An Eye for Mullet: Charles Farrell’s Photographs of the Brown’s Island Mullet Camp, 1938

Abstract

In autumn of 1938 a photographer named Charles A. Farrell visited a seasonal mullet fishing camp at Brown's Island, in Onslow County, North Carolina. What he discovered there captured his imagination: a remote hamlet of fishermen's shanties far from civilization and two legendary clans of fishermen in relentless pursuit of one of Atlantic's great schooling fishes, striped mullet, known on those shores as jumping mullets. Neither of two clans, Gillikins or Lawrences, came from mainland nearest island. Instead, they traveled by boat there in fall of year from Otway, a small farming and fishing community forty miles to east, in a section of neighboring county, Carteret, that locals call Down East. Year after year for generations, men left their homes in Otway and returned to Brown's Island and sea. Farrell's photographs provide a unique portrait of mullet camp life and an invaluable historical record of one of largest commercial fisheries in American South. Indeed, for much of nineteenth century, mullet trade on North Carolina coast comprised largest saltwater fishery in South. (1) Even as late as 1930s, large numbers of fishermen still moved to barrier islands every autumn to work out of camps like one at Brown's Island. From Ocracoke Inlet to Cape Fear, their camps lined shores. Centered at Morehead City, N.C., fish dealers loaded so many barrels of salt mullet on outbound freight cars that local people referred to railroad as the Old Mullet Line. During late 1930s, Farrell documented fishermen's lives in a large swath of North Carolina coast, as well as at Brown's Island. The proprietor, along with his wife, of an art supply store and photography studio in Greensboro, in state's piedmont, Farrell had long had a special interest in lives of commercial fishermen. (2) He had been taking photographs in coastal communities for some time when, in 1938, he approached W. T. Couch at University of North Carolina Press about publishing a book of photographs. Couch had previously hired Farrell to take photographs for several other books. They signed a contract for Farrell's coastal book later that year. (3) Farrell completed photographic portion of book, but apparently made little headway with text. (4) Now preserved at North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, his photographs are one of fullest documentary accounts of southern fisheries at any time in twentieth century. (5) The following is a selection of Farrell's photographs of mullet fishermen at Brown's Island, with extended commentary. (6) This article is part of a larger work-in-progress that examines coastal North Carolinians and their relationship to sea through close analysis of historical photographs taken between Civil War and end of Age of Sail. Our world today is so different than that of only a century ago that few people can recognize even most basic aspects of daily life and labor as seen in historical photographs like ones of Brown's Island. Fewer yet can appreciate craftsmanship that is sometimes evident in them or grasp what they might tell us in any kind of deeper way about changing nature of our relationship to ocean and seashore. With my own insufficiencies in that regard in mind, I have been attempting to develop a more knowing eye when it comes to looking at historical photographs such as ones that Farrell made at Brown's Island. To that end, I have drawn heavily from historical records, from consultations with more specialized scholars of maritime material culture, and, most importantly, from wisdom of some of oldest residents of fishing communities that remain on North Carolina coast, including one where I grew up. (7) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An early morning view of mullet camp at low tide from a dock on sound side of Brown's Island. …