Tide to Table

Listen carefully, as Gullah hymns rise in the air.

Lowcountry Crispy Crab Nuggets - recipe from Tides of Tradition online cookbook

Port Royal Crab Factory, 1960s

The factory sat close to the water’s edge in Port Royal, where the breeze off the sound carried the sharp, briny smell of steaming crabs. Inside, the air was thick and damp, heavy with salt and the faint sweetness of shellfish. Long wooden tables stretched across the room, each lined with women in aprons, their fingers flying as they worked through bushels of vibrant reddish-orange crabs that had just come out of the steam vats.

The rhythm was steady. A hammer thudded, claws split, shells fell into buckets, and the precious white meat landed in tin trays. Conversation floated above the clatter — gossip about neighbors, talk of Sunday services, whose boy had joined the Navy, which family needed a new roof.

Port Royal Crab Company - 1960s in Port Royal, SC

Most of these women were Gullah descendants, their mothers and grandmothers before them having worked the waters in one way or another. They sang hymns under their breath, or sometimes a Gullah praise song would rise up and carry across the room, blending with the sharp snaps and taps of shells cracking.

It was hard work. Shoulders ached, fingers stung from the brine, but every pound of meat meant another dollar toward feeding their families. The factory owner walked the floor with a ledger, weighing trays, writing names, and adding tallies. Nobody got rich, but there was pride in being part of something that fed not just Beaufort but kitchens all up and down the coast.

Outside, baskets of live crabs kept arriving, pulled from the Port Royal Sound, their claws snapping in protest. By day’s end, trucks would roll out carrying tubs of fresh-picked crabmeat, bound for Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta, even New York. And the women would walk home tired, smelling of salt and steam, but with a little money folded in their aprons.

The company had been founded in 1939 by inventor Sterling Harris, who kept his principal offices in Beaufort and briefly operated on Lady’s Island before moving and expanding to Port Royal. For years, Blue Channel was the nation’s top producer of Atlantic blue crab and one of the largest crab-packing firms in the country.

Today, those factories are quiet, their doors shuttered, and the industry has long since been battered by imports and development. Yet the blue crab remains woven into Beaufort’s fabric — not just as commerce, but as memory and ritual.

On warm summer evenings, down backyard docks where the tide breathes in and out, families still gather around bushel baskets of live crabs.

The creatures clatter and scrape, claws reaching through the wire, as children squeal with half-fear, half-delight. The men tip them into a steaming pot, seasoned with Old Bay and sea salt, while the women spread the Beaufort Gazette across a long picnic table, corners weighted with sweating pitchers of sweet tea and beer.

When the crabs emerge, red as fire and piled in a tin washtub, the feast begins. Fingers crack claws, juice runs down wrists, and laughter mingles with the shrill buzzing of tree crickets in the pines. The youngest learn to coax the sweet meat from its shell; their triumphs are met with cheers. Stories flow as freely as the food: someone recalls their grandmother picking in a Port Royal shed, someone else remembers setting hand lines in Battery Creek with chicken necks tied to a string.

As the sun slides low, painting the river in gold and rose, it feels as though time itself has softened. The shells pile up, the table becomes a mess of newsprint and salt, and everyone leans back, satisfied and drowsy. The river keeps rolling past, same as it always has, carrying with it the memory of every crab pulled from its depths — from the picking houses of Port Royal to the backyard docks of Beaufort.

The factories may be gone, but the ritual endures. In every claw cracked, in every story told around a table stained with seawater and laughter, the blue crab still binds this community to its waters, from past to present, from work to celebration.

Recipes, dating back to the 70s, served at parties on the bluff are from our online cookbook, Tides of Tradition. To join our cookbook club, hit the Subscribe button and never miss a story or a recipe.

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