Contents
Story
Decoys
Credits
🟡 AVERAGE RESEARCH VOLUME
OWNERS
U.S. Coast Guard
Eubanks/Holt
Willie York
Charlie Vellines
Date 1894-1946
Date 1946-1964
1964-1977
1950s-1977 use
OTHER ASSOCIATIONS
Brant Rock Gun Club
LOCATION
Northern Core Banks, Portsmouth Village
Story
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Roy Eubanks and Henry Holt
Shortly after WWII, Charlie Vellines had continuous use of the Portsmouth Coast Guard Station. Clifton Noe, Jack Gardner, Jr. and Leroy Goodwin all site Vellines as owner and using the station—at least in the early 50s onward. Leroy Goodwin, of Cedar Island, related that Mr. Armfield (owner of the Armtek camp) had joint ownership or lease with Charlie. Reputedly, his lease cost Vellines a dollar a year. There is extensive photographic documentation of the Vellines family, friends and charters using the station.
Henry Holt and Roy Eubanks (both of Beaufort) told Bruce Weber, in an interview, their story of buying the station and owning it till 1964. Holt and Eubanks split the $600 purchase price. Ownership came with 12 acres, the detached kitchen and the stables.
They added a toilet and generator, as well as as refrigerator.
Holt/Eubanks only intermittently used the station for hunting and fishing. They later bought the Portsmouth School for $100 and acquired 108 acres adjacent to the station through a Torrens procedure. (The 108 acre plot was later sold to Sam Jones of Berkley Machine for $5,000.
Holt and Eubanks sold the station in 1964 to Willie York of Raleigh for $7,500.
Interviews with the Vellines family and multiple friends relate Charlie used the station till the Park Service takeover. Charlie died in 1977 of heart disease.
Roy Eubanks and wife Lucy–Roy was a professional photographer in Beaufort. (photo courtesy of Joey Eubanks)
(VISIT THE SITE ABOVE– for detailed NPS historical report on the station—#188)
Post-World War II
The Portsmouth Coast Guard Station may have sat vacant for a time after it was declared surplus in 1946. Its condition certainly deteriorated, as evi- denced by photographs from the period, but by the mid- 1950s it was being used as a hunting club and at least some repairs were being made. The old wood- shingled roofing was recovered with white asphalt shingles in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Around the same time, the porch wrapping the southeast side of the building was removed, apparently to accommo- date vehicular parking, and the old WWII- era screening was entirely replaced on the remainder of the porch.
“The largest building in Portsmouth, the Life- Saving Station has been a landmark on the island for over a century. It is the best- preserved example of some twenty- one “Quonochontuag” stations that the Life- Saving Service built along the eastern seaboard between 1891 and 1904, only ten of which survive today.
Constructed in 1894 with only slight modifications to a standardized, Shingle- Style design and plan by Life-SavingServicearchitectGeorgeR.Tolman,the Portsmouth Life- Saving Station is one of only ten Quonochontaug- type stations remaining in exist- ence and the only one that has not undergone major modifications.”
The United States Life- Saving Service’s establish- ment of a station at Portsmouth in 1894 gave a boost to the community, offering employment to a few residents of the village. Washington Roberts, whose family had lived at Portsmouth for at least three generations, worked at the station for nearly thirty years, and Jesse Babb was employed for over ten years, first as a cook and then as a surfman and mechanic. Others, including George Dixon, worked as temporary substitutes on occasion. Most contin- ued to make a living as fishermen, although that became an increasingly precarious existence as competition increased and over- fishing depleted stock. The Portsmouth Fisheries Company opened a cannery on Casey Island in 1916 and provided some work until it closed the operation in the 1920s.
In addition, some residents benefited from the hunting clubs that were established in the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries. By 1900, the great flocks of water fowl that wintered on Pamlico Sound were attracting large numbers of wealthy sportsmen from Baltimore, New York and else- where, many of whom maintained hunting lodges on the Outer Banks. The Pilentary Club on Core Banks ten miles southwest of Portsmouth and the Harbor Island Club off Cedar Island were two of the best known, but up and down the Banks, residents worked as guides and cooks and provided other services for these hunters and their clubs.
With this drain on its resources,( from repeated hurricanes, 1933 especially) the Coast Guard delayed major repairs to the Portsmouth station indefinitely. The station did continue to operate, however, but was deactivated on June 1, 1937, depriving Portsmouth of another reason for being. The station was reactivated in 1942, but by then, there were only 42 permanent residents of the town. In September 1944, the “Great Atlantic Hurricane,” a Category 3 storm, came ashore near Cape Hat- teras, sinking two Coast Guard cutters near Oregon Inlet, killing 47 people and flooding Portsmouth again. By the end of World War II, even more resi- dents of Portsmouth had relocated to the mainland.
The Coast Guard closed the Portsmouth station permanently in 1946, and by 1950 the village had only fourteen year- round residents.
Portsmouth was one of many stations that were closed in 1937 and 1938, although the Coast Guard retained ownership of the stations. After Pearl Harbor, the Coast Guard reactivated a number of these stations, including Portsmouth, to meet the war- time need for coastal observation. In 1942 or 1943, the station was remodeled, and for two years during the war, the beaches at Portsmouth were patrolled by Coast Guards patrols on horseback.
In 1945, the Coast Guard closed the Portsmouth station permanently and, in March 1946, formally conveyed the property to the War Assets Adminis- tration. In the early 1950s, the Brant Rock Rod and Gun Club acquired the old station for a private club house. They were responsible for creating a landing strip that obliterated what little remained of the old Marine Hospital. The old life- saving station was occupied on a seasonal basis until it was incorpo- rated into the Cape Lookout National Seashore in 1977.
Acquisition document from NPS files shows transfer from York to NPS.
Holt ands Eubanks 93 acres Portsmouth Island In litigation State contends ownership—Sam Jones purchased for $5,000 while under litigation. (NPS archives–Sam Jones was active in resisting NPS takeover)
1894 Crew
Keeper: Ferdinand G. Terrell
1) Dennis Mason
2) Washington Roberts
3) Augustus D. Mason
4) James T. Salter
5) George R. Willis
6) George W. Gilgo
Substitute: Jesse Newton
Credits
- NPS Archives–Cape Lookout Seashore
- Other references within text