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Rottenwood creek fishing3/17/2023 ![]() Maurice Ballance was about seven years old when his uncle by marriage had the “Blanche” built. The history of the Blanche was compiled by talking to islanders and fishermen who remembered and worked on the boat. In that year, the “Blanche” was donated to the museum by another island fisherman, James Barrie Gaskill (the son of one of the boat’s former owners) and since then she has shown how, through contributions of time, hard work, and money, a community can save and preserve a part of its culture. Her story provides a fascinating look at the island’s fishing traditions from the 1930s until 2006. Today she sits in a wooden cradle in the yard of the Ocracoke Museum, where she serves as an exhibit of Ocracoke’s maritime heritage. With the work near completion, the Blanche looks great! He, along several volunteers from the Maritime Museum, worked with Ocracoke volunteers Tom Wright and Tom Payne to replace the rotten wood in the deck, the rub-rails, the washboards and the gunwales, and apply a new coat of paint. (Boats are traditionally referred to in the feminine gender.) Craig Wright, a boat-builder at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, NC, was commissioned to oversee the work. This past spring the “Blanche,” now belonging to the Ocracoke Preservation Society, was once more the object of much sawing and hammering, as boat-builders and volunteers set out to restore her to her former glory. ![]() (He had another boat, the “Lela”, named for his older daughter.) Blanche Howard Joliff, now in her nineties, still remembers how happy she was when her father named the boat for her. ![]() Proud of his well-designed craft–a traditional deadriser-Stacy Howard gave it the name of his teenaged daughter, Blanche. The work was finished by another island boat-builder, Homer Howard, who added a rounded cabin near the prow. Seventy-five years ago an Ocracoke fisherman, Stacy Howard, commissioned a master boat-builder, Tom ‘Neal, to begin building him a fine new fishing boat. ![]()
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