This is where the weather-beaten
men hang out, men who have done
this all their lives, who depend on the
annual harvest, who are always think-ing
and talking about shrimping.
Men like Jeremy Edens, who
shrimps with his grandpa and is
kin to the Millises. He hasn’t been
out this year either, but still has
hopes for a good season.
“My brother shrimps,” he says.
“He talked with someone who does
the tests in the Pamlico Sound and
said it looks better than last year.
If that’s the case, we’ll be OK. Last
year the Pamlico Sound was really
good.”
This is life in Sneads Ferry, a town
of 9,750, some 37 miles north of
Wrightsville Beach, just below the
Marine base.
The ferry in the Onslow County
town’s name dates back to 1728,
when Edmund Ennett began taking
passengers across the New River.
The Snead is Robert Snead, an
attorney who settled here in 1791.
The community soon became
established as a rural fishing village.
Just about everyone made their liv-ing
from the water.
“That’s all we know to do,”
Buddy Davis says. “That’s all my
daddy done, and his daddy. I don’t
know how far back it goes.”
These days, not many people
are involved in shrimping and fish-ing.
The population has grown 80
percent since 2000, mostly because
of the proximity to Camp Lejeune.
Sneads Ferry is no longer a little
shrimping village.
“A lot of people call it that, but
it really ain’t that no more. Not to
me,” says Warren Hostetler, Buddy
Davis’ nephew and a shrimper for
about three decades. “That’s what
The Zack & Meredith, Warren Hostetler’s boat, shrimps out of Davis Seafood.
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WBM august 2018