oday, the only
evidence of a ferry
landing is a depres-sion
in the wooded,
swampy bank of
the Northeast Cape
Fear River not far
from the Dan Cameron Bridge. All
other visual evidence of the riverine
transport that linked New Hanover
and Pender counties has disappeared,
leaving only tree stands and tangling
strands of poison ivy that cover any
remaining trace of Blossom’s Ferry.
The landscape was scarcely different
in 1979 when the late Wesley K. Hall,
then a graduate student of maritime
history and underwater research at
East Carolina University, searched for
a subject for his thesis.
That year, when Hall made his
first reconnaissance dive on Blossom’s
Ferry landing, he discovered artifacts
from two ferries that included hull
sections, tool-marked floor planks,
fasteners, joints, stanchions, aprons
and hand tools. With support from
the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, Hall collaborated with
ECU professor Gordon Watts and
other graduate students, and in
1983, from Murphy Base, a 56-foot
LCM (a mechanized landing craft)
anchored near the site, they surveyed
the remains. The underwater research
lasted five weeks, and spawned inves-tigations
and model reconstructions
that spanned two years.
Cooking implements and hand
tools, like a lead-glazed, red-clay
earthenware crock, fragments of a
creamware plate and a three-legged
cast iron Dutch oven pipkin dated the
oldest ferry to the early 18th century.
Dark green glass bottle fragments,
transfer-printed ceramics and an axe
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALLISON POTTER
48
WBM february 2013
helped to date a second ferry to the
turn of the 18th century.
Despite the difference in age, the
two vessels were similar in construc-tion.
Tool marks suggested the same
technology — pit and sash saws —
cut the lumber used to build them.
The tool marks were also used to
confirm dating. Hand-wrought iron
hinges used to attach aprons were
four feet long on the earlier vessel
situated to the east and two-feet long
on the older vessel situated to the
west. Archeologists concluded that
aprons were attached to unload and
load traffic. A third ferryboat, wagon
parts and the remains of a bridge
were also discovered.
Hall’s thesis, “An Investigation of
Blossom’s Ferry on the Northeast Cape
Fear River,” suggests the presence of a
ferry on the Blossom site by 1733 oper-ated
by John Marshall for a decade.
T