The Star Talks to Capt. Norman Edwards - In the Seafaring Tradition

Few among us are able to stay in touch with their ancestors by way of a particular piece of land or expanse of water. Capt. Norman Edwards Jr., who, as a boy, heard the work songs sung by the all-black crew of his father's bunker steamer, stories of his grandfather's ocean piloting, and tales of his great-grandfather's whaling voyages, is such a person.

The Edwards family of farmers and fishermen settled in Amagansett in 1652. In November, Captain Edwards will run as a Republican candidate for East Hampton Town Trustee.

In late afternoon on most days, he can be found at the town dock at Gann Road in Springs unloading iced boxes of fish from Petrel, his small dragger, after a day of fishing on Gardiner's Bay. His father was lost in the bay on May 22, 1997, when his small dragger, the Little Robert E, capsized in a storm.

The son did what his father suggested - he went fishing, but only after first getting a college education at his mother's insistence.

"I was a junior in high school. Dad asked me what I wanted to do. I said, Fish. Mother said, No. College. My father knew my desire to fish, and our heritage, but he supported her. He said, Go to college, then come back and go fishing. So, I looked around at schools, then heard about the Coast Guard Academy. I said, Well, if I can't fish, at least I can go to sea."

He graduated from the academy in 1968. He retired 30 years later with the rank of captain and with plenty of sea time logged before his last assignment as chief of staff for the admiral in charge of all Coast Guard operations in Alaska.

"The first one of my father's boats I went on was the Montauk when I was 6 years old," he said last week, sitting aboard Petrel, the interior of the dragger's wheelhouse glowing in late-afternoon light.

Norman Edwards Sr. fished for menhaden, commonly known as bunker, an industrial species whose oil is used in paints and lubricants. He was considered a high liner, the best in the business along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Bunker are caught by purse seine, a net that encircles a school and is then drawn closed like a purse. The fish are pumped out of the net into the hold, and brought to a rendering plant such as the Smith Meal Company plant at Promised Land on Napeague beside which the Edwards family once had docks.

The bunker fishing crews came from Virginia and Carolina Island communities. Many spoke and sang in Gullah, an English dialect with African roots. Captain Edwards said he remembered hearing them sing as they heaved on the nets.

The Promised Land plant closed in 1968, but was still rendering fish when, at the age of 16, young Norman went aboard the bunker steamer Napeague for the first of two summers. He recalled the time Napeague made a set off the Connecticut shore but heavy grass got caught in the net. The grass clogged the screen of the fish pump. "I was the smallest aboard. My father said, 'I've got a job for you. Can you climb up there with a screwdriver and clean the screen?' I cleaned it out, we repumped the fish, and I was the hero of the day. It did a lot for my self-confidence."

His first assignment after leaving the academy was aboard the buoy tender Woodbine whose home port was Grand House, Mich. From there he commanded the 82-foot cutter Point Chico, based up the Sacramento River from San Francisco. His boat took part in the Coast Guard's first West Coast drug-enforcement mission.

It was in California he met his wife, Joan. The couple have four children, Samuel, Elan, Sarai, and Zacharia. Samuel is also a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy.

From the Point Chico, he coordinated rescue operations in San Francisco for a year and a half, then became an aide to the Guard's Pacific area commander for a few months before going for a master's degree in physical oceanography at Florida State University.

After a short stint on the buoy tender Paw Paw, out of Charleston, S.C., he reported to the Coast Guard research and development center in Groton, Conn., where he was given the task of overhauling an outdated system for determining the probability of sighting boats or people lost at sea under all sorts of conditions. His experiments resulted in the development of a model now used during search-and-rescue operations.

Four years later, Captain Edwards put the protocol to use himself. At the time, he was in command of the 210-foot cutter Vigorous, which patrols waters between the U.S.-Canadian border and the Caribbean. Five Venezuelan Coast Guardsmen had been missing at sea for three days without food or water. U.S. jet aircraft, Venezuelan fixed-wing planes, two French fishing vessels, and Vigorous were searching. "On the second day, my lookout sighted them."

His oceanography was put to work again in 1983 when he was put in charge of the Coast Guard's international ice patrol, whose job it is to keep track of icebergs that move south from the Arctic and threaten shipping. The patrol was created in 1915, three years after ice sank the Titanic.

In 1990, after leaving Vigorous with a rank of commander, he was promoted to captain and put in charge of the aids-to-navigation division at the Coast Guard's First District headquarters in Boston.

The posting coincided with the 200th Anniversary of the Life Saving Service. There were celebrations at lighthouses up and down the coast, including the Montauk Lighthouse and the Bug Light off Orient, which burned on July 4, 1963. Norman was with his father aboard Napeague that night, and watched the burning, a story he related when rededicating the repaired light nearly 30 years later.

From Boston, Captain Edwards was put in charge of the 378-foot cutter Sherman, out of Alameda, Calif. The cutter's missions included fisheries patrols and boardings to intercept smuggled drugs and migrants from the Bering Sea to the East China Sea. After two years aboard Sherman, Captain Edwards led the first Coast Guard squadron to be formed since the Vietnam War. The squadron was part of the embargo of Iraq in the Red Sea in cooperation with the navies of the U.S., Australia, and France.

Captain Edwards's first Alaskan posting was for two years starting in 1981 as officer in charge of the buoy tender Laurel, based in Ketchikan. He finished his career by returning to Juno as chief of staff of the 17th District headquarters. He plans to return later this month for the wedding of his daughter, Sarai.

"If I didn't have such deep heritage here, I would be there - the resources, beauty, and especially the people," Captain Edwards said.