Maybe people on both sides of the waterway were right, since the old ferry served as the main means of transportation between the Brick Landing community on the mainland and the east end of Ocean Isle Beach back in the 1950s.
Now, thanks to the talents of retired civil engineer Gerry Strickland of Sunset Beach, the Museum of Coastal Carolina in Ocean Isle Beach will unveil its own working model of the old ferry crafted by Strickland.
A grand opening of the exhibit was held Friday, Jan. 9, at the museum at 21 E. Second St.
The original life-size ferry was built in 1950 by Brunswick Islands patriarchs Odell Williamson and Mannon C. Gore.
According to museum history, a causeway had previously provided vehicular access to Ocean Isle Beach. But once the Intracoastal Waterway was dug in the 1930s, the only way to travel between the mainland and island was by boat.
In 1950, early development on Ocean Isle Beach was on the east end of the island at Shallotte Boulevard.
A wooden platform that could hold two cars comprised the ferry, which had a chain across the front to keep the first car from rolling into the waterway. A cable operated by a motorized pulley was used to pull the ferry back and forth across the waterway. A cable on the other side of the ferry prevented the ferry from being pulled off course.
When a boat approached, the cables had to be dropped to the bottom to prevent the boat from becoming entangled in them.
“This is what they called the guideline,” said Strickland, 78, tweaking the mechanical ferry model he made that’s about to be unveiled at the museum.
“This is what guides the ferry in a straight line across the waterway,” he said. “It’s to keep the currents from shifting it one way or the other.”
The lines were fastened to a post or piling, while a motor and winch were used on the structure, requiring an operator to direct the ferry’s progress across the waterway. The process was reversed to go back across the other way.
“I haven’t been able to find anyone that knows a lot of the specifics about it,” Strickland said. “I know they’re here in town — there’s still some people living that remember going across it. But I know someone had to be here the whole time to operate it.”
The operators were on call, and Strickland believes there was a shed where bait was sold on the Ocean Isle side.
“This was the only way that people could get to the island pre-(Hurricane) Hazel,” he said.
The ferry’s first operators were William Gurganus and Clyde Stanley, who alternated to keep the ferry running from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week.
Their work was described as challenging and exhausting because the cable, which museum officials aren’t sure whether it was rope or steel, was “heavy, slimy and hard to handle.”
If the cable broke, the ferry couldn’t operate until it was fixed.
Hurricane Hazel in 1954 severely damaged the ferry, which was repaired and put back into service, continuing until 1959 when it was replaced by a swing bridge that crossed the waterway at the center of the island. Ocean Isle Beach got its high-rise bridge in 1986.
Today, the site of the old ferry landing on the island is called Ferry Landing Park, which is at the end of Shallotte Boulevard and Seventh Street with a gazebo, picnic tables, fishing pier and waterway views.
Strickland, who also built and presented a working model of the old Sunset Beach pontoon bridge after it was shut down to make way for a new high-rise bridge four years ago, said he was trying to give people a little background on “why we needed this — a bridge — because it all started with ferries.”
This article first appeared in the Brunswick Beacon.
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