LAMP archaeologist Brendan Burke has just published an article on St. Augustine’s shrimping and shrimp boat building heritage in Florida Scuba News:.
Plodding up and down the coast with their outstretched arms, the shrimp trawler has become a seaside icon throughout the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Painters, poets, writers, and musicians have recorded shrimp trawlers to feed our nostalgic interest in harvesting the sea, but little has been done to record the history of shrimping, the boats, and the families who built and operated them.
St. Augustine doesn’t claim to be the birthplace of modern shrimping. Fernandina, Florida, has that title, but for much of the 20th century St. Augustine was the shrimp boat capital of the country.