Volume XI
Number 36
THE STATE February5
1944
A Weekly Survey of North Carolina
Knirrrit
»*
If
ООП
J cU«« mailer. Juno 1, 1033, al Ihe PootoBce a« Kaloigli, Norlli Carolina, und*r Ibo Act of Ifarcli 3, 1879.
Steamboating on the Tar
An old-1 inter al I he business gives you a
description of river navigation as il was
practiced in eastern Carolina a half cen¬
tury or more ago.
YES. SIR";
мМ
Captain Bob
Zoeller, glancing idly out of the
office window. “I reckon you'd
call them pood old days. They cer¬
tainly were different from modern
times, particularly so far as trans¬
portation is concerned.”
Captain Boh had come to Raleigh
on a little business trip. He had a
little time on his hands, while waiting
for a bus to Tnrboro, so lie dropped
in to chat a while.
“I’ll get home in time for supper,"
he said. “And that makes me think
of the way folks used to have to travel
fifty years or so ago. For instance,
take a resident of Washington. X. C.,
who wanted to come up here to the
state capital. He'd get up at 5:00
o’clock in the morning in order to be
on time to catch the l-»at to Tarboro.
The boat left at 6:00 o’clock and ar¬
rived at Tarboro at about 4:00. Some¬
times much later than that, depending
on the amount of freight and also on
the depth of water in the river. He
spent the night in Tarboro and caught
the early morning train for Selma.
There he'd have to change trains, and
he got to Raleigh around 3 :00 or 4 :00
in the afternoon.
“So you see, it was practically a
two-day trip. Today you can make the
same journey in less than three
hours.”
Several Boats in Operation
Captain Bob live- in Tarboro. For
many years he was a river steamboat
man, operating boats between Wash¬
ington ami Tarboro. You see, the
Clyde and Old Dominion lines used to
run big boat* n.« far as Washington.
Their cargoes would be transferred to
lighter craft, because the big vessel.*
drew too much water. There were n
number of these boats that ran up
and down the Tar River between
Washington and Tarboro. Among
them were the Beaufort, the Green -
rille, the R. L. Myers, the Margie.
the Shiloh, the Tarboro. the Alpha
ami the Bela.
“How come Alpha and Beta?” we
inquired.
"I believe it was Captain Kd
Chirk's idea,” ho replied. “Either hie
or Captain Styron’s. It was Mr.
Clark’s ambition to have a largo fleet
of boats. He named the first one Alpha
and the second one Beta, and he in¬
tended going down the whole length
of the Greek alphabet. However, Beta
was as far as he got. Incidentally, ev¬
erybody along the Tar River called
her the ‘Beet
а' Г
Steambonting on the Tar was quite
a business fifty, sixty ami seventy
years ago. As a matter of fact, it
wasn’t until 1923 that the operation
of the last river freight boat to Tar¬
boro was discontinued. Captain Bob
was interested in both the Shiloh and
the Tarboro. Dave Lytton built them
but Captain Hob superintended the
work.
“The Shiloh had a screw propeller.”
he told us. “She was 100 feet long.
The Tarboro was 82 feet long. She
was a stern-wheeler. Guess how much
water she drew?”
"Three feet,” we guessed.
“She drew only sixteen inches." he
stated. “And she was as sweet a boat
as I ever bandied. Of course all river
boats had to have tint bottoms, othcr-
( Continued on page twenty-one)
THE COVER PICTURE
A splendid character study
of a typical Coast Guardsman.
He is Nelson Midgett, generally
known as “Nell” Midgett,
Chief Motor Machinist Mate,
Oregon Inlet Coast Guard Sta¬
tion. He has been in the service
for 30 years.
When the submarines were
so active off Nags Head and
Hatteras, Nell was in the thick
of it and was constantly on
patrol with the commander of
the station, Chief Boatswain
Mate T. J. (“Jep”) Harris.
Both Midgett and Harris were
advanced in rating on account
of their outstanding activity in
the submarine warfare.
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