It’s a bit unusual when people elect to purchase a home in the exact same complex where, years before, they rented a one-bedroom on the fly. Jim Newsome, president and CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority, and his wife, Kathy, did just that.

“When I first moved into the Tides, I rented a one-bedroom condo and my wife, who hadn’t joined me yet in Charleston, liked to joke that it was my dorm room,” he said to me in the lobby of the Tides on a quintessentially sunny Charleston morning. Light spilled through the front and back doors of the lobby and across my notebook page as I wrote. It was already clear to me why Newsome enjoyed the atmosphere.

Newsome has lived in Mount Pleasant’s Tides community, located at the foot of the Ravenel Bridge, since September 2009, when he initially accepted his new position aspresident of the ports. He claimed he needed a short commute to his office on Concord Street in downtown Charleston as well as a spectacular view. Since the Tides offered both, he has remained a resident since that first rental in unit 118.

“I went from unit 118, the one-bedroom I lived in before my wife moved here, to moving into a three-bedroom in August 2010 with my wife, unit 224,” he said. “Now, we’ve just purchased unit 245 and we’re very pleased. After living here, we didn’t particularly want to leave.”

Of course, that’s not to say that the Newsomes didn’t speculate on the idea of moving out of the Tides community when the time came to buy a house. After a few years of renting units, Newsome said they carefully examined every option but kept coming back to the place they loved most.

“We never wanted to leave, and we hoped to purchase from the beginning of our search,” he said. “We looked everywhere – from the Isle of Palms to Sullivan’s to Old Village – but we didn’t really want a single-family home. After raising the kids and dealing with yard work nonsense for years on end, my wife and I welcome the experience of condominium living.”

“Are you and your neighbors pretty much best friends?” I couldn’t help but ask. I hadimagined Kramer-like hall mates, knocking on Newsome’s door to borrow sugar and ask about cruise ships.
Newsome’s own busy schedule of running the South Carolina ports is peppered with relaxing moments at the Tides, enjoying the amenities and the view.“We like all our neighbors a lot; in fact, our best friends here in Charleston, the Brodys, live at the Tides as well,” he said. “And we run into people in the elevators or here and there. But everyone keeps busy schedules.”

“I use the swimming pool a lot. It’s probably my favorite thing,” he mused. “I also love the sauna and the fitness room.”

Newsome took me around the grounds, showing me the amenities center, where residents rent space for parties, as well as the pool deck, which is complete with a miniature fridge and plenty of grill space.
“I don’t know if I could live here,” I said. “I’d feel like every day was my vacation!”

Though he and his wife take advantage of the proximity to both downtown and Mount Pleasant that the Tides offers, Newsome said he spends most of his time on this side of the Cooper River.

“I do a great deal of golfing at the Daniel Island Club, working out at ECCO and riding my bicycle,” he said.

“Do you ever get tired of seeing the harbor?” I had to ask. “I mean, do you think about work when you come home and look out the window?”

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Newsome said. “I could watch ships all of the time.”

Speaking of ships, Newsome was more than happy to share the details of how the ports’ objectives are trucking (chugging?) along.

“For 2013, we will continue to focus on our chief goals, such as deepening the Charleston harbor, forming an inland harbor in Greer, South Carolina, and working on the Navy Yard terminal,” he said.

Newsome also said that the rapid growth of Mount Pleasant bodes well for the port’s growth and Charleston’s growth as a metropolitan region.

“I think that anything that increases the profile of the greater Charleston area is good news for the port,” he said. “We’re bringing in more people from other places, better infrastructure – and our shipping volume is up almost 10 percent from one year ago. We’ve got a lot of objectives to cover but we’re meeting them.”

Somehow, Newsome still finds time for “extracurricular” activities in Mount Pleasant in addition to his busy career and taking in the beauty of the harbor. The morning we chatted, he was just coming from a meeting of the Heart Walk Committee, a walking fundraiser for heart disease that takes place in September. He’s also on the board of Trident United Way, the Advisory Board of MUSC Children’s Hospital and the Board of Governors for the College of Charleston’s Business School.

Despite his packed schedule, Newsome finds life in Mount Pleasant – and at the Tides – calming.

“After life in the big cities, it’s great,” he said. “I laugh at people who complain about the traffic, in fact. I go back to Atlanta now and shudder at the eight lanes. Life is just plain good in Mount Pleasant, and I can get downtown in 10 minutes. Living at the Tides has provided me with the best of both worlds.”

By Denise K. James

Photos by Andy Hagedon

Photo used with permission from East Cooper: A Maritime History. by Tressy Magwood Mellichamp. Available from the publisher online at http://www.arcadiapublishing.com or by calling 888-313-2665.

On an unseasonably warm day in January, I dined at Red’s Ice House on Shem Creek, a familiar place to nearly all residents and visitors East of the Cooper, and daydreamed about what Shem Creek was like during the golden age of local shrimping. The restaurants and bars we currently love would be gone, of course, replaced by rustic fisheries, where shrimp boat captains would stop in with the morning’s bounty. Make no mistake, the creek would be just as populated as it is today – mostly with shrimp boats vying for the best spot to occupy until the time came to head out for the open water once again.

Until I talked with Sam Schirmer, a native of Sullivan’s Island and a one-time shrimp boat captain, along with his father, the legendary Robert “Hagg” Schirmer, I knew little about shrimping besides what could be gleaned from watching “Forrest Gump.” But, while listening to Sam’s vivid stories about Mount Pleasant’s shrimping era, I felt like I was right there on the boat.

Schirmer, his father and the mates who accompanied them on various adventures undoubtedly can tell countless tales among them. But in the couple of hours I spent speaking with Sam, I learned a great deal about navigating Lowcountry waters for shrimp and the laughs and bloopers that went along with it.

“When I was growing up, I thought all the other shrimp boat captains and crews were friends with my father,” Sam explained with a hearty laugh. “I didn’t realize, because I was a kid, that they were actually competitors, out to get the most shrimp. Of course, when I became a captain myself, later on, I quickly figured it out.”

Schirmer reminisced about the different “groups” of shrimp boat captains and crews and how everyone shrimped different parts of the Lowcountry, including groups that stuck to Rockville and McClellanville.

“Of the ones close by, the Magwoods shrimped on Morris Island; Wayne Magwood, Barry Wilson and Louis Williams tended to shrimp in “the channel,” where the ships came in – which could be difficult because of dodging ships – and others shrimped from Sullivan’s Island to Bulls Island,” Sam told me. “The Bulls Island and Sullivan’s Island crews included my father, Farrell White, Wally Shaffer, Skipper Shaffer and Bubba Rector, who actually still shrimps to this day.”

According to Schirmer, shrimping was so popular around Mount Pleasant during his youth that it was tough to get down the center of Shem Creek because the boats were so thick.

“Now there are only a few boats; it’s not like it was back then,” he explained.

How did these shrimp boat captains beat their competition and get the most shrimp? Very craftily, according to Schirmer.

“There were certain tricks of the trade,” he said. “These included techniques that were not so sophisticated, like straight-up fibbing – ‘You catch anything over there?’ ‘Nope’ – and other stuff.”

The “stuff” included everything from radio scramblers, which garbled conversations between crew members so competitors could not decipher what they were saying; to selecting the best docking position at night for earlier launch the next morning; to, according to Sam, one of the most important techniques, otherwise known as the “rules of the road.”

“The rules of the road, as we called them, were how the ships approached each other on the water,” Sam said. “There were red lights and green lights on either side of the boat. They determined who was able to pass whom. The lights helped with dealing with the close quarters among ships that traveled similar paths.”

As the years passed, the hours in which the captains were able to shrimp decreased. In the late 1970s, the Department of Natural Resources made it illegal to shrimp at night in South Carolina.

“It actually made sense – there was never any down time on the ocean floor,” Sam said. “Ships were out all day and all night. When the new law took place, 30 minutes prior to dawn became the cutoff. People got arrested all the time over being a couple of minutes early, because the actual time for sunrise changes each day.”

Just as the water was home to competitive shrimp boats, Shem Creek was home to competitive fisheries. Among the earliest on Shem Creek were Mount Pleasant Seafood, owned by Buddy Sturges, and Moultrie Fisheries, owned by Red Simmons – yes, that Red.

“My father and I unloaded with Moultrie Fisheries for years. Then, in 1976, we began unloading with Mount Pleasant Seafood,” said Sam. “Later we unloaded with Geechee Seafood, which was across the creek from the other ones and which came about after the others shut down. In fact, it still exists.”

“How would the boats determine who went to which of the fisheries?” I asked.

“Ohh, fighting,” Sam admitted with a laugh. “An owner of a fishery would get into a fight with a shrimp boat captain and they’d part ways for awhile. It all came down to whomever you were getting along with.”

Despite the bickering and competition running rampant with shrimp boat crews, Schirmer said that obstructions in the waterways, also known as “hangs,” were not kept secret, because they could tear the shrimp nets.

“Many a fisherman lost a net on a local hang that we now recognize as part of the Hunley,” he mused. “But a lot of people don’t know that two more hangs exist off the Isle of Palms pier – Confederate ships. When we’d fish off the Isle of Palms, we could never get any closer than half a mile away.”

Though Schirmer and his father left the business around 1982, Sam Schirmer said he still misses it.

“These days, most shrimp are farmed or imported,” he mused. “I went into insurance after the shrimping life, a career that I’ve maintained since then, and my father retired as well. I always thought if I wanted to go back to it one day, I could.”

A look that can only be described as nostalgia came over Schirmer’s face.

“But it’s not the same anymore,” he admitted.

By Denise K. James