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The "Skipper and Wayne" drags the depths of the Atlantic for shrimp. In an age of fiberglass boats, Junior Magwood's vessel is a relic. Its side and bottom planks are made of mahogany, its decks of hard pine, and its frame of steamed white oak. Now, Magwood's famous boat has been sold to a gulf shrimper.

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Junior Magwood's boat is being constructed near where Shem Creek Bar and Grill now stands.

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Captain Junior Magwood gives a speech at the launching of the "Skipper and Wayne" in 1958.

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Captain Junior Magwood sits on the bow of his boat, the "Skipper and Wayne." Magwood died in 2001, but his boat has continued to function as shrimp trawler at Shem Creek.

Nearly 10 years after legendary shrimp boat captain Junior Magwood departed from the earth and Shem Creek, his storied boat is leaving Mount Pleasant for the gulf.

"It's a sad sight to see. Put a tear in my eye," said his son, Capt. Wayne Magwood. "I guess I kind of grew up on this boat."

The price of fuel and the price of shrimp just aren't creating the balance necessary for enough profit anymore, said Magwood, so it made more sense to sell it. And although the boat's latest captain was Rocky Magwood (Wayne's nephew), the Magwoods have not owned the boat since Junior was alive.

"You pretty well gotta run your own boat now to make any money," added Warren "Bubba" Rector, who once worked with Junior Magwood on his boat and even owned it for a year.

These days, any Shem Creek boat leaving the fleet is a story, but the sale of Junior Magwood's boat is more dramatic than most. Magwood built the boat himself 50 years ago out of mahogany and ran it for decades out of Shem Creek, and since then it has passed from owner to owner and dock to dock, meant different things to different men, who all called her by different names.

Made in Mount Pleasant

It was July 29, 1958—Mayor Coleman was in office; there were three policemen in Mount Pleasant; McCants Drive and Simmons Street were dirt roads. And Captain Junior Magwood leaned over a podium beneath a canopy of oak branches, dressed in his Sunday best and giving a speech to celebrate the launching of his freshly built shrimp boat.

The mayor was in attendance, recalls Capt. Wayne Magwood, and his mother had dressed Wayne and his brother, Skipper, in little sailor suits. She broke a bottle of champagne against a wall to celebrate, and the crowd cheered as the "Skipper and Wayne" was brought down Shem Creek and approached the bridge. Junior, a draftsman, had gotten the boat plans from a liquor store owner with an interest in shrimp boat design, and taken them to Tuck and Pherigo, a nearby cabinet store that furnished the wood.

Now, as the finished product floated down the creek, not yet fitted with its rigging, it became clear that it was not going to make it under the bridge. So, Capt. Wayne recalls, the crowd watched as Junior Magwood filled the bilge with saltwater to sink the boat low enough to pass safely under the bridge.

Then began the shrimping. Junior would send his sons, Wayne and Skipper, down to Red's Icehouse to get ice and fuel for the boat, and then father and sons went off to sea, usually staying out for four days at a time and shrimping nonstop from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Over the years, Junior Magwood's work ethic became the stuff of legend.

"He was probably the hardest working man I ever saw in my life," said Bubba Rector, who worked for him at one time. "But I was 18 years old back then so he couldn't kill me."

As the Shem Creek shrimping industry flourished, the world beyond began to trickle in. Skipper Magwood joined the army in Vietnam, and Wayne says when he came back his brother wasn't the same. Wayne, the younger of the two, stayed on to continue shrimping and learn the business with his father.

The longest crawl

Wayne Magwood recalls his father saying that the day he would stop shrimping was the day he could no longer even crawl onto his boat.

One day, Wayne recalls with a sad laugh, he found his aging father, who lost a leg late in his life to diabetes, crawling in the street on hands and knees near where Alex's restaurant stands today.

He had fallen trying to walk down to his boat and could not get up. Wayne put his father in his truck and drove him down to the boat.

The old shrimp boat captain looked with weary eyes at his son and said, "Don't worry about me. I got no crew, I'm not goin' out today." So, Wayne left him to go get some help. When he returned, his father was gone, and so was the boat.

With one leg, fading eyesight, and no crew to help him, Junior Magwood had taken his boat out alone to go shrimping.

"He was tough," said Wayne. "He said there'd be a blue moon in hell before he'd stop going out."

A tribute to Shem Creek shrimping

Ten years ago the Magwoods sold the "Skipper and Wayne" to Bubba Rector, who kept her a year and renamed her "The Lady Ann" before selling her to another man, who used her for shrimping even scalloping along the Virginia and northeast coasts.

Then, two years ago, she returned to Shem Creek under the ownership of Mike Richardson, who gave the boat its current name of "Taylor Morgan," after his daughter. But the Magwoods still had a role in the boat's life, since Rocky Magwood served as her captain.

Now, the former "Skipper and Wayne" will quit the east coast for the first time and venture down to the gulf, where some captains with fresh fortunes made cleaning up the oil spill are buying new trawlers.

But the Magwoods still harbor a secret hope of returning the old boat to Shem Creek and Mount Pleasant, where Junior Magwood would want her to reside, and they are even entertaining the idea of making her a sort of museum, a tribute to the Shem Creek shrimping industry.

"To tell the truth, I'm not that worried about it," said Tressy Magwood, one of Capt. Wayne's daughters. "I've seen it leave before, and I have a feeling it'll come back again."

(Chris McCandlish can be reached at news@moultrienews.com).