Bones, Bertha and the Black Fishing Camp By Polly Wylly Cooper - co-author of Tybee Days In the ‘30s, a group of black families lived in a fishing camp on the Back River. “These men had saltwater in their veins and knew every fishing drop,” said Billy McKenna, who frequented the camp as a child. “A lot of us hung out there and hoped Edward “Bones” Tattnall, with his singsong Gullah accent, would take us shrimping. We’d hold the boat with oars while he cast the net for shrimp. Bones could “head” two shrimp at once.” “Eddie Bones” knew the rivers, creeks, oyster rakes and sandbars like the back of his hand. Bone’s wife, Bertha, sat inside a screened fish house picking crabs and scaling fish. She brewed oyster stew and she-crab gumbo in Maxwell House coffee cans cooked in river water. Said it “saved on salt.” There was a pot of grits simmering, and she sold lukewarm Pepsis and Orange Crush drinks to folks renting bateaus. As a child, Mary Eva Bryan Dubose sat in Bertha’s lap. “While she shucked oysters, she told stories and sang gospels.” Sister Jude Walsh RSM, former principal of St. Vincent’s Academy in Savannah, learned to row her bateau standing up by watching the oystermen row with the outgoing tide. Harry Wilson said, “We learned “double skulling”…that was when two of us stood up and rowed facing the bow.” Bones kept the string of bateaus bailed dry after squalls and the hulls scraped clean of barnacles. James Adams owned Adams’ Inn just off Butler Ave. at 16th Street. The lodge rented out four rooms and played music downstairs for patrons. Daily soaking of the linens in washtubs gave the inn a distinctive aroma of Clorox. After 1935, brothers Willie and Joseph Logan owned the fishing camp. The settlement of small shanty houses sat next to the big gabled Rourke House, later the Riverside Lodge. Tommy “T” Smith’s family went to Tybee in 1943. “Sometimes I’d rent a bateau from Bones and use my own five-hp Johnson motor,” said T. “It always leaked so I never stopped bailing. I had a 14-foot Penn Waller bateau that I kept at the Collins’ house. To winterize it, I’d turn it upside down on sawhorses.” One oysterman amazed Dan Sheehan. “Slinger was a one-armed man who could row like a pro. He got that name ‘cause he could cut grass all day with a swinging blade.” Bones and Bertha had a nephew named Thomas “Pompey” McHenry who had a second job at Frank Matthews Seafood on Congress Street. Scales flying, he filleted, gutted and de-boned fish with lightning speed. In 1947, after the fishing camp had disbanded, “Miss Janie” and her husband, Nace Notrica, bought the property on the Back River from Thomas Scott adjacent to the old fishing camp. Bones and Pompey went to work on the docks and boat hoists there and Bertha sold shrimp. A colorful way of life ended when the oystermen moved out to make way for expensive development. When the fishing camp vanished, Tybee lost a colorful chunk of its heart. TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | OCT 2016 13 Tybee Beach Massage Not Just Another Massage 912-944-7996 Book Online Now! TybeeBeachMassage.com 1016 US Hwy 80 E Tybee Island 31328 (Behind of Gallery By The Sea) Like Us on Facebook Nails by Maranda $15 MANICURES 1018A HWY 80 �� TYBEE ISLAND �� 912-786-9626 Cati��’����Conf�������������� Too Good to be Good for You! Cakes, Cupcakes, Birthday Parties, Cookies & More! ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Come See Me at the Tybee Farmer’s Market ������������������������������ 10%OFF WE DELIVER 304-216-5776
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