Shad boat

[1] [2] One hundred years earlier, George Washington Creef of Roanoke Island built the first shad boat in North Carolina in the early 1880s.

Creef shaped his boat hull from the root ball of Atlantic white cedar, also known as juniper, trees that grew along the shoreline of the pocosin wetland region of southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina.

Initially, the shad boat had a round-bottomed hull and single mast rigged with a sprit sail.

Once the "pickup truck" of the waters of eastern North Carolina, there are only a handful of relic shad boats left on Roanoke Island.

[5] Another shad boat, originally built by Alvira Wright in 1904, is undergoing restoration for eventual display at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.