Two North Carolina men given award for preserving boats

CURRITUCK

Two Currituck County natives have received national honors for preserving locally built boats that once plied the Currituck Sound.

Wilson Snowden and Travis Morris will be presented with the Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History at a banquet in Rochester, N.Y., on Sept. 12. The History Channel is sponsoring the award.

Snowden and Morris, both lifelong hunters and boaters on the Currituck Sound, began collecting locally built vessels years ago. Several attempts to get sponsorship to preserve the boats from the elements have failed.

"These old boats are just disintegrating," local historian and Wilson's wife Barbara Snowden said Tuesday.

Barbara Snowden has helped bring state and national attention to the effort.

Earlier this year, maritime historians and students from East Carolina University documented 68 boats in descriptions, drawings and photographs to be recorded in the Library of Congress. The project was the first of its kind.

"This is certainly an important part of the local history in the Currituck Sound area," said Richard Lawrence, director of the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. "I know of no other effort like it in the state."

The project has revealed that documenting many ordinary boats in one region for one purpose tells the history of an era better than focusing on a few high-profile vessels. Plans are to try the same process in the Great Lakes region.

The Currituck boats mainly tell the story of local watermen earning a living on the Currituck Sound by guiding wealthy businessmen on duck hunts. It was an era that began in the mid-1800s and was a big part of the Currituck County economy for more than 100 years.

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com