"Mailboats"

The mailboat Aleta carried mail and passengers to & from Ocracoke in the 1940s and early 1950s (see http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news052007.htm for more information). The "mailboat" was a variation of the shad boat, a type of vessel first built by George Washington Creef on Roanoke Island in the late 1800s.

The shad boat (with wide beam, round stern, and graceful lines) evolved from dugout log boats. It was ideally suited for fishing in rough water near inlets and in Pamlico Sound. The North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill in 1987 designating the shad boat the "State Boat of North Carolina.""

According to Michael B. Alford in his book, Traditional Work Boats of North Carolina, "during Prohibition times shad boat builders found a lucrative business in supplying boats to dealers in illegal alcoholic beverages...." These boats were "euphemistically referred to as mail boats," and "for obvious reasons they usually were furnished with more powerful engines than their fishing cousins."

Mailboat Aleta

The Harker's Island story of the misadventures of the Adventure, a prohibition era rum runner, is told in the song "The Booze Yacht" (sung to the tune of "The Sidewalks of New York"). I'm not sure if the Adventure was a "mailboat" but this fun song is still popular on the coast of North Carolina.

Down around the “Beehive,” Harker's Island retreat,
Every night and morning the fishermen would meet.
One day there came a rounder; came running by the door,
Said, “Boys, let’s go to Cape Lookout;
There’s a Booze Yacht run ashore.”

This way, that way, to the Cape they’d run.
The coming of the Adventure, put the fishing on the bum.
Some lost their religion and back-slid by the score,
The “King Lock” stoppers they stood waist high
When the Booze Yacht run ashore.

Times have changed since those days.
When some were up in their “Gs”.
Others, they are down and out, but most feel just like me.
Some would give a hundred, and some a little bit more,
To see another time like that
When the Booze Yacht run ashore.

This way, that way, to the Cape they’d run.
The coming of the Adventure, put the fishing on the bum.
Some lost their religion and back-slid by the score,
The “King Lock” stoppers they stood waist high
When the Booze Yacht run ashore.

Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter is the story of Ocracoke and the War of 1812. You can read it here: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news102112.htm.