August 29, 2018 — Late January 1891, the steamer Vesper, rented from the Wilmington Steamship Co. and mounted with a well-used howitzer and caisson borrowed from the state of Virginia, left Elizabeth City with militiamen of the Pasquotank Rifles. Their mission: To enforce “An Act to Promote and Protect the Oyster Interests of the State” that had been passed barely a week earlier.
After three years of growing tension between North Carolina oystermen and vessels drifting down from Chesapeake Bay to harvest oysters in Pamlico and Roanoke sounds, North Carolina’s legislature had acted, creating a list of draconian restrictions on the harvest that prohibited dredging and allowed only in-state residents to gather oysters.
Tasked with telling the oyster poachers — mostly from Maryland — of the new law, as conflicts go, the North Carolina oyster war wasn’t much of a war, the rhetoric far outstripping the action.
“As she (the Vesper) proceeds on the return trip if any dredgers are found continuing to ravish the oyster beds they will be arrested, even if their boats have to be blown out of the water and their crews killed,” the Wilmington Weekly Star wrote.
In the end, the Vesper made one arrest, with other boats heeding the warning and leaving North Carolina waters.
Although short-lived and bloodless, what occurred on the water was but a part of an intersection of changing priorities in northeastern North Carolina.
Read the full story at Coastal Review Online