He also has a fervent desire to get the book into print sometime this year. “I even have a contingency plan in case something happens to me before it’s finished,” said Collins, better known as Captain Woody. He turns 77 in 2019. Collins purchased an old camper and parked it out back next to the garden at his Sheldon home. 

Its walls are tacked with newspaper clippings and old photographs of trawlers. An overhead compartment brims with books about the history of shrimping and of Beaufort County. This is where Collins is writing “Where Have All the Shrimp Boats Gone?” The urgency of his project reflects the state of a once-strong industry that could vanish before his eyes. 

The number of trawler licenses issued by South Carolina is about a quarter what it was in the 1980s. Fuel prices, and competition from foreign producers and farm-raised shrimp are oft-cited culprits of the industry’s demise. Collins adds to the list fewer and fewer people willing to spend time away from their families.

“There were years I spent more time in the bunk on my boat than I did at home,” he said. Collins seeks an accurate, unvarnished history — no fact and no story goes in unless verified at least three times. Even so, he says his greatest challenge is deciding what to omit. He has collected fascinating stories of the Portuguese immigrants who launched the Beaufort County industry in the early to mid-20th century; summer deckhands who went on to become surgeons; and rough-and-tumble captains who were literally casting their fortunes into the sea along with their nets.

Although storytelling will be central, Collins wants to write something more than a sentimental collection of old fish tales, which is one reason he initially hesitated to inject personal anecdotes. However, his editor, California-based Peter Allison, encouraged him to include personal reflections. And for good reason — Collins could hardly omit someone involved in several facets of the industry, from one end of Beaufort County to the other.

The son of a Parris Island Marine, Collins’ introduction to shrimping came as a youngster, when he played on the docks in Port Royal. One day, he convinced a friend’s father, the noted Capt. Tony Vukas, to take him out on his trawler. Vukas did more than that; he treated him like a deckhand. “Take the wheel.” “Steer us over there.” “Grab this line.”  “I was apprenticing, and I didn’t even know it,” Collins said.
Eventually, he bought his own boat and docked the leaky “Two Sisters” near the north end of Hilton Head Island, where Benny Hudson was establishing his seafood market and restaurant on Broad Creek. Collins noted all the folks in funny shorts and colorful shirts who passed through Hudson’s and pegged them for south-end tourists. He figured a market closer to the resorts would do a brisk business, so he opened a shop in a vacant car wash in Coligny Plaza. He leased the place on a handshake deal with developer Norris Richardson — $250 a month. Richardson also agreed to put a roof over the exposed car wash bay if Collins would run electrical wiring and do the other finishing work needed to make a proper store.

Business was indeed brisk, and when Collins sold the market four years later, he made enough money to retire the “Two Sisters” and purchase a more seaworthy boat. From there, Collins found himself selling his catch directly off the deck of his vessel at Palmetto Bay Marina. When its owners broke the news that they had sold to a developer who planned to ring the place with retail shops, they cautioned he probably would not be allowed to sell on the docks any longer. However, one of the former owners, John Rumsey, offered to partner with him on a new seafood restaurant. Captain Woody’s was born.

In 1999, after a decade or so running a restaurant, Collins sold to Kentucky natives Russell Anderson and his wife Shannon Wright. They later relocated the original Hilton Head Island restaurant to Target Road and opened a second restaurant in Bluffton. However, they kept the name, and Captain Woody’s remains a popular haunt for locals and visitors alike. The sale of the restaurant allowed Collins to return his full attention to the water. He spent his final years in the industry shrimping out of the Port Royal docks and moved his home from North Forest Beach on Hilton Head Island to Sheldon in northern Beaufort County. 

In picking a spot to retire, he and his wife passed on waterfront property, choosing instead an old farmhouse built beneath three gigantic oaks. However, Collins can walk past a treeline beyond his garden to an adjacent lot. There, he can fish a creek any time he wants. And of course, the water still calls him from inside the camper, where he speeds to complete his work. “It doesn’t matter to me if lots of people read it now. I just want to get it out there,” Collins said. “When I’m writing, I’m thinking about people who will pick up this book 50 years from now. “I’m writing for people who will want to know but who will have no one to tell them.”