Fun fact about me: I am a full-blown steamed oyster fiend.
That’s not an exaggeration. I will eat steamed oysters until I make myself sick. Just ask Brandon. He’s witnessed it more than once—and married me anyway.
Aunt Van is to blame.
When I was about ten years old, she started picking me up and taking me to that seafood restaurant on Oleander Drive near Jungle Rapids. It’s closed now, but I can still see it plain as day. One afternoon, she fixed my very first half shell—melted butter, Texas Pete—then slid it across the table like she was handing me a secret.
That was it. Life changed. Hooked forever.
I’ve missed oysters these past few years since we’ve been away from Wilmington. Oyster season—any month with an R in it—is sacred at the beach. Oyster roasts every weekend. Long folding tables. Steam rolling into the cold air. Folks standing around talking with their hands full, juice dripping down their wrists. Just thinking about it makes me homesick.
Brandon knows this. And because he is the angel of a man that he is, he bought me tickets to an upcoming oyster roast hosted nearby.
Naturally, that sent my ADHD brain straight down a rabbit hole—right into one of my favorite forgotten chapters of North Carolina history.
Which brings us to the Oyster War.
The Oyster War
On January 21, 1891—North Carolina essentially declared war.
Not over land.
Not over politics.
But over oysters.
In the late 1800s, shellfish were big business. Oysters fed booming canneries, working families, and entire coastal economies. For centuries, North Carolina’s sounds had been rich beyond measure. Native Americans left behind massive shell middens. Early European explorers wrote of reefs stretching for miles. After the Civil War, oysters became an economic lifeline, especially in places like Beaufort, New Bern, and Washington.
Locals harvested oysters the old way—by hand, with tongs, in shallow water. It was slow, physical work, but it was sustainable.
Up north, in the Chesapeake Bay, things went a different direction.
By the 1880s, Maryland and Virginia had dredged their oyster beds nearly into oblivion. Heavy metal dredges scraped the bottom clean—adult oysters, seed oysters, reef structure and all. Harvests collapsed from tens of millions of bushels to a fraction of that, but demand didn’t slow down.
So they came south.
By the mid-1880s, fleets of Virginia and Maryland boats were poaching North Carolina waters. By 1888, thousands of bushels a week were being pulled from Hyde County alone. Pamlico Sound went from producing around 100,000 bushels in 1887 to more than 2.5 million by 1890—and most of it wasn’t being taken by North Carolinians.
These weren’t small operations, either. The so-called “oyster pirates” were well-organized, heavily armed, and often carried Winchester rifles to defend their hauls.
Locals pushed back. In 1889, North Carolina banned non-resident dredging, but enforcement was weak. The sounds were vast. Patrol boats were few. By 1890, tensions around Ocracoke and Pamlico Sound were reaching a boiling point. Watermen reported armed confrontations. Some northern captains even claimed private planting rights as an excuse to keep dredging.
Governor Daniel G. Fowle’s desk filled with appeals: protect our beds, or lose them forever.
This wasn’t just about oysters. It was cultural. It was ecological. Local tongers saw dredging as outright destruction—piracy that would wipe out the fishery for generations. Outsiders saw untouched deep-water beds and dollar signs.
So on January 21, 1891, North Carolina drew a line.
The General Assembly banned out-of-state dredging entirely and prohibited shipping North Carolina oysters to northern markets. Then Governor Fowle did something even bolder.
He rented a steamer—the Vesper—out of Wilmington. When the federal government refused to loan him a weapon (citing North Carolina’s shaky post-war credit), he borrowed a howitzer from Virginia instead. He armed the vessel with militiamen from the Pasquotank Rifles and issued orders that were simple and unmistakable:
Seize—or sink—any illegal dredger.
The Vesper patrolled Pamlico Sound in late January. Dozens of Chesapeake boats were spotted. And remarkably, not a single shot was fired. The sight of an armed North Carolina patrol was enough. The fleets scattered almost immediately.
Only one vessel—the Sailor’s Return—was seized. Its crew stood trial in Pamlico County, the lone prosecution of the entire conflict.
And just like that, it was over.
By spring of 1891, North Carolina’s oyster beds were secure. The war led to the creation of the Shell Fish Commission, laying the groundwork for modern fisheries management. Governor Fowle, sadly, didn’t live to see its long-term impact—he died in office that April.
The victory wasn’t permanent. Overharvesting continued. Disease would devastate oyster populations in the 20th century. Today, oysters are a fraction of what they once were, though restoration efforts are finally bringing reefs back to life.
Still, I love this story.
Because it reminds me how fiercely North Carolinians once protected what was theirs. How deeply tied our food is to our identity. And how something as humble as an oyster can carry generations of memory, culture, and conflict inside a single shell.
