Them Fish Were Firing the Water: Bill Lewis of Beaufort recalls Menhaden Fishing

Reprinted from Tradewinds Magazine, 2020, from "Raising the Story of Menhaden Fishing" oral history project, NC Humanities Council and Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. Interview by B. Garrity-Blake, Photo by Scott Taylor.

Bill Lewis of Beaufort, who passed away January 2020 at the age of 89, had an unlikely career in the menhaden fishery given that he was born on a tobacco farm in Jones County. His father’s people were from Beaufort, and a relative by the name of Captain George Lewis offered him a job on the Lloyd T, a wooden menhaden steamer. 

“In 1952 all the fishermen that fished at the Port Monmouth, New Jersey plant went on strike for higher wages. So Harvey Smith closed all his plants down - everybody came home to fish here and I was offered a job on one of the sound boats with a bunch of old fellows. I was the youngest man on the boat.”  

At that time many of the menhaden vessels were owned by individuals rather than by the company. “The Evelyn L. Willis was a sub-chaser - it belonged to a fellow that run the Standard Oil dock up town, Lon Willis. He sold fish to Piggy Potter. The Simpson Brothers belonged to Captain Berkley Simpson and his brother, Harold. Harold run the Texaco dock up there. And then another one of those chasers was named the Miss Morehead. It belonged to Charlie Bennett from Morehead – he sold to Wallace Fisheries in Morehead City.” 

As companies grew and consolidated up and down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, they began buying up independent vessels and having their own boats built or retrofitted; eventually menhaden vessels became too cost-prohibitive for any individual to afford. 

“They started making larger boats to carry more fish and refrigerating them,” Lewis explained.

The menhaden fishery dominated the economy of Carteret County for many decades, blanketing towns with the “smell of money” as factories processed the oily "pogies" into fishmeal and oil. Over time, small “hand-cranked” factories closed and vertically integrated companies along Taylor’s Creek and Town Creek hired fishermen and factory workers from Down East, Beaufort, North River, and Harlowe. The work was 'round the clock during the height of the fishing season, and factory workers caught a few winks in bunkhouses and ate at the company cookhouse. 

Bill Lewis worked on the Jarrett Bay with Captain Steve Dudley, and the Core Sound with Captain Elwood Willis. He worked his way up the ranks and became captain of the Lennoxville for Piggy Potter from 1962 until 1971. Although he fished the ocean, Lewis mostly fished the smaller “sound boats” during the summer. 

“Most of time we fished in Harkers Island channel or Gull Island slough that runs from Middle Marsh to the island toward Cape Lookout – there’s a hole there, a gathering place for menhaden,” said Lewis. “Another good place was down off Davis Shore.” 

As schools of menhaden were visible from the crow’s nest and later from airplanes, menhaden fishing was – and continues to be - a daytime operation. But Bill Lewis recalled fishing in the middle of the night off Davis Shore. 

“We left the factory dock in Beaufort Sunday at midnight on the Lennoxville. We were headed to Barry’s Bay between Atlantic and Cedar Island. We got off of Davis Shore about three o’clock in the morning and saw a great big light under the surface. Them fish were firing the water and they were solid.” 

The men were witnessing a tightly packed school of menhaden swirling through bioluminescence in the water. 

“The fellow I had to run the dry boat was named William O’Neal but they called him Corporal,” Lewis explained. The dry boat, larger than a dinghy, would be launched from the mother ship once fish were spotted, and rowed by one man while standing up, facing forward. The dry boatman’s job was to signal to the rest of the crew where the fish were by pointing with his oar. The crew would then board two purse boats and pay out the seine net between them to encircle and capture the fish.  

“I said, ‘Corporal, get the dry boat up there right in the middle of that raft of fish and you keep right straight blinking that flashlight,’ – we only had flashlights on the boat!”

The men were able to encircle the glowing ball of fish with the purse net. As this was in the early 1960s, hydraulic net-lifting devices – known as power blocks - were not yet widely used, and crewmen used their brute strength to raise the net and lift thousands of pounds of menhaden. 

“At the time, Captain Elwood Willis on the Jarrett Bay was the only one with power blocks – he had the first set that Piggy Potter bought.” 

Most of the crewmen were African American, and crews without hydraulics had a unique tool they’d use when the nets were especially heavy: the menhaden chantey. Bill Lewis heard many chanties over the years. One man would lead the song by singing a line, and about two dozen crewmen would respond, some singing alto, tenor, and bass. Between lines, all the men would lean over and pull the net in concert, timing their efforts with the song. The men claimed that a special power would be generated by their singing, enabling them to lift what would otherwise be too heavy for human strength alone. 

One can only imagine Bill Lewis’ crew on the Lennoxville that night, raising a glowing ball of fish under the stars as their harmonies drifted across the water. 

“We filled that boat,” Lewis added, nodding his head. 

In the fall, most of the vessels fished in the ocean where massive schools of menhaden overwintered off Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras. Boats would come down from Reedville, Virginia and tie up in Beaufort until Christmas. Old photographs show menhaden steamers sunk low with fish as they navigated up Taylors Creek to the factories. Quick-changing weather made menhaden fishing an exciting and sometimes dangerous enterprise in the late Autumn season. 

“I enjoyed fishing in the fall of the year,” Bill Lewis reflected. “But the year the Amagansett sunk, that wasn’t no pretty time.” 

Lewis was working on the Lynn Ann with Captain Charlie Pittman at the time. It was late November of 1964. 

“We were up there to Oregon Inlet, Wendell Shoals. The first set that morning we filled the hold with about 500 thousand of them big fish. And Charlie wanted another 100 thousand. We made nine stabs, didn’t catch a fish. Captain Curtis Lewis come along on one of Harvey Smith’s boats. He told Charlie, he said, ‘You’ve got some bad weather coming.’” 

The men hauled in their seine, pulled up the purse boats, and steamed south past Hatteras toward Ocracoke.

“About ten thirty at night the Amagansett come by us, deck loaded with those big fish. And they was splitting the sea open.” The Amagansett disappeared in the rough seas on its way to Beaufort. Bill Lewis and crew never saw the vessel again. 

“They were just off Cape Lookout," said Lewis. "The fellow had turned the boat to get her stern to the sea to free herself of water. When he tried to turn her back and got side-to in that sea, the starboards gave away and she went right on over.” 

Fortunately, a nearby menhaden vessel rescued all but one crewman from the sea. 

“They pulled all the men out of the water, saved them, except for the engineer,” Lewis recalled. “He was down in the engine room and went down with the boat.”

When the Lynn Ann came around Cape Lookout that night, Bill Lewis recalled how steep the seas were. 

“When the moon come up about twelve o’clock you could look off to the southeast. There were six rows of swells and every swell had a shadow to it. And the sixth swell was always the biggest.”

Menhaden crews have been greatly assisted by fish spotters since 1950; pilots in small Cessna planes are hired by companies to locate schools of fish – which can look like a dark oil spill in the ocean - and radio the location to the captains. Bill Lewis shared a story about a spotter pilot who had the rare distinction of being a woman. 

“Her name was June Rodd. They called her June Bug. She’d fly the sounds when her husband Dick flew the ocean. One day she set Jimmy on a dark place of fish right off Davis Island. Turns out it was cormorants! So many of them setting in the water it looked like a school of fish showing color.”

The fishing crew deployed the purse boats and encircled the “fish.” 

“June Bug got on the radio and said, ‘Captain Jimmy, the color just jumped up out of your net and flew away!’”