Life-Saving surfmen were paid ‘not to fish’

About all of the U.S. Life-Saving Service members who manned the earliest Carteret County, N.C., stations established between 1888-96 at Cape Lookout, Portsmouth and Core Banks were born and raised in Down East Carteret County.

 

These were highly prized federal government jobs that paid steady wages to these local fellows for doing what they so enjoyed – working on the water.

These were dangerous jobs with long hours, but Down East boys and men were accustomed to the lifestyle, having been raised as boatbuilders, fishermen, whalers and waterfowlers.

The surfmen trained, practiced and watched for ships in distress. 

There was precious little time for relaxation, but the Portsmouth Island Life-Saving Station surfmen and local fishermen occasionally enjoyed whacking balls with wooden mallets and rolling them about through wickets on four manicured “croquet diamonds” on the village lawn.

 

“That was the only recreation we had,” a village elder once told Dr. David Cecelski, an academic historian with family roots in Carteret County. He has written volumes about life in coastal North Carolina.

“We took it serious, too, I’m telling you,” the villager said. “If it got dark on us, and we were still playing a game, the balls and wickets were left there, as is.” The players would come back, pick up and start again the next afternoon.

“There weren’t nobody to wander in and disturb the playing field,” the villager remarked.

 

Dr. Ceselski said the Portsmouth village champion was Washington “Wash” Roberts (shown below), a handsome head surfman and jack of all trades, noted for his carpentry, masonry, boat building and coffin making skills.

 

When the Portsmouth Life-Saving Station opened in 1894, its keeper Ferdinand G. Terrell made Roberts one of his first hires. Roberts continued his career with the Life-Saving Service/Coast Guard through 1930…as the croquet matches “intensified.”

Portsmouth players challenged teams from fishing villages all up and down the Outer Banks to play a few wickets, and “they’d take the mailboat to engage in spirited contests with them.” Matches drew crowds of spectators.

 

“Why, you’d think it would have been a baseball game,” remarked Portsmouth resident Lionel Gilgo. “The field would be full of people.”

Gilgo especially remembered the day when Wash Roberts and Portsmouth locals loaded the mailboat to travel down Core Sound to Marshallberg “to defend the island’s honor.”

Roberts won the match and, when he returned, “we give him a celebration,” Gilgo said.

In the fall and winter seasons, all the men in Portsmouth went “out oystering.” There were huge oyster rocks on the sound side of Portsmouth. Imagine the community oyster roasts they had on the village lawn.

 

The Coast Guard decommissioned the Portsmouth station in 1937. The building was then abandoned, but the facility became part of the National Park Service (NPS) in 1966, when all of Core Banks was authorized to become Cape Lookout National Seashore. Portsmouth’s Coast Guard station has been restored and preserved.

 

The Cape Lookout station, which was decommissioned in 1982, enjoys the same NPS protection. The building still stands, with renovation pending.

The Core Banks station, which was directly across Core Sound from the community of Atlantic, is gone. The building burned in the 1970s, long after it had been vacated and decommissioned.

Memories of the three Down East Life-Saving Stations will never perish. They are preserved at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

For many years, the Core Sound museum leadership team has hosted parades, reunions and birthday parties in tribute to the Life-Saving/Coast Guard heritage and culture that still permeates the region.