THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601210099
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HATTERAS VILLAGE LENGTH: Long : 166 lines
With his $805 boat, The Albatross, and two gamefish reels given as gifts, Capt. Ernal W. Foster hooked the nation on Outer Banks offshore sport fishing in 1939.
He started Hatteras Island's first Gulf Stream charter fishing fleet, bringing thousands of visitors to the isolated islands.
Within 20 years, he had single-handedly reeled in the first blue marlin, first white marlin and first sailfish caught from a charter boat off northern North Carolina. In 1958, an angler aboard The Albatross released the first blue marlin known to have been deliberately set free.
For more than 40 years, this hoary-headed captain carried charter parties to the Gulf Stream almost every day.
From the stern of his hand-hewn juniper boat, he sought out the secret spots where trophy tuna and big billfish swam.
When he was 85, he was known as the only barrier islands captain who could steer a 42-foot boat into a lift slip without bumping a buoy.
``Even the experts touch,'' said Mike Scott, whose Buxton boatyard has serviced Foster's Albatross fleet for more than 20 years.
``He was amazing. You'd see him coming in the harbor, bringing the boat by himself, wearing that home made khaki uniform with his name stitched on it, waving at everyone. He and that boat were one. He'd get on board, and 20 years would fall out of his face. I've never seen him without a smile when he was on that boat.
``He's an institution, I'd say. Everybody had a lot of respect for him. That man's life is a monument to good living.
``And he really helped put Hatteras Island on the map.''
Foster died Jan. 8 of heart failure, a few weeks before his 86th birthday.
More than 400 friends, family members and fellow fishermen attended the simple funeral at Hatteras United Methodist Church. Thousands of others across the country continue to mourn the loss of an esteemed angler.
``I think my father would want to be remembered as someone who liked people - and someone who never took more from the sea than he needed,'' Ernie Foster, 50, said last week from his office at Manteo High School, where he is a guidance counselor.
``He never saw the need to be the captain who threw the most fish on the docks. He used to delight in saying he'd released - instead of caught - the world record sailfish. He knew everything. But he was never a know-it-all.
``A lot of the guys at the docks looked at my father as a tangible contact with a world they'd never experience,'' said Capt. Foster's only child - who continues the family's charter fleet business on weekends and during the summer.
``I'm beginning to accept that he was a character,'' Ernie Foster said of his father. ``His death was truly the end of an era.''
The son of an Outer Banks menhaden fisherman, Ernal Foster was born in 1910 in a two-story wooden frame house on the southern tip of Hatteras Island. He had three brothers and three sisters. The family spent most of their time working on the water.
When he was 12, Ernal Foster got his first job, ferrying bathers from Morehead City to Atlantic Beach each Sunday. He charged 25 cents per passenger each way. Three years later, he had moved on to carrying salesmen from Hatteras across the inlet to Ocracoke Island for $4 a head.
Fascinated with fish and the sea - but bored by the confines of a classroom - Ernal Foster dropped out of school in the ninth grade to become a full-time commercial fisherman. He joined the Coast Guard at age 18 and journeyed to Long Island, N.Y.
If the Great Depression hadn't hit a few years later, he probably would have been a New York plumber instead of the founder of Hatteras Island's first charter fishing fleet.
``He was an apprentice plumber up north after he got out of the Coast Guard. But when times got tight, he refused to stand in bread lines,'' Ernie Foster said of his father.
``He knew he could come home to Hatteras and eat fish he caught for free.''
In 1937, Foster commissioned his first boat - The Albatross - which still carries charter parties into the Atlantic. By 1952, he owned two other fishing vessels, Albatross II and Albatross III, all of which dock at the wooden wharves near his Hatteras Village home. Sharp at the bow and round astern, these flare-bowed boats were built for bad weather, shallow shoals and swollen seas.
They're not as quick as modern-day sport-fishing boats. But each one has been to sea thousands of times.
Years ago, charter parties paid $25 for a full day of fishing. Today, anglers pay at least $800 for off-shore trips. Many other aspects of sport fishing also have evolved since Capt.
Foster first steered away from the Outer Banks shores.
``When he started, everyone commercial fished most of the year and carried charter parties sometimes during the summer,'' Ernie Foster said.
``My father was the first one to devote all his time to charter fishing. At that time, everyone supplied their own tackle. And most everyone already knew how to fish.
``My father carried sportsmen and sportswriters from all over the country out to the Gulf Stream.''
Relying on his wits rather than technology, Ernal Foster seldom used a radio, never used charts and could navigate from North Carolina to New York using only a compass. He could find wrecks from memory in a few minutes that other watermen searched weeks for with their electronic navigation devices and fancy fish finders.
Other watermen had told tales of strange fish with baseball bats on their noses swimming around Diamond Shoals.
But Ernal Foster was the first person to hook and land a big billfish in the area. When he brought the 475-pound blue marlin back to the docks in 1952, more than 300 people from around the Outer Banks came to see the strange sight.
``Ernal Foster probably did more for sports fishing in North Carolina than anyone else you could name,'' Hatteras Island charter boat captain Steve Coulter said Friday. ``He was the most respected and well known of all the old captains. Most anyone who's ever fished out of Hatteras has fished off an Albatross boat at one point. Heck, he carried three generations of anglers off shore.
``He never got in a hurry. And he didn't let progress change the way he worked. He was just a simple, straight-forward, honest man who loved fishing and loved to take people out on the ocean.''
In the 1950s, Ernie Foster said, his dad carried two New England brothers on a Gulf Stream fishing trip for the first time. In October, three months before he died, Capt. Foster took the same brothers fishing one last time. The three men - all in their 80s - caught a boatload of bluefish a few miles off the beach.
``One of the brothers was in a nursing home up north. And the other brother came and kidnapped him for his birthday,'' Foster's son recalled.
```We're going to see if Old Capt. Ernal is still alive so he can take us fishing,' the brother said.
``Of course, my father was still sitting on the docks there by the fishing fleet, where he spent most of his afternoons,'' Ernie Foster said.
``The brothers asked if he'd take them out again. He could never refuse a request like that. So off they went. The one brother was even in a wheelchair or something. But they all got on board that boat.
``My father had so much fun, he said he gave them an extra hour on the half-day charter.''
As he got older, and his heart began to slow, Capt. Foster whittled away his days on the docks - but even that seemingly idle pasttime was purposeful. He made perfect, curling shavings of juniper most of the time.
But whenever anyone's boat needed a plug, those old, sure fingers could carve a perfect fit within minutes using Foster's famously sharp pocket knife.
``He'd sit out there carving and telling stories that lasted 40 minutes or more,'' charter boat Capt. Walt Spruill said.
``His mind was just as crisp as the winter's air. He could remember everything. It was always good to listen to him tell about how good life used to be before all us younger fellas came down here and ruined Hatteras for him.
``He was a real inspiration to all us watermen down here,'' Spruill said seriously. ``He surely will be missed.''
Belinda Willis lived across the street from Ernal Foster and saw him every day for the past 20 years. She said he was like a father to many villagers in Hatteras, always around to offer encouragement and advice.
He was very influential in the area, she said, helping found the Hatteras Fire Department, Hatteras Medical Center and Hatteras Island Water Association.
And he loved to talk to anyone, she said - but never spoke ill of a single soul.
``He was a simple man. Materialistic things didn't matter to him. He didn't see the need to search for wealth or riches since he enjoyed the life he had so much,'' Willis said.
``He was an awesome man. Really special.
``In my eyes, he didn't really die,'' she said.
``His spirit will live on here in so many ways. Ernal Foster is a part of everyone on Hatteras Island.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Capt. Ernal W. Foster, who died this month, started Hatteras
Island's first Gulf Stream charter fishing fleet, bringing thousands
of visitors to the Outer Banks.
by CNB