The Watermen and Wild Ponies

by Robert H. Mears
Copyright ©1994 Robert H. Mears
116 Pages, Black and White Photos, Paper

In 1912 when  Bob Mears was a boy of five, his family moved from Wachapreague on Virginia's Eastern Shore to Chincoteague.

The men on the docks had loaded all of our furniture on a monitor, a wooden barge, with a low freeboard and flat deck.  Captain Jim Jester of Chincoteague arrived with his boat to transport our family, with the monitor in tow, to our new home...

Chincoteague was emerging as a thriving seaside community. The streets were lined with gas lamps that were lit each night by the local constable, and the only transportation on the island consisted of horse-drawn carts, buggies, and wagons. Two passenger boats docked across from the Atlantic Hotel daily, and in the evenings islanders would come to the dock to see the big boats come in.

One evening as many as 100 people gathered there and began to sing songs as they watched the boats unload their passengers. This impromptu musical serenade was an impressive introduction to the island for the visitors. There was a special magic and excitement about Chincoteague that was contagious.

For Bob and his friends, the island was a place of non-stop entertainment. They swam from clam floats, and - using a simple fishing line with hook, bait, and sinker - they fished from the docks for croaker and flounder. They "signed" for clams and watched the watermen cull the oysters that were being brought in by the dredge scows.   But pony penning was everyone's favorite, and from a big tree in the Mears' yard, Bob and his cousin would watch the islanders ride the wild ponies and race them in an open field.

The ponies were a familiar sight around the island. Mr. Clarence Beebe, who became famous after Margarite Henry's book about his pony "Misty," would drive his ponies through town to their wintering place on the northeast end of the island, and in the spring he would drive them back through town to the south end of the island.

The seafood industry was the focal point of the island economy, and it was the life of the Chincoteague watermen that appealed to Bob. They were tough and courageous and worked long days dredging oysters, tonging clams, and building  large ocean "pound" traps to catch their fish.  Not long after completing high school, Bob and his friend, Lee Savage, headed for Pittston, Pennsylvania, where they opened their first fish market. After four years, when the coal mines went on strike, they sold their store and bought a truck with the idea of selling Chincoteague seafood up north.   This was the beginning of their most successful business. With a handshake deal, they started delivering clams and oysters to the A & P chain - a relationship that was to last for 43 years as Bob's Chincoteague business grew.

On the rising tide I would take the boats and go up to the head of the island and put a flag up to let the clammers know I was buying and wait for them to come alongside.... I would generally have about twenty men coming every day but Sunday.

Bob describes the life of the waterman whose boats were their most important possession - and often enough their "only protection from the wrath of Mother Nature."   In the 20s and early 30s, "they had no radio or means of communication. Once a waterman went out, he was on his own."  The story of Sawdy Jester, a renouned Chincoteague bird carver, surviving the hurricane of 1933 highlights the dangers of this way of life.

There was no forewarning of storms, and Sawdy and Doug were caught in his workboat coming home by inland waterways.... The seas became a furious roll with the waves cresting at 25 to 30 feet, and suddenly they knew the small boat had no chance of making it back to Chincoteague. They had to find a safe haven or the small craft would be lost and sink at sea.... Doug and Sawdy decided their only chance was to try to wrestle their boat with its little 10 hp motor over to where they thought the kinks bushes should be and throw out the anchor. The huge waves began wrenching the boat back out towards the sea leaving them helpless against the wrath of the storm. With about 300 yards to the open ocean past the submerged beach and certain doom, the anchor caught on a submerged kinks bush. There they sat, tossing about in the waves, with no hatch covers to shield them from the storm and praying the anchor would hold.

Bob Mears' book tells a fascinating, personal tale of the islands from the early years of this century to the present.  Included are  stories from the small village on the neighboring island of Assateague, from the devastating Chincoteague fires of the 1920s, and from the building of the causeway that linked Chincoteague with the mainland. Those familiar with Chincoteague will enjoy the references to  local  people and places. And those who have not yet had the opportunity to come and discover these barrier islands for themselves will enjoy the wealth of information on a way of life that is fading from the American scene.

Reviewer's Note:  Bob - now ninety - and his wife, Blanche, still live on Chincoteague.

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