The sharpie schooner seems to have been more popular on the Chesapeake Bay than on Long Island Sound. The rig alone appealed to Bay sailors, who were experienced with schooners. Of all the flat-bottomed skiffs employed on the Bay, only the schooner can be said to have retained much of the appearance of the Connecticut sharpies. Bay sharpie schooners often were fitted with wells and used as terrapin smacks (fig. 7). As a schooner, the sharpie was relatively small, usually being about 30 to 38 feet over-all. Since the 1880's the magazine _Forest and Stream_ and, later, magazines such as _Outing_, _Rudder_, and _Yachting_ have been the media by which ideas concerning all kinds of watercraft from pleasure boats to work boats have been transmitted. By studying such periodicals, Chesapeake Bay boatbuilders managed to keep abreast of the progress in boat design being made in new yachts. In fact, it may have been because of articles in these publications that the daggerboard came to replace the pivoted centerboard in Chesapeake Bay skiffs and that the whole V-bottom design became popular so rapidly in the Bay area. The North Carolina Sharpie In the 1870's the heavily populated oyster beds of the North Carolina Sounds began to be exploited. Following the Civil War that region had become a depressed area with little boatbuilding industry. The small boat predominating in the area was a modified yawl that had sprits for mainsail and topsail, a jib set up to the stem head, a centerboard, and waterways along the sides. This type of craft, known as the "Albemarle Sound boat" or "Croatan boat," had been developed in the vicinity of Roanoke Island for the local shad fishery. Although it was seaworthy and fast under sail, this boat was not particularly well suited for the oyster fishery because of its high freeboard and lack of working deck for tonging. [Illustration: FIGURE 17.--Deck of a North Carolina sharpie schooner showing U-shaped main hatch typical of sharpies used in the Carolina Sounds.] Because the oyster grounds in the Carolina Sounds were some distance from the market ports, boats larger than the standard 34-to 36-foot New Haven sharpie were desirable; and by 1881 the Carolina Sounds sharpie had begun to develop characteristics of its own. These large sharpies could be decked and, when necessary, fitted with a cabin. In all other respects the North Carolina sharpie closely resembled the New Haven boat. Some of the Carolina boats were square-sterned, but, as at New Haven, the round stern apparently was more popular.