Southport Magazine

Publishing a community magazine is just fun. You never know where the connections you make will lead. My trip to the community garden behind Brunswick Community College’s Lord Street campus to take photos led me to a really cool old boat. 

Tom Lombardi, one of the volunteers working on the garden, mentioned on his way out that he was headed downtown to finish up a planting by the old lifeboat that had just been placed at the corner of Caswell and Bay Streets. Well that just perked my ears right up! I found out that the boat was old lifeboat that used to part of a sign at a local restaurant but had been just sitting in the high grass since it was removed. Volunteers got permission to refurbish the boat and put it up on Southport’s waterfront. I’m a sucker for an old boat, so of course that was my next stop. 

The boat I found installed on the corner was everything I could have hoped for. It was re-painted in white with orange trim with a sailcloth cover. This was not only a treat for a boat and history lover, it was a photographer’s dream. I snapped a few photos and happily went home to post one on Southport Magazine’s social media. 

That Facebook post got a lot of love. The photo is striking, not so much because of my ace photographer skills as because of the absolutely amazing colors offered up by the boat and Southport and the perfect blue sky that day. And this is where the story gets fun. One of the comments on that post was from the owner of the restaurant the where the boat served in her former life as a sign, the Sandfiddler (located where Southport Sushi Gourmet operates today). 

She said this:

“We bought the boat when we owned the Sandfiddler and put it there. I believe it was originally on one of the liberty ships that used to be in the Brunswick River. A scrape yard took them 1×1 took apart and sold the scrap metal. That’s where it was a life boat.”

This was of course followed by commenters raving about the Sandfiddler’s hushpuppies and such. They DID have great hushpuppies. It was just the sort of small-townish thing that makes living here so much fun. 

Now the lifeboat has acquired a name, “Sara Faircloth,” and a sign explaining a little about where the boat was produced. 

So, a local landmark was spotted by some sharp-eyed citizens, restored to her former beauty, and installed where she can become a new landmark going forward. Her story came together with the help of a lucky photographer, social media, and local historians. Kind of funny that the lifeboat, built to save sailors’ lives, has been saved twice by Southport citizens. But that’s how history works.