lum he said to William, “You load the old Lyle gun,”
When he went to pull the lanyard you could see the fellows run
The Lyle Gun she wouldn’t fire, it was an awful disgrace
Lum couldn’t see a blessed thing, his hat blew in his face.
But they finally got the hawser out and tied it to the mast
They stepped the crotch and fixed the buoy the thing was rigged at last
First man crawled in the buoy, the crew they heaved around
He was so heavy the hawser sagged, poor Devil nearly drowned.
Now all the men were saved that night all except’n one
This man he had a heart attack his name was Peyton Young
Ansley O’Neill brought him over to the Coast Guard Station
The crew they worked him over on artificial respiration.
And then Van Henry said, “Stanley hear my plan
Harvey Smith says he’ll pay us thirty grand
He’ll pay that sum if we can float,
That Charlie Mason pogie boat.”
Up at Travis Williams’s you could hear this conversation,
“If I had the equipment, I’d float that Charlie Mason!”
But Stanley Wahab told his men, “You float that craft for me!”
And Sunday the 4th of April, she was in Beaufort, NC.
