Gov. W. Kerr Scott ‘found funds’ for N.C. ports in 1949

In 1924, a North Carolina Ports Commission was formed, effectively replacing the State Ship and Water Transportation Commission (SSWTC). The new commission was given the task of establishing port facilities for seagoing vessels.

A statewide bond referendum for $8.7 million to develop the facilities was placed on the ballot in November 1924 but failed to pass. The outcome was 40.8% voting in favor with 59.2% opposed. Lacking funding to accomplish its task, the Ports Commission literally folded up its tent and ceased to exist.

Despite the absence of a state ports program, Wilmington and Morehead City continued efforts to improve their respective facilities.

Historian Herbert W. Stanford III said the Morehead City port struggled to “attract much-needed business.”

“For years, the port’s main supporting commodity was mullet unloaded at its piers by fishing boats that netted the mullet in local waters. The railroad carried from the city two or three carloads of fish several days a week and became known as the ‘Mullet Line.’”

 

“There seemed to be reasonable assurance that commerce would develop…if the port’s facilities were enlarged,” Stanford said.

 “Subsequently, in 1933 a Morehead City Port Commission was formed (by the General Assembly) to investigate this possibility and study traffic potentials,” he said.

The commission was successful in securing a $400,000 loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a U.S. government-sponsored agency that had been established in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover.

The financing enabled construction of a 1,000-foot pier and a 32,000-square-foot terminal.

Still, “no import-export boom developed,” Stanford noted.

In 1945, the state legislature established the North Carolina State Ports Authority with responsibility for developing and improving harbors at Wilmington and Morehead to “benefit waterborne commerce.”

William Kerr Scott (went by Kerr, pronounced “car”) took the state by storm when he was North Carolina’s governor from 1949-53.

 

The late Philip Gerard, an author and professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said Gov. Scott accomplished some “amazing” things in just four years related to transportation, public education and public health.

Gov. Scott proposed the issue of $7.5 million in bonds for construction and improvement of the deepwater ports at Wilmington and Morehead City to handle oceangoing vessels. 

The legislature approved this measure in 1949 without a single dissenting vote.

“Remarkably, he (Gov. Scott) accomplishes all of this, raising only one tax: a penny per gallon of gas to fund roads. He leaves the state treasury with a surplus of $40 million – which gives him special pleasure, having been accused of attempting to bankrupt the state with overambitious plans,” Gerard said.

 Known as “The Squire of Haw River,” Gov. Scott enjoyed tremendous popularity, especially within farming communities. He called his supporters the “Branchhead Boys,” people who lived at the head of the branch or the head of the creek, and therefore, were “the most rural of the rural.”

 

The late Dr. Julian McIver Pleasants of Davidson, N.C., a retired history professor, said Gov. Scott “was the most controversial, polarizing…and successful North Carolina politician of his age – the most influential governor in the state’s history.”

“Two successful, progressive governors who knew Scott’s contributions well praised his work,” Dr. Pleasants said. “Jim Hunt (shown above) called Scott the state’s ‘political savior,’ and Terry Sanford (shown below) lauded Kerr Scott as the ‘Great Agrarian’ who put ‘a new pulse beat into the progressive heart of North Carolina.’”

 

Raleigh newspaper reporter John Simmons Fentress said former Gov. Scott was “stubborn as an Alamance mule and just as unpredictable.”

“Scott was essentially a needler, a provoker, a builder of fires under the foot-draggers and the indolent,” Fentress said.