Continued from page 12 day and yesterday is like the difference between day and night Up to 50 clammers used to work off Little Beach (Barnegat) big raking for clams. The bay was full of scallops. You could eat them right out of the shell •just like a peanut and sweet as honey."

Over the years Charlie guided for a number of gun clubs, including the Little Beach, Gunning River and Sloops Head clubs. They killed brant by the barrel full. Charlie was also a decoy carver and has carved more than a thousand decoys in his lifetime.

In I 963 he built the fishing boat Old Barney. She was built of Douglas fir and took nine months to build. He sailed her as a party boat in the summer and a commercial longllner in the winter.

They fished primarily for codfish, setting out six or eight tubs of line. Each tub had a mile of line with 450 hooks; each hook was baited by hand with clams. They would bait them two or three days ahead of time - of course, by then they smelled pretty •ripe" - and boy, did they catch fish. Charlie said working to to 25 miles offshore, they averaged about 1,000 pounds of codfish. Scrod averaged five to seven pounds and stakes seven to nine pounds. The biggest cod Charlie ever caught was around 30 pounds.

The Old Barney still sails today from Barnegat Ligl1t as the Captain Bill.

In the summer Charlie would tread for clams. Some of the guys would hold onto their sneakbox with one hand, then with one foot they would work the clam up the other leg until the free hand could grab the clam; then it was tossed into the sneakbox. It was no big deal catching 5,000 clams a day in those days. Of course, they only got $5 for a thousand.

Even after Charlie semi-retired he continued work­ing the bay.

CAPT. DICK CLINEMAN

Capt. Dick Clineman, of Waretown, was born in 1911. He has been a captain out of Barnegat Light since 1930.

Dick's first long boat trip was with his father, who sailed a boat down the Intracoastal Waterway starting on the Shrewsbury River, then over to the Delaware River and then down the Atlantic Seaboard.

In 1929, Dick came to Waretown for the summer to work with George Wagner, who was a family friend and owned a boat rental marina Wagner hired Dick to run the marina, which had 42 rental boats. Some­tima; those boats went out twice a day.

Dick also traveled to Philadelphia and got his captain's license. He mated for Wagner that summer.

In I 930, Dick started to fish out of Barnegat Llght. One of his boats was the Linda, built by Sam Hunt of· Waretown. Dick hired Ed Wilber to run it for him.

The next several years Dick captained different boats. Then, in 1938, he decided to build his own boat His father-in-law had a cedar swamp, so Dick and his wife, Caroline, went down and picked 21 trees for his boat They took the wood to Jesse Taylor, who had a sawmill in town; he cut the wood for them. Dick, his father-in-law and Herb Stackhouse built a 38-foot boat, which they launched in the early summer of I 938. This boat is still working as a net boat in the Chesapeake Bay.

The Clinemans traveled to Florida with this boat for the winter fishing along the Florida coast. TI1eir daughter Wanda traveled with them when she was very young and learned how to fish.

Dick used this boat until 1956, when he had a new one built in Ohio by a man named Fleetwood. Named the u11Jy Caroline, it is 50 feet long and now has a 671 Detroit diesel engine in it.

Dick still fishes out of Barnegat Light with the Lady Caroline and spends his winters with his wife in Jen­sen Beach, Fla.

CAPT. CALVIN WILSON

Born In Port Republic 78 years ago, Calvin Wilson has been fishing since he was old enough to get into a boat. Fishing. clamming and boat chartering have been his life.

Wilson's first boat, an ocean skiff, was nameless. It was used for commeR:ial fishing in such areas as far north as New York, and Atlantic City to the south.

The ocean skiff traveled with the fish up and down the coast. During those days there was no radio or radar; the captain navigated with a compass and by sharp memory. Mrs. Wilson said her husband could always find anything!

In 1963 Carl Adams made a model of a party boat for Calvin which he really liked. Calvin bought the party boat and named it the Stahawk. The party boat was originally operated as an extra side job, but eventually Wilson shifted his Interests away from commercial fishing as enforcement of strict laws was making fishing very tough. Today Capt. Wilson is still a party boat skipper for the Seahawk he purchased 30 years ago.

One day while cod fishing off Atlantic City, Capt. Wilson and his crew had a close encounter with the sea. A cold, thick fog rolled in and the temperature dropped drastically. The fog and mist were freezing; every time the bow of the boat hit the water it was chopping ice. The sea was a dead black calm, and Wilson knew the boat had to reach the beach. The boat came pretty close to Atlantic City's Steel Pier with all on board safe.

Despite his wife's concern for his safety, bad weather and whale sightings have never kept Capt. Wilson off the water. The ocean has provided him with a wealth of memories and experience. In addi­tion to boat chartering. Wilson was an excellent striped bass fisherman. Today he continues to charter his own boat out of Oyster Creek in Galloway Township.

PETER OLIVER BAHR

Born on Long Beach Island 98 years ago, Pete Ballr is one of the last of the original natives of Surf City. He was destined to live his life on Barnegat Bay as many others of the area did. From the time he was a schoolboy he clammed the bay and learned to eel and scallop.

As he matured, his daddy taught him boat build­ing and the appreciation of woodworking. He learned to make garveys, skiffs, crossbows, cabinets, anything made of wood, even his own home.

In time he became a duck hunting guide running out of rented shanties on the islands in the bay. The method in those days was to use cannon-type guns mounted on the front of the sneakboxes. His living came from this and game hunting and the boat build­ing trade.

Pete moved from the Island to the little boat shop he built on Route 9 in Cedar Run; it Is now Ucci's Pizza. His home was the little house behind it. He built most of the garveys for Ace's and Speck boat rental marinas.

Pete Bahr still isn't far from his birthplace. He and his wife, Myrtle, reside on Dock Road In West Creek, where they have a peaceful life on the creek reaping the fruits of their vegetable garden and what the bay will relinquish to them.

ELLIOTT GILES

Born on Feb. 22, I 916 and raised in Barnegat, Elli­ott Giles is truly a man who has lived his life in the Barnegat Bay tradition. When just a boy he went to work for a rowboat business. He started at 12 to clam, scallop, and eel to make extra money. He oystered the Mullica in spring and fall.

In high school Elliott and a buddy used to go to the men's room after he checked in for class, then jump out the window and go hunting or clamming. They did that for days and never got caught. His mom would fix all the duck and game he came home with.

During the Depression his family lived like kings, Elliott recalls, because he trapped rabbits, killed deer and ducks, clammed, and kept a big garden that "had everything." The family used to bury carrots in a bar­rel with topsoil so they would have fresh carrots all winter. His mother used to make sauerkraut from the cabbage in the garden. They hardly ever had to go to the store because they even made their own bread.

Elliott thinks that if people today couldn't get to a store they would starve to death. The locals wouldn't; they are resourceful enough. Elliott used to trade his clams for potatoes, trading with a man from New Egypt who peddled them. He also fiked and trapped mink, muskrat, coon and possum.

14 / 1993 Old Time Barnegat Bay Decoy & Gunn ing Show

You couldn't get a young housewife today to pluck a chicken, goose, or duck, says Elliott. A lot of kids that go duck hunting today throw the ducks away because their parents don't know what to do with them, and they don't want to learn.

Elliott never trapped snappers but he'd pick them up and give them to a man in town who would make a delicious stew out of them, complete with hard­boiled eggs and carrots. It was nothing like the soup in the stores.

Elliott started hauling boats in 1940 after Dick Reeves drowned. Mr. Reeves had a boat trailer and worked for the local boat builders hauling their boats back and forth. When he died his wife asked Elllott if he wanted to buy the trailer. He was the only one in the entire area who pulled boats and stored them. He bought property on Bay Avenue in 1957 and stored boats there for I 7 years.

He built only one small gunning boat, but he over­hauls them, works on them and rebuilds them. His boat was a small gunning garvey with brass runners on It to slide over the ice. He was one of the first in the area, over 40 years ago, to set out crab pots for commercial crabbing.

If this is a typical day in Elliott's life, he's been out in the bay already. He goes out at 6:30 in the morning and comes in by I I to beat the heat, he says. He doesn't make much anymore. He's worried about the pollution that's threatening our marine and shellfish industries. He's worried about the CCA- treated docks and pilings, wondering why we couldn't have just stuck to creosote. At least barnacles and mussels and crabs would cling to them, he says. As for his younger days, he says, •we had a great time - we had the best of it."

CAPT. LEW BROOME

Miss Beach Haven's captain, John Lewis Broome, was known up and down the New Jersey coast as one of the finest striped bass fishermen ever born. With his handsome boat, designed and built by his father, Edward, who was a master carpenter, Capt. Lew trolled the inlets and jetties almost by instinct. He could catch fish where there was no water one minute and a surging sea the next.

The Broome family had its roots in Tuckerton, where both Edward and his wife, Mellie Lane, were born. But the couple moved over to the new town of Beach Haven on Long Beach Island shortly after they were married at the tum of the century. Lew and his brother Leslie attended Beach Haven School with the Sprague and Cranmer children. Capt. Lew remem­bers how he, Leslie and their mother walked to Ship Bottom from Beach Haven to see the grounded Fortuna.

From his father and other baymen, Lew learned everything about how to make a living on the bay. The boys in Beach Haven crabbed and fished to make some money. They could earn a nickel by rowing an anchor line out from the stem of the cat yachts as they came in from their day's chartering to the Beach Haven Yacht Club dock.

When he was 15, Lew and his friend Johnny Cros­ta shipped out on a buoy-tender. But the Island and the bay called him back, and by 1923, Lew was mar­ried and settled in Beach Haven again. He borrowed $1,000 from his wife Elizabeth's family, the Ellis Parkers, and bought Dorcas, an old cat yacht, as his first charterboat. In the winter, he put a cabin on het and caught clams. A goqd shot and a man who knew the bay, Capt. Lew fed his growing family with the ducks and geese he shot, as well as the bounty from . the sea.

After he began sailing Miss Beach Haven in 1929, Capt. Lew took tuna and offshore fishing partia; out all summer, and striped bass parties in the fall. Throughout the hunting season he guided gunning parties with Rollie tiomer·iit Middle Island Gun Club from sneakboxts. Then in the spring. Capt. Lew took Miss Btach Haven to Peconic Bay, Long Island, along with hundreds of other charter captains, for the an­nual weakfish bonanza. Their parties would catch 50 or more fish a day, every day for a month.

During the winters, Capt. Lew supported his fam­ily by codfishing. which drew him offshore. In I 939, he was stunned to see a German submarine surface

Continued on page 16

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1993 Old Time Barnegat Bay Decoy &. Gunning Show/ 11 .

Continued from page 14 no more than a third of a mile away. Luckily, its crew's attention was focused on an old British ship that was heading north, and the sub went down again before reaching Miss Beach Haven. Lew said he was pretty shaken when he heard that the ship was sunk that night off Block Island - the first sinking of a ship off the American coast in World War II.

During the war, Capt. Lew joined the Coast Guard for shore and inlet patrol. His ability to navigate ~as recognized by many officers who far outranked him. Once he was asked to take a boat 90 miles offshore to a location specified only by its coordinates. In the days before LORAN this could only be done by u~i~g dead reckoning, and depended upon a captam s knowledge of the sea, its currents, tides and winds. Capt. Lew brought the Navy to the appointed spot on the first try.

In 1951, Capt. Lew decided to give up chartering, and worked as a private captain for Singleton Meers. Shortly afterward, as his wife had died and his chil­dren were grown, he moved to Florida. There he !"et and married his second wife, whose name 1s Flonda. Capt. and Mrs. Broome now live in Indiatlantic. -Omoll Sheppard

LACHLAN BEATON

Lachlan Beaton is a second-generation boat builder. He was born in Scotland and came to America when he was 15. His dad built boats in Scot­land and passed the trade to his son. When Lachlan came out of high school in 1930 the nation was in the middle of the Depression and it just so happened that his dad got a job building boats at the Johnson boat works.

In 1936 Lachlan's father started his own boatyard; he later sold his share. The second boatyard, which is still in the same location, was empty land, and all the buildings were built on pilings cut by hand from Forge Pond. The first boats they built at Beaton's Boat Yard were launched on wooden rails.

Lachlan's dad wanted things to work for his sons despite the Depression, so he worked hard to be successful. Lachlan worked diligently at the boat building business, too, and acquired his knowledge by building models and laying them out so he could take patterns off them. His models were the 5800 class 50 inches long.

Beatons Boat Yard had plenty of local cedar to work with, but they had to order Sitka spruce for the masts six months ahead from Alaska. They began to make small sailboats for racing in the bay; one winter 40 new sailboats of 13, 16 and 19 feet were built.

One reason Beatons built sailboats is that everyone was making skiffs. They used to build the little 12· foot duckboats for Christmas presents for customers' kids.

The boating season was different back then. When Labor Day came, all the boats were hauled out for storage and everyone left for home.

All the same, Beatons started building 4~·foot class boats for the yacht club people. At one time three· quarters of the sailboats on the bay were made by the Beatons. They worked with hand tools because t~ey had no electricity. After seeing them use a car engu~e to run a planer, one influential customer had electnc poles put in. . .

Nowadays it costs 40 to 50 times more to build a 28-foot A-Cat and requires about 5,000 hours of la~r. Lachlan's son Tom has an A-Cat under construction now. The plans for this boat were discovered in a chest of drawers in an antique shop in South Toms River by a first mate on a schooner that was undergoing repair work in the area. The plans were turned over to Lachlan, and Tom is building the boat.

Lachlan recalls that when he was working for Mor­ton Johnson, one of the top guys there was building a boat and when he was finished, he just turned around and started to build another one without stopping. Lachlan always thought that when you build a boat you srould stand back and take a look at it, then go on to another. Lachlan always gives his dad all the credit for Beatons' success. He says, "Without Dad there would be no boatyard."

BILL CRANMER

Bill was bom and raised in Manahawkin in 1917. He graduated from Tuckerton High School in 1935.

After high school Bill went to work in the bay clamming, but he could get only between 10 and 40 cents a hundred for clams. In 1936 he tried house painting for the summer.

In 1937 Bill became a carpenter apprentice for Har­ry "Dick" Crane of Manahawkin.

Bill's father passed away when the boy was only 6 years old, so he never really got to 1?'ow his d~d. Bill's uncle, Walt Martin of Manahawkin, taught him about the bay. .

In 1932 or '33 when Bill wanted to start gunnmg, he couldn't afford to buy decoys, so he made his own. Joe Tom Cranmer taught Bill how to carve decoys. He also gave Bill his first shotgun, a 1 ()..gauge double bar­rel hammer gun. Bill was also able to use some of Joe Tom's tools to carve with, but he had to get his own adze made (which is used for hollowing out the decoys). He bom>wed one and took it to.a local black­smith named Irving Cook, who made him a copy for $1.25.

Getting cedar for making his decoys wasn't too much of a problem. Sherwood Corliss had a small sawmill, and he would save a 7- or 8-inch slab of cedar for the decoy carvers for 10 cents each.

Black duck decoys were the first decoys Bill sold. After using them for one season, he was able to sell them for $20 a dozen.

Now that Bill had a shotgun and decoys for hunt­ing, all he needed was a boat. So he traded a dozen broadbill decoys to Carol Pharo of Manahawkin for a 12-foot sailing sneakbox built by Frank Iamson of Mayetta. And that boat needed some work done to it.

Bill lost his sneakbox and decoys in the 1938 hurricane. They were found by Milton Cranmer of Manahawkin along Bonnet Island. The boat was dam­aged and had to be rebuilt, and most of the decoys were gone. . .

From 1942 to 1945 Bill served m the Anny, serving two years in Europe. After the war he went back to carpenter work and decoy carving.

In 1947 Bill built his first sneakbox. It was a 12· foot-long feather edge boat with a centerboard. Since then he has made seven sneakboxes and two 1 ()..foot gunning garveys; in 1948 he and his brother-in-law built a 26-foot garvey, buying most of the cedar from a Parkertown sawmill owned by Joe Dayton.

In 1948, Bill was inspired by.an article in Fie!d and Stream magazine to enter a black duck decoy m the International Decoy Makers contest in New York; he won Honorable Mention. In 1951 a red breasted mer-ganser won first place for Bill at that show. . .

Around 1950 a trip to the Ward brothers m Cns­field, Maryland, with Chris Sprague and ~at Ewer inspired Bill to change his style from a working decoy to a decorative decoy. In the early 1960s he also learned some painting tips from them. Bill painted some decoys for the Wildfowler Decoy Company of Point Pleasant, owned by Charlie Birdsall.

Bill started to carve full time in 1958 and contin· ued until the mid-1980s. Now he carves occasionally for his friends and enjoys telling stories of his past.

PERRY INMAN

Perry's heart and whole life have always been on the bay. At 78 years old he is still wor1'.-'ng th: bay and says he will continue as long as he 1s physically able.

When Perry was a young boy, his dad would take him and his brothers, Joe and Marvin, clamming for a week at a time. They would stay in a tent all week on High Island. They caught their clams and kept them in the cove until the end of the week. On Saturday, they would gather them up and head back home. They s(lld their clams to Cal Conklin for 25 cents a hundred.

Perry likes to tell a story about when he was clam­ming as a boy with his dad. His dad noticed a stoi:m was building and decided they had better head m. Perry's dad told him to crawl up under the deck of

16 / 1993 Old Time Barnegat Boy Decoy & Gunning Show

the sneakbox so he would be protected from the storm.

After the big storm blew across the bay, finally everything calmed down. Perry's dad told him to come out and see something he would probably nev­er see again: The lightning had hit a hay stack of salt hay on the meadow and it was on fire!

Perry wishes Long Beach Island was the way it used to be. He says it was Cod's country then - you could walk from Surf City to Harvey Cedars without seeing any development. Perry's dad cleared what was left of the Great Swamp of Harvey Cedars in 1927." They used to pick cranberries in L<>veladies when he was a boy.

Joe guided his first gunning party in a northeast storm with Joe Willie Oliphant. Joe said he didn't think it was a good idea for Perry to go; Perry went with the party anyway. It was blowing a gale. The meadows were flooded and they gunned Log Creek Meadows. They had one of the best days ever, killing quite a few broadbill.

Perry remembers the old days vividly. When Perry's mom was going to give birth to his brother Jack, his dad sailed his sneakbox across the bay for the doctor. Dr. Hilliard came and spent three days until the boy was born, on Sept. 16, 1900. The doctor's bill was $5.

Perry started clamming at 8 or 9 years old, and since then his every spare moment has been spent on the bay either sailing, clamming or fishing.

BERT CRANMER

Bert Cranmer was born in 1904 and raised in Ce· Jar Run. He has been making a living from the bay since he was old enough to drive a boat. Bert was taught the bay by his dad, Howard Cranmer, who took him out on the water when he was 4 or 5 years old.

His first boat was a 12-foot sailing sneakbox built by his dad's uncle, George Bogart of Cedar Run.

Bert started his clamming business in 1931 on Ce· dar Run Dock Road, where he owned and operated a clam house. The clammers would bring their catch to him. Bert would buy the clams and sell them to the markets in New York.

In 1931 Bert was buying clams for 20 cents a hun· dred for necks, 30 cents a hundred for cherries and 40 cents a hundred for chowders. He handled about 100,000 clams a day.

Most of the clamming Bert did himself was by treading and using his sneakbox.

To go along with his clam house, Bert used to have rental boats, about 10 of them. Some of them were built by his dad. He had them for a few years.

Bert also caught some oysters and tried planting his own seed oysters. He went to New Gretna, bought a garvey load of seed oysters for 30 cents a bushel and brought them back to Cedar Run, where he planted them. But the drumfish ate them before he could harvest them after they grew to the right size.

Crass shrimping was another of Bert's hobbies; he sold them at his clam house for 35 cents a quart to use for weakfish bait. Bert said catching grass shrimp at night was a Jot easier and better than in the daytime.

In the winter Bert helped his brother Howard Jr. guide his hunting parties off Cedar Run, hunting mostly black ducks and broadbills.

-Compiled by John Gormley, Lillian Hoey, Mike Mangum and Cliff Oakley

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1993 Old Time Barnegat Bay Decoy & Gunning Show I 17

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