Stories of watermen, pilots, bands and honest crooks

When Mother Virginia left Lewes and her Marshall family in 1940 to dedicate her life to God and the All Saints Convent in Catonsville, Md., her brother Rowland set his compass north for his second year at University of Delaware.

The following March, our country at war with Germany and the river piloting ranks on Delaware Bay running thin, Marshall received a call in Newark telling him he had been accepted into the apprentice ranks for the Pilots Association for the Bay and River Delaware. There was no decision on his part.

“I was gone,” he said.

Fifty­-one years later, in June 1992, Capt. Marshall reached 70, mandatory retirement age for pilots, and he climbed aboard his last ship to navigate up the river.

He and his sister Mother Virginia sat on the front porch of a family beach house during a recent visit and reminisced about growing up in Lewes. As Mother Virginia used the toes of her right foot to keep the porch swing in motion, Rowland took turns with her telling stories.

As an apprentice pilot, Rowland went to work quickly on the water, spending much of his time on launches ferrying pilots back and forth between Lewes and ships coming and going in Delaware Bay. “It was wartime, and we stayed at it. The Coast Guard had taken over all the pilots. When I went to the post office to sign papers, I had been making $5 month as an apprentice. The Coast Guard guys told us they didn’t have anything common enough for apprentice pilots so they made us first class seamen. It was a good deal for the apprentices. Our pay immediately jumped to $72 per month - ­$66 for the rank and $6 for sea duty.”

Rowland said the pilots tried to give him a night off now and then, but he didn’t take liberty. “One day I had already taken four or five pilots off outbound ships, and they put me in a car and sent me to Philly. They dropped me off at the Coast Guard building. I went in one office, and they discharged me as a first class seaman. Then they sent me to another office, and I was sworn in as a lieutenant JG, United States Coast Guard Reserve Temporary. Then I went to Jacob Reed for a uniform, and they put me on the next southbound ship as a pilot. We didn’t get to Lewes until 3 or 4 in the morning. I was so excited I wasn’t even tired.”

A man of the water, a man of navigation, a man of Lewes and a man of good humor – ­not to mention a man of 93 years – ­Rowland finds a dose of the Fountain of Youth when he tells one of his favorite stories. It was a big day for Lewes in May 1937 when Roosevelt Inlet was dedicated.

“They had built the jetties on either side and were taking out the last of the sand – digging from Delaware Bay to the canal – to open the new inlet,” said Rowland. “It was a big deal. Mayor Burbage had worked a long time to make the new inlet happen. The old inlet was farther up the Broadkill River by a couple of miles, and this new inlet was going to make things much more convenient for the town.

Gold Stanley’s big entrance

“The flags were flying. It was a beautiful day. The school band was on a barge playing music for the occasion. The mayor and a bunch of dignitaries were on a Coast Guard boat to inaugurate the new inlet and be the first ones through. Then things got real interesting. When the last sand was removed, the water started flowing and the new inlet filled quickly. Then the Coast Guard boat made its move. But it didn’t get far. It ran aground. And while the dignitaries were waiting to make the first passage, and the captain was trying to get off, here came an old fisherman named Gold Stanley in his one­-lung engine bateau. Pop, pop, pop he came and cruised right past the Coast Guard boat and through the new inlet. Herb Hazzard’s sister dropped the slide off her trombone into the water she was so tickled. Every time I went in and out of that inlet through the years I thought about Gold Stanley pop-popping his way through.”

Mother Virginia smiled and told Rowland to tell about the Danish tall ship he piloted up the river for a festival in Philadelphia. “I was at a church event in Philadelphia at the time,” she said, “and I remember seeing you on TV when they quoted you. You said what scared you was going under the bridge at Chester. I think you told me they had to take 8 feet off the mast to get her under.”

“That’s right,” said Rowland. “It was the tall ship Danmark, and taking the 8 feet off the mast gave us 3 feet clearance under the bridge. But I also remember telling the captain what he really needed to worry about was the rocks about a foot and a half below the bottom of the ship in the river.”

Piloting isn’t a profession for the faint of heart.

Mother Virginia remained quiet. Clearly she knew that such were times for prayer, and a strong flooding tide.

Rowland told of days on the river when he had to keep United Fruit ships moving through dense fog because pilots had to keep the big scoops on deck catching air so the bananas in the hold wouldn’t ripen on the way to the dock.

Mother Virginia and Rowland remembered when the telephone exchange was on the second floor of the Second Street building that now houses King’s Ice Cream. Windows looked over the street. That was back when an operator pulled cable jacks out of slots and plugged them into others to make hardwire connections between people making calls. Mother Virginia laughed. “I remember one operator working one day. She told someone who was trying to reach someone else in town: “No sense in calling her now. She’s not home. She just walked by.”

These are stories that have been traded hundreds of times through the years - ­the kind of stories that bond families through the decades.

Rowland finished with a story about former Mayor Al Stango who had a Western Auto store on Lewes Beach.

“I went in there one day to buy a brass eye and hook for a screen door. Stango said he didn’t have any brass ones, just steel. I looked at him in disbelief.

“I said: ‘What good is a steel hook and eye in this salt air? You should be carrying brass so they won’t rust.’”

Rowland said Stango came back quickly. “‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘I want to be able to sell you a new one every year.’”

Rowland said he came back just as quickly: “‘Well,’ I told him, ‘at least you’re an honest crook.’”

And so it goes, through the years, in small towns.