The Sea's Bounty

Children frolicking at the seashore, where sun-sparkled water laps the sand, paint a picture of summertime fun at its best. Their squeals of delight are infectious as they grasp at seashells and delicately-colored pebbles proffered by each incoming wave. As the boys and girls build sand castles and chatter about buried pirate treasure, their elders might recall stories of the bounty of the sea in days past that was not represented by a fish on a line or clams in a basket. Here are a few examples from my collection of accounts of flotsam and jetsam encountered by residents of the Sussex, Delaware, coastal area.

As compared with the labored attempts to locate treasure thought to have been on board the HMS De Braak when it went down off Cape Henlopen in 1798, beachcombers have been treated to coins graciously tossed at their toes while strolling the area known as Coin Beach. The copper halfpennies discovered over the years on the oceanfront north of the Indian River Inlet have been attributed to the ill-fated ship, The Faithful Steward. When leaving Ireland, carrying 249 immigrants, the ship was bearing barrels of copper coins. After a two-month voyage, The Faithful Steward was grounded on a sandbar as it approached the Delaware coast on September 1, 1785. The situation only worsened from that point, and a major storm aided in spelling doom to the vessel, accompanied by a heavy loss of life.

In the gale of October 4, 1877, it is said that 225 vessels sought shelter in and near the breakwater harbor off Lewes. Ten coal-laden schooners broke up, and resourceful citizens of the town helped themselves to a free supply of welcomed winter fuel.

In addition to the traditional means of netting a living from the sea, there are stories of Lewes folk who relied upon gathering the remains from shipwrecks for their personal use or to be converted into money. One aspect of this activity, called "wrecking," was employed in the spring of the year during the late 1800s and early 1900s as a sweep line stretched between two boats was used to search for and raise abandoned anchors resting on the sea floor. People recall anchors, ranging in weight from 200 pounds to two and a half tons, piled on the old Queen Anne Pier awaiting a trip to junk yards in Philadelphia. Some specimens that escaped redemption as scrap iron are seen in the locale as yard ornaments.

During the era of Prohibition, cat-and-mouse games were played along the Sussex coast between Coast Guard boats and small boats used by bootleggers as "rumrunners." When the government men appeared to have the upper hand during a spirited chase, the outlaws often deemed it prudent to jettison their illicit cargo. It was not unusual for local men, fishing their fykes in the early morning, to find at water's edge five-gallon cans of pure grain alcohol, wrapped in straw and packed in wooden crates.

In contrast to the backbreaking labor required to transfer netted schools of menhaden from the water to fishing trawler, residents of Lewes were treated effortlessly to a surprise catch back in 1936. It was wintertime and the area fishermen were hampered by the frozen Delaware Bay. To their delight, they discovered one morning that tremendous schools of live fish had been flung up on the beach. Joined by other residents as word of the bounty spread like wildfire, the finders gathered up all the fish they were able to tote. There were fish feasts aplenty in the ancient town that night. The press reported the event as "The Miracle of Fishes."

While some gifts from the deep must be searched for, and others appear miraculously at the shoreline, perhaps the most unexpected visitation from the brine came to a select few Lewes men as they gathered during a storm many years ago at a tavern. J. Thomas Scharf felt the experience worthy of inclusion in his History of Delaware: