Shad Boats

The North Carolina shad boat is emblematic of the post-Civil War–era South. It embodies innumerable aspects of this period of its region’s historical resource use and development patterns. The changes it has gone through in design, power, and function perfectly mirror a unique slice of Americana. A shad boat is a utilitarian, carvel-planked workboat built on a carved “bottom piece” as opposed to a standard keel. Usually about 24′ long, they were adaptations of earlier dugouts called kunners. The original shad boats of the late 1870s were designed for sail, but later versions were adapted for inboard engines; combined with a shortage of materials such as naturally crooked knees, these powered shad boats began to take on the qualities of a “deadrise” hull type. This evolution has led to some controversy as to whether the later versions are, in fact, shad boats, deadrise shad boats, or round-chined deadrises. Most people on Roanoke Island tend to lean toward a broad definition and embrace all versions as the shad boats that have become an important part of their identity. George Washington Creef of Wanchese, North Carolina, is credited with designing and building the first shad boat in the late 1870s. Various builders around the tidewaters of Dare County continued to build shad boats and tweak the design for 50 years or more, marking the shift from the age of sail to that of the internal combustion engine, and in 1987 the state legislature designated it the Official State Historic Boat of North Carolina. While shad boats have been employed in many of the state’s tidewater fisheries, they are more than just utilitarian workhorses for artisanal fishermen. Ingrained in their sweeping lines and seakindly forms are myriad influences that go back thousands of years to the Croatoan tribe of the Outer Banks. Ben Brown of Wanchese has a passion for shad boats that goes back to his childhood, which wasn’t so long ago. “I have been studying them since I was little boy,” says the 23-year-old fisherman and boat carpenter. “I don’t know what it is; something about them.” Brown recalls his father buying him an old skiff when he was 12 years old, and he credits that boat with teaching him most of what he knows about boat carpentry. “It was one disaster after another. One time I was digging rot out of the side, and I dug out so much I didn’t know how I could fix it, and I fell down on the floor and I was crying and my dad grabbed me and said, ‘You got this. You’ll figure it out.’ And I did. I learned a lot from that boat. I learned there’s always a way to fix something.” When he heard his uncle was selling a shad boat built in 1980, Brown went over to the mainland to talk to him. “I told him I wanted to buy it. He had another one but hadn’t been using