W.O. Dough and Five Son Continue Building Shad Boats, Jan. 7, 1921

Seldom is it seen in one family where as many as five sons have taken up the tricks of the father. The five sons of W.O. Dough of Manteo make one of the exceptions. The father is a boatbuilder and the son of a boatbuilder and sea captain. He hiered (inherited?) all his father’s seamanship and mechanical skill. His sons have taken up the boatbuilding tendencies inherent in the family and none of them seem satisfied unless they are building boats. W.O. Dough was for years in the Life Saving Service and has spent much of his life in the shad fishing business. He has seen sea service in all kinds of rough weather and knows just how a boat should be for smartness and seaworthyness. And he has learned just how to combine these essential characteristic in a craft without losing the elegance and beauty that has made the North Carolina shad boat famous thruout the country. Today his boats may be seen all over North Carolina, and in many ports up and down the Atlantic coast. Nowhere is W.O. Dough happy except when he is watching the smart lines of some handsome boat take form under his minute supervision, and nowhere is he more satisfied than when racing one of his craft against that of some other builder. His name has become a byword among fishermen who depend thruout the year on the safety of the craft with which they must pursue their livelihood. For the entire period of the war, Dough and three of his sons served at shipbuilding in a leading American shipyard. And when the war was over, they went home and started building boats again. Boatbuilding is his trade but he is a jokesmith by profession. With the rough wit of a second Mark Twain and the adaptability of Abe Lincoln, he carries a barrage of stores as interesting, and as original as the boats he designs. Nobody ever failed to laugh at W.O. Dough, unless he was wondering where he managed to dig up so many side-splitting anecdotes. (The above story is from The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Jan. 7, 1921. The photo shows shad boat builder Worden Dough (center) and is from a story printed in Coastal Review, at https://www.coastalreview.org/2020/05/the-story-of-shad-boats/)