Amel Callaway and the birth of island’s charter fishing industry

Amel Callaway and the birth of island’s charter fishing industry

By Fran Thompson
If he was just a little higher on the Callaway family totem pole, Amel Callaway might not widely be considered Orange Beach’s first charter fisherman, edging out an assortment of brothers, cousins and Walkers along the way to earning that distinction. Amel was the youngest of the seven boys that Susan Callaway presented to her husband James Callaway beginning in the late 1800’s.
According to Amel’s grandson, Earl Callaway, Amel was more often than not made to stay at home and watch after the woman while the elder Callaway boys sailed with their father out into the Gulf of Mexico on adventures to assorted points in the Caribbean.
James Callaway, like most of Orange Beach’s first settlers, was a merchant seaman. The Callaway clan sailed on two schooners they built themselves to ports such as Cuba and Key West. They dropped off lumber, turpentine and naval spirits from home and picked up rum, molasses and sugar at ports all along the way.
“This was 125 years ago. There was nobody around and James wanted to leave a man to look after the woman,’’ said Earl Callaway. “More often than not it was Amel, because he was the youngest. He had to stay home and look after the woman and the turnup greens.
“While the others were away, some guy came up and offered Amel 50 cents to go fishing,’’ Callaway added. “That’s how it all started. After that, if somebody wanted to go fishing, they would send a telegram to Foley and eventually the word would get down to Orange Beach. It was a pretty shaky way of communicating.’’
Callaway remembers his grandfather Amel as a bit or a renaissance man.
“Everybody loved him. But you knew not to mess with him. I used to say John Wayne was almost as cool as Amel Callaway,’’ Earl said. “He was the town vet. He made shoes and fishing poles for his grandkids. He was a tough son-of-a-gun. But I never remember any harsh words, at least any that were not well deserved.’’
Recalling stories from roughly 1961’s Roll Tide championship year to 1964, when fellow Foley High grad Ken Stabler was on the freshman team up in T-Town, Callaway waxes nostalgic about Orange Beach in those pre-condo days and time spent with his grandfather.
He said he and his little brother Ronnie and friends like T. Bagley and Ben & Tom Wilson would spend summer days swimming across Wolf Bay to play all day on the ridge at the end of Sapling Point (across Wolf Bay from the O.B. Library). When it was time to come home, Earl’s dad, Ray, would blast a hand cranked air raid siren from the family’s porch of his home, which was the original Orange Beach Hotel (now the Coastal Art Center).
“It was great growing up around here,’’ Earl said. “We would never see more than five cars a day. One guy would always toot his horn when he drove by. Amel called him ‘Mr. Tooter.’’’
Did Amel take pride in being the first charter fisherman in Orange Beach?
“He was aware of it,’’ Callaway said.
But, Callaway adds, there is also a good family story about his Uncle Herman (Amel’s brother) finding the first snapper reef in the Gulf of Mexico by following a tip from his father-in-law, the Pensacola Lighthouse keeper. That spurred the start of Orange Beach’s world renowned man-made reef system.
There’s also the story about Amel’s father, Capt. Jim, surviving the most harrowing of battles with the elements onboard one of his schooners. The ordeal turned Capt. Jim’s hair from jet black to gray.
Amel’s brother Herman also basically invented steering wheels on boat bridges when he manufactured a contraption using bike chains and sprockets to guide his boat. Callaway also mentions that his own father, Ray, pulled an umbella off of a John Deer tractor to fit on his bridge and allow him to steer in the shade from the bridge.
“Everybody laughed at him. But he didn’t care. He just sat up there and waved from the shade,’’ Callaway said. “The next summer everybody had umbrellas. But that’s another story, and there’s are a million stories.’’
Pictured: (left) Capt. Amel Callaway in the cockpit of his early charter boat, the Red Wing. The man behind Capt. Callaway is unidentified, but that’s a nice string of fish hanging from the canopy support. At right is a rare photo of the Red Wing while running in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by permission from Margaret Childress Long, author of The Best Place To Be – The Story of Orange Beach, Alabama.