Have you heard the one about ‘Sneads Ferry Sneakers?’

Over the years, the fishing village of Sneads Ferry in Onslow County, N.C., has received more than its fair share of printer’s ink in Our State magazine and assorted travel and tourism publications.

It’s due partly because of the allure of “Sneads Ferry Sneakers” and partly because of local shrimpers.

Let’s start with the famous line of footwear that won’t help you run faster or jump higher. Rather, Sneads Ferry Sneakers will keep you from slipping and sliding on a wet boat deck. They’re white and not black for a reason as well – so as not to leave scuff marks.

The term “Sneads Ferry Sneakers” was branded and copyrighted in 1992 by Sherry Thurston, a local Sneads Ferry artist. That was the year when she had a batch of T-shirts with an image of the white boots printed up to sell at the annual Sneads Ferry Shrimp Festival.

 

Word got out, and Sherry said she had people banging on her door “at 11 o’clock at night” before the festival opened the next day wanting shirts.

 

Her art studio in Sneads Ferry has been featured in the alumni publications of East Carolina University. Sherry graduated as a fine arts major from ECU in 1970.

 

Before Capt. Tommie Jarman, owner of Reel Livin’ Fishing Charters in Sneads Ferry, allowed Elizabeth Hudson, Editor in Chief at Our State, to climb aboard his 35-foot wooden shrimp trawler named Faith & Hope, for a “working waters” tour, he insisted she slip on a pair of “Sneads Ferry Sneakers.”

 

Hudson wrote about that experience in her magazine column published in May 2022. “Sneads Ferry…on the New River in Onslow County has been christened the ‘Shrimp Capital of the East Coast,’” she said.

“Judging from the number of trawlers and fishing boats I saw outside of Davis Seafood, outside of Mitchell’s Seafood, outside of Grant’s Oyster House,” Hudson said, “I’d say it’s a safe bet that there are far more shrimp here than people.”

“I’ve been a passenger on a few North Carolina boats over the years…pleasure cruises all, but this was the first one where I got to do some work,” Hudson wrote. “I was aboard Capt. Jarman’s boat to learn firsthand what goes into netting a haul of shrimp, what it means to make a living on the water.”

“During my three-hour tour with Capt. Jarman,” Hudson said, “I watched him work, gauging our location for the best catch; maneuvering the hydraulics that lower the antennae-like outriggers; hooking nets; clipping pulleys and cables; raising nets and funneling the load of slippery shrimp onto the boat, where I understood, gratefully, why I was wearing those rubber boots.”

“When I say that I ‘did some work,’ I mean that Capt. Jarman let me put on a pair of thick sorting gloves to help filter the shrimp from crabs and other fish…which is to say that I did nothing at all other than stand in awe of the people, like Capt. Jarman, who make up our fishing industry, the ones who operate the boats and run the charters and ply the waters and support these coastal communities and give our state an economic backbone on which we can all shoulder so much pride.”

Hudson signed off her column this way: “At the end of our run, as the sun lowered and the water shimmered, Capt. Jarman dropped me off at the marina, my cooler full of fresh shrimp, my heart full of admiration for these fishermen and -women, and my appreciation as deep as the briny sea.”

Did you know bananas are bad luck at sea?