THE PROBLEM
After decades of providing great seafood and jobs to the community, our (Backmans) and many other shrimpers began to feel the pressure of keeping up their fleet. The rising cost of fuel and the imported shrimp that was steadily flooding the market had driven down the price of wild shrimp. Today our fleet of six shrimp boats is down to one. This is mainly due to the high maintenance required by the old wooden boats which must be hauled out at least every two years if not more to be replanked. For the aforementioned reasons it became increasingly less viable to perform the required maintenance on so many boats. Shipworms eventually laid to rest four of the family’s fleet right at their dock. The one remaining, the “Backman Enterprise”, was built in 1986 and is made completely of fiberglass. And then came Hurricane Matthew.
OUR SOLUTIONS
“Seeing the tattered dock after the storm made me sad to think that we would lose this staple of the community and all the rich history that goes along with it. When I asked Sammy, Dave’s brother, what the plan for Enterprise was, he said that he wanted to sell it. Then he said “or turn it into a museum.”” This is from an article authored by Thomas Ambrose Bierce “. . . who admired the uniqueness of the Backman’s commercial waterfront, and I was glad to be helping out a fellow waterman in need.”
Thomas went on to point out that the building across the street from Backman’s on the corner of Old Sol Legare Road is the Farmers’ Lodge Museum and Cultural Center, which is a circa 1915 building that the Town of James Island pitched in to restore and have added to the National register of Historic Places in 2007.
Backman’s Seafood began providing local fresh seafood at the current location in 1961 during the heyday of the shrimping and oyster industry. These unique buildings have serviced that industry until recent events put them out of service. Bierce realized that if he explained to people that they might lose a part of history that they would care and pitch in again to help preserve this working waterfront and allow it to adapt and continue functioning in a sustainable way as something everyone can enjoy.
We need the assistance in not only preserving this history, but also making it presentable to so that others are able to learn and appreciate the history.