Randy Slavich
Biloxi luggers continue a heritage that began with sailing vessels in the middle of the 19th century. FRANKA, based in Bayou la Loutre, Louisiana, was built in 1950 at a Biloxi, Mississippi, boatyard established in 1896 by Jacky Jack Covacevich, one of the region’s many Croatian immigrants. The boat was built for the grandfather of her current owner, Randy Slavich.
You can still find the old girls, though their numbers—once in the hundreds—have dwindled to a few dozen. South of New Orleans, Louisiana, traditional wooden luggers tie up at Empire, Buras, St. Bernard Parish, and other oystering ports deep down in the Mississippi River Delta in shrimpers’ enclaves from Bayou Lafourche east to Biloxi, Mississippi, and you see them in yacht marinas along the northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico. On a fair day, you can see luggers towing oyster dredges near the Chandeleur Islands east of the Delta or dragging shrimp nets. You might spot one of their yachty cousins on a family cruise to the nature preserve at Deer Island off Biloxi or the red-brick bastion of the Civil War–era fort on Ship Island south of Gulfport.