Wachapreague's Captain Bobby Turner: 70 years fishing on the Bonnie Sue

Note: Captain Bobby Turner died Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017, two months after this story was published. You can read his obituary here. 

Captain Bobby Turner, 86, has plied the waters off Wachapreague in his boat, the Bonnie Sue, for 70 years — ever since he and his father, Garland Turner, finished building the wooden vessel together in 1947.

Tom Young of Parksley built the hull, and Turner and his father completed the boat.

Named after Turner's mother, Susie, and a close family friend, Bonnie, the boat has been part of his life since he was 16.

Together, man and boat have carried innumerable charter fishing parties to sea on a quest for tuna or marlin – or to waters closer to shore in search of flounder.

Turner recently recounted the boat's history for a visitor.

"My father had another boat called the Accomack. He was mostly a carpenter, but he did do some fishing on weekends in his early age," Turner said.

During World War II, most of Wachapreague's fleet, including Garland Turner's boat, was recruited to stand guard against the enemy at inlets between the barrier islands off the Eastern Shore seaside.

"Then when he got out after the war, he sold that boat and he started building this boat," Turner said.  "And he said, 'Bobby, Mother didn't know it, Jerry (Bobby's brother) didn't know it — nobody ... This boat is for you.' He knew I loved the water."

When he was 8, Turner's grandfather often took him out on his boat, mainly used for oystering and charter fishing.

"I found out my love in life was water," he said.

After the Bonnie Sue was completed, Turner was a constant presence on its trips to sea — although his father accompanied him, since Turner was not yet old enough to obtain his captain's license.

"He had to go with me, and I did the mating work. Then, I got my license in 1949, when I was 18," he said, adding, "From then on, I ran the boat. He wasn't with me."

Turner estimates "it was six or seven years" before he gained enough customers to make any money. Still, he stuck with the enterprise.

He did gill netting for mackerel in the meantime in order to make a living with the Bonnie Sue. He did that for a year, then handed the boat over to three other captains to operate while he was in the Coast Guard from 1951 to 1954. He was stationed on nearby Parramore Island.

"As soon as the mackerel season was over, I would take my vacation and come home and run charters on the boat," he said.

READ MORE:Idea for Tangier Island sea wall funding gets support from local officials

Once his Coast Guard duty was completed, Turner turned his attention again full time to the Bonnie Sue.

He rebuilt the boat himself in 1956, including installing a flying bridge. After that, Turner started taking parties fishing in the ocean for marlin, tuna and dolphin, and wreck fishing for tautog — an enterprise he continued for three decades.

In the so-called heyday, there were 25 charter boats running out of Wachapreague.

"We have had a tremendous lot of good captains here," Turner said, adding, "Over the years, a lot of the older captains passed away and there were no new ones taking up the industry. All of them now are gone except Sam Parker and Nat Atkinson," he said.

"It's just like anything — if you're farming or an electrician — the more years you put in, the better you get with it," Turner said.

After 30 years, he "got kind of worn out and tired of the ocean beating me up" — and of leaving home at 4 a.m. and not returning until 6:30 at night — so he stopped doing most of the ocean fishing trips.

Fortuitously, around that time, fishermen began to catch significant quantities of gray trout in the waters two to three miles off the barrier island east of Wachapreague.

"Some days, we'd catch 120 or 150," Turner said.

That fishery lasted quite a few years.

After it played out, Turner decided "to strictly inside bottom-fish" for flounder, trout and croaker.

Over time, Turner increasingly came to appreciate the scenery around him on his trips on the Bonnie Sue.

"The older I got, the more interesting the marshes, the trees, the beauty of the water (became). I've seen dolphins, I've seen seals, and I've seen so many different types of birds and even animals there on the beach," he said.

Still, the most important aspect of his career was neither the fish caught nor the sights seen, Turner said.

"My life doing this has been meeting people," he said.

The lure of fishing with Turner and the other charter boat captains brought many people to Wachapreague, some of them wealthy businessmen, well-known politicians or community leaders.

Turner is thankful he has been able to live and work all his life in the little seaside village, where he has seen so many changes.

When he started his career, the town had three fish processing companies, four oyster houses and one mussel business, Turner said.

Additionally, there was the Wachapreague Hotel, a 60-room grand old structure that burned in 1978.

There was a large store where the Wachapreague Inn is now — one end of the building was a grocery store and in the other end was sold everything from clothing to boating supplies.

In 2012, the town honored Turner and fellow charter boat captain Ray Parker with the unveiling of a mural on an exterior wall of the Wachapreague Inn.

Painted by Bob Bilicki, the mural depicts Parker's boat, the Hobo, and the Bonnie Sue.

Some of his customers, most of whom live in Hampton Roads, have been fishing with Turner for 35 or 40 years.

Turner said he has mentored his share of local high school and college students who worked as mates on the Bonnie Sue over the years. This includes one young man from Onancock, who worked for Turner for two years and later went on to become a physician and then Virginia's lieutenant governor.

Turner described Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, now the Democratic candidate for governor, as "a good man."

"I still confer with him; I still talk with him," Turner said.

Another man who fished on the Bonnie Sue for many years is Steve Johnson of Onancock.

"I have had the pleasure of being onboard his vessel over the last 35 years," he said, calling Turner "a real professional in his trade."

Johnson, president of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Foundation, said the foundation recently renamed the student internship program at its Wachapreague laboratory in honor of Turner and the Bonnie Sue.

It costs nearly $25,000 a year to pay for student interns who work and learn at the laboratory each summer. The interns are Eastern Shore of Virginia high school or college students.

The program, which has been in place for nearly a decade, will now be called the Bonnie Sue Internship Program, Johnson said.

Donations can be made via check, made payable to VIMS Foundation with a notation that it is for the Bonnie Sue Internship Fund.

Mail to VIMS Foundation, VIMS Watermen's Hall, 1375 Greate Road, Gloucester Point, VA 23062,

"He has distinguished himself with a lot of really good friends that he has made through his efforts in being a charter boat captain," Johnson said, adding, "He's a real prince of an individual. He's extremely friendly and open to all different kinds of issues, and he has represented Wachapreague extremely well in everything that he did ... He is known quite far and wide."

Turner's health has been declining in recent days, and as result, he recently handed over ownership of the Bonnie Sue to his son Bill's close friend, Marcus Killmon.

"The old boat is 70 years old," Turner said. "It's been kept up and I'd just like to see the old boat stay around a while and be used for the same thing it has been used for." 

His lifetime, spent in large part on the water with the Bonnie Sue, has been a good one, Turner said.

"It has been a good journey. God has blessed me through 70 years," Turner said. "He has blessed me so much to see what I have seen and meet the nice people that I have met. I just praise and thank God for all the things I've done in my life."

READ MORE: Cancer victim is inspiration for fundraisers

On Twitter @cvvaughnESN

443-260-3314