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Coastal Review

A Daily News Service of the North Carolina Coastal Federation

Making a Way: Army Corps of Engineers 1930-1932

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ pipe-line dredge Currituck off the North Carolina coast, February 1931. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Coastal Review is featuring the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who shares on his website essays and lectures about the state’s coast. He brings readers along on his search for the lost stories of our coastal past in the museums, libraries and archives where he visits in the U.S. and across the globe. 

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I have recently been absorbed by a photograph album that the staff at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Office of History discovered in their historical collections a few years ago.

The name of the photographer who took the photographs in the album is unknown, but they are a treasure.

Dating from 1930 to 1932, the album’s photographs make up a rare, up-close portrait of Army Corps of Engineers’ dredging crews and dredge boats engaged in maintaining and improving navigation on the hundreds of miles of coastal waterways between Norfolk, Virginia, and Beaufort.

That 200-mile stretch of coastline composed the Army Corps’ “Norfolk District,” headquartered in Norfolk.

The whole album is fascinating. However, my favorite scenes are probably a series of photographs from the Scuppernong River in the spring of 1931. They chronicle the crew of one of the Army Corps’ derrick barges clearing snags, dynamiting obstructions, and straightening the banks along the narrow, upper reaches of the river.

The Scuppernong River rises in the eastern part of Washington County, N.C., and flows through Tyrrell County (highlighted here) and into the Albemarle Sound. In 1930, the largest town on the Scuppernong was Columbia, the seat of Tyrrell County, population 864. Map, courtesy of Wikipedia
The Scuppernong River rises in the eastern part of Washington County and flows through Tyrrell County, highlighted in red, and into the Albemarle Sound. In 1930, the largest town on the Scuppernong was Columbia, the seat of Tyrrell County, population 864. Map from Wikipedia

Dredging on a small, remote, out-of-the-way blackwater river such as the Scuppernong was a bread and butter job for Army Corps in those early years of the Great Depression. However, I can’t remember ever seeing that kind of work captured so fully in photographs.

Overall, the photographs are quite varied. The album even includes, for instance, a half-dozen photographs of Army Corps’ big pipeline dredge Currituck barreling through Beaufort Inlet on its way to build a new section of the Intracoastal Waterway.

In my experience, those of us who study maritime history rarely give much attention to dredging crews and their watercraft.

Working on a dredge boat was hard, dirty work. A bit like being a sailor, a bit like being a miner, a bit like being a heavy equipment operator, and a bit like being a pipe fitter and a mechanic, too.

The crews often lived on their boats for months at a time. They were not getting rich, and they moved from work site to work site, getting home, if they had a home, when they could.

Throughout the 20th century, many dredging crews all over the East Coast came from villages on the North Carolina coast.

They came from some coastal communities more than others. At Ocracoke Island, on the Outer Banks, for instance, or in Otway, in the Down East part of Carteret County, you would have been hard pressed to find a single family that did not have a father or a son who had not worked on a dredge boat at one time or another.

For more on Ocracoke Islanders and the dredging industry, see my story “Ocracoke and Philadelphia– An Outer Banks Village, a Great Seaport and the Bond between Them.” This photograph shows Delaware Avenue, Philadelphia, with the Delaware River and Benjamin Franklin Bridge in the background, early 20th century. Courtesy, kienantimberlake.org
For more on Ocracoke Islanders and the dredging industry, see my story “Ocracoke and Philadelphia – An Outer Banks Village, a Great Seaport and the Bond between Them.” This photograph shows Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia, with the Delaware River and Benjamin Franklin Bridge in the background, early 20th century. Courtesy, kienantimberlake.org

The Army Corps’ Norfolk District Photo Album, 1931-32 includes 99 photographs in all. You can now find them all online at Army Corps’ Digital Library.

I have picked out a selection of the photographs to highlight here. You will find them below, along with my annotations about the places, people, and activities depicted in them.

I have also included an especially striking photograph taken on the deck of the dredge Currituck that I found at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia.

It is an up-close view of the Currituck’s cutterhead, the mammoth dredging tool that her crew used to dig much of the Intracoastal Waterway along the North Carolina coast.

The Mariners Museum, by the way, has copies of the Army Crops photographs in its library. You can access them online.

I don’t think this is the time to discuss the overall historical impact of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the North Carolina coast, either for the good or the bad.

However, I think that I should note that few entities of any kind have shaped either the geography or economy of the North Carolina coast more over the last 150 years.

Resting in the hands of the Army Corps’ dredging crews and those of its private contractors has been the very shape of our coastline and the character of much of maritime life and work.

That has included the depths and commercial viability of our harbors; the fate of our seaports; how far our rivers can be navigated; which inlets are navigable and which are not; where ferries can run, and where they cannot; where boats can find refuge; how vulnerable, or not, coastal towns are to hurricanes; and where, if at all, our commercial fishing fleets can get to sea, among much else.

In those same hands, again for better and for worse, has been the fates of whole coastal ecosystems.

Another page of the photo album shows the aftermath of the fire that ravaged Norfolk’s waterfront on June 7, 1931. Courtesy, Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Another page of the photo album shows the aftermath of the fire that ravaged Norfolk’s waterfront on June 7, 1931. Courtesy, Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Yet in all my years of studying the history of the North Carolina coast, I have never seen a book, a museum exhibit, or a historical marker about that part of our maritime heritage.

Many a time I have looked out onto a harbor or an inlet and watched a dredging crew at work and wondered what their lives were like, and how they do what they do, and what it is like to endeavor to shape and bend the sea and shore against nature’s will.

Of course, the photographs in the Army Corps’ Norfolk District Photo Album, 1931-32 are far from the full story.

They only show us a brief moment in history, and just a few waterways. But to me they are still invaluable. At the very least, they give us a glimpse of this usually unseen part of our maritime history and leave us with a yearning to know more.

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The following is a selection of the album’s photographs and a little background on what is happening.

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This is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ derrick barge No. 14 at work on Turner’s Cut, a canal in Camden County, N.C., September 1931. Turner’s Cut was originally dug in the 1850s, presumably by slave laborers (at least if its construction was like that of all the state’s other antebellum ship canals). The 4.4-mile-long canal was designed so that vessels headed north to, or leaving south from, the Dismal Swamp Canal would no longer have to traverse Joyce’s Creek, a shallow, narrow, and winding stream that flows into the Pasquotank River and which was often called the “Moccasin Track.” The canal ran from South Mills, N.C., at the southern end of the Dismal Swamp Canal, to a broader, more navigable point on the Pasquotank closer to Elizabeth City. In 1929, the Corps of Engineers had purchased the Dismal Swamp Canal and made that whole route part of the Intracoastal Waterway (IWW), the grand network of canals and natural waterways that the Army Corps of Engineers was still in the process of building at that time. At the time of this photograph, the Corps of Engineers had completed the IWW from the Delaware River to Beaufort, N.C.. Another section of the IWW, extending from Beaufort to Wilmington, was under construction. In this photograph, the No. 14’s crew is removing a 2,500-foot-long shoal that had built up just below the canal lock at South Mills. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
This is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ derrick barge No. 14 at work on Turner’s Cut, a canal in Camden County September 1931. Turner’s Cut was originally dug in the 1850s, presumably by slave laborers, at least if its construction was like that of all the state’s other antebellum ship canals. The 4.4-mile-long canal was designed so that vessels headed north to, or leaving south from, the Dismal Swamp Canal would no longer have to traverse Joyce’s Creek, a shallow, narrow, and winding stream that flows into the Pasquotank River and was often called the “Moccasin Track.” The canal ran from South Mills at the southern end of the Dismal Swamp Canal, to a broader, more navigable point on the Pasquotank closer to Elizabeth City. In 1929, the Corps of Engineers had purchased the Dismal Swamp Canal and made that whole route part of the Intracoastal Waterway, the grand network of canals and natural waterways that the Army Corps of Engineers was still in the process of building at that time. At the time of this photograph, the Corps of Engineers had completed the Intracoastal Waterway from the Delaware River to Beaufort. Another section of the Intracoastal Waterway extending from Beaufort to Wilmington was under construction. In this photograph, the No. 14’s crew is removing a 2,500-foot-long shoal that had built up just below the canal lock at South Mills. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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Derrick barge No. 14 expanding the width of Turners Cut, September, 1931. The Cut’s existing channel is just to the righthand side of the scene. Source: Office of History, HQ, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
Derrick barge No. 14 expanding the width of Turners Cut, September 1931. The Cut’s existing channel is just to the right-hand side of the scene. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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The contract dredge Reliance on Knobbs Creek, June 1931. Knobbs Creek is a roughly 2-mile-long freshwater stream that flows into the Pasquotank River some 18 miles north of its mouth on the Albemarle Sound. The Reliance’s crew spent several months dredging a 10-foot-deep channel and a turning basin there. As with much of the Corps’ dredging work on that part of the North Carolina coast in that day, the goal of the project was to make it easier for lumber barges to navigate the waterway. Knobbs Creek’s channel had previously been too narrow for those barges to turn around, meaning they had to be towed stern-first one way or the other. Owned by the Norfolk Dredging Company, the Reliance had been doing work for the Army Corps of Engineers on the North Carolina coast for decades. The first mention that I found of her in local newspapers, in fact, was from the 15th of September, 1913. On that date, The Virginian-Pilot reported that the Reliance had sunk on the Pamlico River in a powerful hurricane that had come ashore at Cape Lookout two days earlier. She was soon refloated and back to work. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The contract dredge Reliance on Knobbs Creek, June 1931. Knobbs Creek is a roughly 2-mile-long freshwater stream that flows into the Pasquotank River some 18 miles north of its mouth on the Albemarle Sound. The Reliance’s crew spent several months dredging a 10-foot-deep channel and a turning basin there. As with much of the Corps’ dredging work on that part of the North Carolina coast in that day, the goal of the project was to make it easier for lumber barges to navigate the waterway. Knobbs Creek’s channel had previously been too narrow for those barges to turn around, meaning they had to be towed stern first one way or the other. Owned by the Norfolk Dredging Co., the Reliance had been doing work for the Army Corps of Engineers on the North Carolina coast for decades. The first mention that I found of the dredge in local newspapers, in fact, was from Sept. 15, 1913. On that date, The Virginian-Pilot reported that the Reliance had sunk on the Pamlico River in a powerful hurricane that had come ashore at Cape Lookout two days earlier. She was soon refloated and back to work. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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The Corps’ derrick barge No. 14 on a section of the Scuppernong River near Creswell, N.C., May 1931. According to the U.S. Army’s Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1931, the dredge’s crew spent 3 months that year removing snags from the upper part of the Scuppernong and trimming and straightening the river’s bank. The Scuppernong is a roughly 30-mile-long blackwater river that rises in eastern Washington County, crosses into Tyrrell County and flows into Bull Bay, on the south side of the Albemarle Sound. Prior to the 1870s, the head of navigation for steamers on the Scuppernong was a site called Spruills Bridge, 23 miles from the river’s mouth. Over the next half century, the Corps’ dredges had extended navigation a little more than 2 miles farther upriver, into a narrow, winding section of the river in Washington County, near the community of Cherry. Corps dredges had also doubled the depth of the river’s bar and done a good deal of channel dredging, including excavating a 10-foot channel from the river’s bar to the town of Columbia. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The Corps’ derrick barge No. 14 on a section of the Scuppernong River near Creswell, May 1931. According to the U.S. Army’s Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1931, the dredge’s crew spent three months that year removing snags from the upper part of the Scuppernong and trimming and straightening the river’s bank. The Scuppernong is a roughly 30-mile-long blackwater river that rises in eastern Washington County, crosses into Tyrrell County and flows into Bull Bay, on the south side of the Albemarle Sound. Prior to the 1870s, the head of navigation for steamers on the Scuppernong was a site called Spruills Bridge, 23 miles from the river’s mouth. Over the next half century, the Corps’ dredges had extended navigation a little more than 2 miles farther upriver, into a narrow, winding section of the river in Washington County, near the community of Cherry. Corps dredges had also doubled the depth of the river’s bar and done a good deal of channel dredging, including excavating a 10-foot channel from the river’s bar to the town of Columbia. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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Stern view of derrick barge No. 14 on the Scuppernong River, May 1931. According to the Corps’ annual report, the barge’s crew removed 22,152 cubic yards of earth, roots, and stumps in and along the banks of the Scuppernong that spring. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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Here we can see derrick barge No. 14’s orange-peel bucket cutting off a point of land that was protruding into the Scuppernong River, May 1931. An “orange-peel bucket” is a kind of bucket dredge, of which there are two kinds. A “clam-shell” bucket has two jaws (or shells), while the “orange-peel bucket” that we see here has three or four jaws. Both kinds of bucket dredge work the same way. The bucket hangs from a pair of wires or chains hung from the end of the dredge’s boom and powered by a double cylinder, double drum steam engine. On No. 14, the hoist operator used those wires to lower the bucket, open the bucket’s jaws and draw in earth and vegetation. He then closed and raised the bucket, turned the boom, and either lowered the load onto a scow or, in this case, onto the banks of the Scuppernong. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Here we can see derrick barge No. 14’s orange-peel bucket cutting off a point of land that was protruding into the Scuppernong River, May 1931. An orange-peel bucket is a kind of bucket dredge, of which there are two kinds. A clam-shell bucket has two jaws, or shells, while the orange-peel bucket that we see here has three or four jaws. Both kinds of bucket dredge work the same way. The bucket hangs from a pair of wires or chains from the end of the dredge’s boom and powered by a double cylinder, double drum steam engine. On No. 14, the hoist operator used those wires to lower the bucket, open the bucket’s jaws and draw in earth and vegetation. He then closed and raised the bucket, turned the boom, and either lowered the load onto a scow or, in this case, onto the banks of the Scuppernong. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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This is derrick barge No. 14’s crew evidently on the banks of the Scuppernong, May 1931. Any job in that early part of the Great Depression was a good job, but a dredge crewman’s life was no bed of roses. They worked long hours, typically seven days a week, lived on the boat, and often had to stay away from home for months at a time. In my experience, most dredgers did not consider it a bad life however, at least not so long as they had confidence in their crew mates and got along with them alright. They got a regular paycheck, and at least at a work site like the Scuppernong, locals kept their mess table well supplied with produce and wild game. Dredging crews usually had the chance to visit local dance halls and ale houses now and then, too. Along the state’s waterways, many a romance blossomed between dredge crewmen and local women, including one in my family. My grandmother’s brother, Douglass Sabiston, of Core Creek, N.C., met my great-aunt Dessie that way. At the time, Douglass was working on a dredge boat building a section of the Intracoastal Waterway that passed near Dessie’s home in Monck’s Corner, S.C. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
This is derrick barge No. 14’s crew evidently on the banks of the Scuppernong, May 1931. Any job in that early part of the Great Depression was a good job, but a dredge crewman’s life was no bed of roses. They worked long hours, typically seven days a week, lived on the boat, and often had to stay away from home for months at a time. In my experience, most dredgers did not consider it a bad life however, at least not so long as they had confidence in their crew mates and got along with them alright. They got a regular paycheck, and at least at a work site like the Scuppernong, locals kept their mess table well supplied with produce and wild game. Dredging crews usually had the chance to visit local dance halls and ale houses now and then, too. Along the state’s waterways, many a romance blossomed between dredge crewmen and local women, including one in my family. My grandmother’s brother, Douglass Sabiston, of Core Creek, met my great-aunt Dessie that way. At the time, Douglass was working on a dredge boat building a section of the Intracoastal Waterway that passed near Dessie’s home in Monck’s Corner, South Carolina. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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This is the launch Long Point, which served as the tender for derrick barge No. 14 while she was working on the Scuppernong River, May 1931. The No. 14’s crew used the Long Point in a variety of ways, including towing the boat from dredging site to dredging site and for making runs upriver to Columbia to get groceries and other supplies. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
This is the launch Long Point, which served as the tender for derrick barge No. 14 while it was working on the Scuppernong River, May 1931. The No. 14’s crew used the Long Point in a variety of ways, including towing the boat from dredging site to dredging site and for making runs upriver to Columbia to get groceries and other supplies. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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The Long Point and another tender towing the derrick barge No. 14, ca. 1931-32, place unknown, but somewhere in the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District. The view affords a good look at the barge’s superstructure, which, while far from spacious, necessarily included a boiler engine room, machine shop, a supply room, a captain’s cabin, bunks for the crew, and a mess. Source: U.S. Corps of Engineers Digital Library
The Long Point and another tender towing the derrick barge No. 14, ca. 1931-32, place unknown, but somewhere in the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District. The view affords a good look at the barge’s superstructure, which, while far from spacious, necessarily included a boiler engine room, machine shop, a supply room, a captain’s cabin, bunks for the crew, and a mess. Source: U.S. Corps of Engineers Digital Library

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To straighten the Scuppernong, No. 14’s crew sometimes removed points of land that formed bends in the river. In those cases, as we can see here, they first felled the trees on that point of land. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
To straighten the Scuppernong, No. 14’s crew sometimes removed points of land that formed bends in the river. In those cases, as we can see here, they first felled the trees on that point of land. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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In this photo, we see one of No. 14’s crewmen preparing dynamite on the banks of the Scuppernong River, May 1931. Judging by the box labels, he was using dynamite produced by the Hercules Powder Co. and the Atlas Powder Company, two of the three chemical and munitions companies that were formed when the federal courts broke up DuPont’s munitions monopoly in 1911-12. Dynamite was widely used in river dredging. In this case, the No. 14’s crew was blasting a point that protruded into the river to make the river straighter and easier to navigate. In other cases, dredge crews used dynamite to clear tree stumps (usually the remnants of bald cypress swamps), out of river bottoms. This was most commonly done for the sake of navigation, but in some cases also to clear river or sound bottoms to make way for the establishment of a seine fishery. Even in the antebellum era, historical accounts refer to fishery owners forcing enslaved African American divers to lay explosive charges in submerged cypress stumps. (For more on that topic, see my book The Waterman’s Song.) Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
In this photo, we see one of No. 14’s crewmen preparing dynamite on the banks of the Scuppernong River, May 1931. Judging by the box labels, he was using dynamite produced by the Hercules Powder Co. and the Atlas Powder Co., two of the three chemical and munitions companies that were formed when the federal courts broke up DuPont’s munitions monopoly in 1911-12. Dynamite was widely used in river dredging. In this case, the No. 14’s crew was blasting a point that protruded into the river to make the river straighter and easier to navigate. In other cases, dredge crews used dynamite to clear tree stumps, usually the remnants of bald cypress swamps, out of river bottoms. This was most commonly done for the sake of navigation, but in some cases also to clear river or sound bottoms to make way for the establishment of a seine fishery. Even in the antebellum era, historical accounts refer to fishery owners forcing enslaved African American divers to lay explosive charges in submerged cypress stumps. For more on that topic, see my book “The Waterman’s Song.” Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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Here we can see one of the dynamite blasts that the No. 14’s crew used to uproot stumps, roots, and earth and straighten the Scuppernong River, May 1931. After uprooting the largest stumps and breaking up the earth with dynamite, the crewmen would get to work with the dredge barge’s bucket. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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A man standing above No. 14’s deck, apparently working on the A-frame, February 1932. At the time, the barge was in dry dock for repairs and maintenance at a boatyard in Elizabeth City, N.C. She had had a busy year in 1931. In addition to working on the waterways seen in these photographs, she had also undertaken at least 2 other large projects: clearing snags and other obstructions along a 35-mile-long stretch of the Roanoke River, and removing shoals and clearing obstructions on a 12-mile-long segment of the Meherrin River, between the river’s mouth and Murfreesboro. In September 1931, No. 14 had also had a brief stint clearing mud, roots, and logs out of the Dismal Swamp Canal’s lock in South Mills, N.C. Source: Office of History, HQ, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers
A man standing above No. 14’s deck, apparently working on the A-frame, February 1932. At the time, the barge was in dry dock for repairs and maintenance at a boatyard in Elizabeth City. The barge had had a busy year in 1931. In addition to working on the waterways seen in these photographs, it had also undertaken at least two other large projects: clearing snags and other obstructions along a 35-mile-long stretch of the Roanoke River, and removing shoals and clearing obstructions on a 12-mile-long segment of the Meherrin River, between the river’s mouth and Murfreesboro. In September 1931, No. 14 had also had a brief stint clearing mud, roots, and logs out of the Dismal Swamp Canal’s lock in South Mills. Source: Office of History, HQ, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers

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This is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ pipe-line dredge Currituck crossing the bar at Beaufort Inlet, February 1931. By the time of this photograph, the Currituck had been working in the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District for nearly 20 years. At 197-feet in length and 1,000 tons, she was a far larger vessel than the other dredges featured in the Norfolk District Photo Album. In the 1920s and ’30s, she took the lead in the building of large sections of the Intracoastal Waterway, including the 22-mile-long canal that runs from the Pungo River to the Alligator River. According to the 1931 edition of the Dept. of Commerce’s Merchant Vessels of the United States, the Currituck typically carried six officers and a crew of 33. The high column midship is the dredge’s main spud, which is basically a heavy pipe built through the boat’s hull that could be lowered and driven into the bottom of a body of water to stabilize the craft while dredging was underway. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
This is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ pipeline dredge Currituck crossing the bar at Beaufort Inlet, February 1931. By the time of this photograph, the Currituck had been working in the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District for nearly 20 years. At 197 feet in length and 1,000 tons, the Currituck was a far larger vessel than the other dredges featured in the Norfolk District Photo Album. In the 1920s and 1930s, the dredge took the lead in the building of large sections of the Intracoastal Waterway, including the 22-mile-long canal that runs from the Pungo River to the Alligator River. According to the 1931 edition of the Department of Commerce’s Merchant Vessels of the United States, the Currituck typically carried six officers and a crew of 33. The high column midship is the dredge’s main spud, which is basically a heavy pipe built through the boat’s hull that could be lowered and driven into the bottom of a body of water to stabilize the craft while dredging was underway. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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This intimidating bit of machinery is a cutterhead (a.k.a. “rotary cutter”) resting on the deck of the Currituck in 1932. As you can see, this is a very different beast than the kind of dredge that we saw being used on derrick barge No. 14. Attached to the inlet end of a hydraulic dredge’s suction pipe, this cutterhead was a powerful, rotating instrument that broke up and then sucked in sand, mud, rock, and pretty much everything else at a dredging site, including the sea life. The dredge’s centrifugal pumps carried the loose material into pipes, which in turn carried the material to a dump site– either a barge for transport elsewhere or to a dredge spoil island or shoreline nearby. This photograph comes from the W. W. Old Collection at the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Va.
This intimidating bit of machinery is a cutterhead, or rotary cutter, resting on the deck of the Currituck in 1932. As you can see, this is a very different beast than the kind of dredge that we saw being used on derrick barge No. 14. Attached to the inlet end of a hydraulic dredge’s suction pipe, this cutterhead was a powerful, rotating instrument that broke up and then sucked in sand, mud, rock, and pretty much everything else at a dredging site, including the sea life. The dredge’s centrifugal pumps carried the loose material into pipes, which in turn carried the material to a dump site, either a barge for transport elsewhere or to a dredge spoil island or shoreline nearby. This photograph comes from the W. W. Old Collection at the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia.

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This is a smaller hydraulic suction dredge working on the North River, just east of Beaufort, Sept. 1931. In all likelihood, she is making or maintaining a channel for the use of menhaden steamers and other commercial fishing boats. The dredge may have been the Neveral, which in those days seemed to do the bulk of the harbor dredging, channel clearing, and a little bit of everything else in the Beaufort vicinity. That included the rather imposing amount of dredge work that was necessary to build the 2.3-mile-long bridge that connected Beaufort and Morehead City in 1927. At the time of this photograph, the Neveral was owned and operated by the Coastal Construction Co., but was under contract to the Corps of Engineers. As we can see, her crew has laid piping along a series of pontoons to transport the dredge spoil to land. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineer

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A final look at the Army Corps of Engineers’ crews at work. In this case, we see the Corps’ tug Richard Caswell towing the pipe-line dredge Currituck at Beaufort, N.C., February 1931. The tug’s crew has its hands full: the two vessels have come south down the Intracoastal Waterway (IWW) and are approaching the Norfolk & Southern Railroad’s bridge in a stiff northeast wind and a roiling tide. They made it, but only after tying up the Currituck’s pontoons on the bridge escarpment and then having the tug go back and retrieve them after the Currituck made it to the other side. The Richard Caswell was one of several tugs that towed dredge boats and barges for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District. Like all tugs, she was a stout, seaworthy craft, and her 9-man crew had to be tough sailors who knew their jobs. Built in Southport, N.C., in 1913, the Caswell was an 84.9 ft.-long tug with a displacement of 200 tons. On the day shown here, she was leading the Currituck to a rendezvous with a larger, oceangoing tug on the other side of the Beaufort Bar. That tug would take her south of Wilmington to begin work on a new section of the IWW. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
A final look at the Army Corps of Engineers’ crews at work. In this case, we see the Corps’ tug Richard Caswell towing the pipe-line dredge Currituck at Beaufort, February 1931. The tug’s crew has its hands full. The two vessels have come south down the Intracoastal Waterway and are approaching the Norfolk & Southern Railroad’s bridge in a stiff northeast wind and a roiling tide. They made it, but only after tying up the Currituck’s pontoons on the bridge escarpment and then having the tug go back and retrieve them after the Currituck made it to the other side. The Richard Caswell was one of several tugs that towed dredge boats and barges for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District. Like all tugs, it was a stout, seaworthy craft, and the nine-man crew had to be tough sailors who knew their jobs. Built in Southport in 1913, the Caswell was an 84.9 foot-long tug with a displacement of 200 tons. On the day shown here, it was leading the Currituck to a rendezvous with a larger, oceangoing tug on the other side of the Beaufort Bar. That tug would take it south of Wilmington to begin work on a new section of the Intracoastal Waterway. Source: Office of History, HQ, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

About David Cecelski

Historian David Cecelski shares his time between Durham and his family's homeplace in Carteret County. He has written several award-winning books and hundreds of articles about history, culture and politics on the North Carolina coast. His writing focuses on telling stories from his little corner of the world that illuminate American history more broadly. Dr. Cecelski was recently the co-recipient of the N.C. Literary and Historical Association’s Crittenten Award for lifetime achievement.

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