Riding a rising tide in the coolness of morning, he guided his craft through the water with the quiet ease of a wood stork navigating the thermal air currents overhead. His oars hit the water with the same precision he employed when he fashioned them, along with his wooden bateaux, out of cypress wood. The cast net hit the surface with a sonorous splash as it began its bell-like descent into the water to capture the fish for the day’s catch.
Sam Moultrie lived most of his life on the river. It is an apt analogy as his mother, Viola Moultrie, brought him here to Saint Helena Island by boat from Savannah when he was eight months old. And except for the three years and six months that he was in the armed service, he has been here ever since. With only three years of education at the Oaks Plantation School when he was a small child, in distinct Gullah Mr. Moultrie recounts, “I picked up my own trade - building boats. I had no ruler; I took a stick to measure. I read the rule of sticks. I learned by myself, no one teach me. I built boats all my days; if I build them, I guarantee they won’t leak!”
Approaching his eighty-ninth birthday, Sam Moultrie is tall, aristrocratic in bearing, and still has a lot of spunk; “I could still build a boat - just get in my rolling chair and get to work.” In addition to building the bateaux, he was a fisherman and fur trapper. “I made more money on my boat in the water than I did building them. I caught fish and shrimp and oysters.” In the 1950’s and 60’s he trapped raccoons, minks, and otters. “I skinned, stretched, and dried them and a man came through to buy them.”
When asked about his other interests when he was growing up, Mr. Moultrie answered, “I say, go to the place where you can learn something! I was raised by my grandaddy and when he went to bed at night I’d get out books that belonged to my aunt and uncle and read them, I didn’t have any books of my own; I only went to school until third grade.”
I don’t work with anyone else, I’m the only bateaux builder left. I have three sons who know how to build bateaux, but they don’t. For me, building boats was fun! But now it’s over. In the future, the work I’ve done will speak for me.”
Photography by Susan Deloach
