Story and Photos by Jim Burke

The late-summer sun had just slipped behind the huge live oak trees that stand sentry around Russell’s Seafood Grill and Raw Bar in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. A cool breeze rustled through the leaves and brushed across my face, as I placed some more space smoked fish dip on a cracker and plopped it into my mouth.

Russell Vereen, local bon vivant, excellent cook and owner of a white 1973 Electra Glide Harley Davidson with sidecar and license plate reading “Cadlac,” looked a bit like a pirate as he stood confidently, almost arrogantly, at the door of his eating establishment. He stroked his bushy brown mustache and stepped out onto the verandah to greet another customer. A wiry, wisecracking, 30ish man, he seems genuinely concerned about each person who enters the door. Everyone in town knows Russell. To those who know this area, just his name is reason enough to visit the restaurant, because the Vereen family has been involved in cooking fine seafood in this part of South Carolina for generations. In 1791, when George Washington made his southern tour, he spent the night at the home of Jeremiah Vereen in order to get a good meal.

The Vereens are not related to any pirates, but may have helped feed a few. The family arrived in South Carolina with other French Huguenots before 1700, and, during that century, pirates (including Blackbeard) used the creeks and marshes around the inlet to elude the King’s ships and avoid storms.

The inlet may have been named after a pirate! There was a privateer named Murrell who preyed on Atlantic Coast shipping in the late 17th century and had his headquarters in the inlet. Others credit the name to a John Murrall, who purchased 631 acres of land in and around the inlet in 1731.

But there has never been any argument that the six-mile-long inlet, ten miles south of Myrtle Beach, with its protected waters and green marshes, has always been associated with seafood. Before the Europeans arrived, the local Indian tribes (the Waccamaw and Pee Dee) fished and hunted there.

Today, on busy US Route 17, you have to be alert to see a small sign pointing you toward the inlet. As you veer off the main road, you can see a faded, dark wood sign with the light blue letters that announce “Murrells Inlet, S.C.’s Seafood Capital.”

As you enter the small and gloriously unspoiled fishing village, there are a few small seafood stores, a leather shop, a marine supply business, some bait and tackle shops and restaurants with names like Flo’s and Drunken Jack’s.

Except for areas in front of one or two restaurants (there are about 30 to choose from), parking areas are not paved. Stoplights won’t impede your voyage, because there are none until you get back to the main highway. This is the oldest fishing village in the state and, by the early 1800s, was a thriving fishing community that also produced and shipped salt from two salt works. At that time, the tidelands of Georgetown County (a 16-mile strip of land that stretches from the Santee River delta, south of Georgetown, northward to Murrells Inlet) was dominated by huge rice plantations. The inlet became a summer rendezvous for rice growers who needed to escape the inland heat and mosquitoes.

Of course, the most ancient place to visit is the inlet itself, with its calm waters and the waving grass prairie of its salt-water marsh. There are many places to view the inlet, but perhaps the most beautiful vantage point can be found about three miles into the town. Look for Clearview Lane on the left, a bumpy dirt road with overgrown grass and pine trees so close to the road that some branches will touch your car. In about 70 yards, Clearview dead ends onto Creek Drive. This was certainly one of the first thoroughfares in this town and even today is simply two ruts in sandy grass that wanders alongside a marsh creek (the open water or tidal channel between islands of marsh grass have always been called creeks here).

On one side of this old road are sturdy, expensive but unpretentious homes with huge porches that were built between 1900 and 1930. On the other, one can look past large live oaks and the dropping fronts of graceful palmetto trees at the flowing cord grass of the marsh.

Just yards away, graceful white egrets flap silently a few feet above the grass, looking for a good spot to land. Look carefully and some of the other animals in this essential and rapidly vanishing ecosystem will show themselves: fiddler crabs scurry on the black mud at the edge of the grass; breaking homes for clams appear briefly, then quickly disappear; and an endless variety of birds, from usually unseen but shrill clapper rails to quick moving tree swallows, flit from one marsh island to another.

After a long visit with nature, my body was ready for food, so I stopped by a rustic and fun eating establishment called Flo’s. It has a unique, laid-back style that makes it hard to forget. Then there are the hats. About 3000 chapeaux, from an old white visor that says “Ms. Kelli’s Kids” to a wide-brimmed Panama, that hang from almost every wall and rafter. And, by the way, try the Smoked Alligator Ribs.

To see live alligators, visit the Waccamaw River on the west side of the town, which flows past old plantations and is home to a great diversity of plant and animal life.

Undoubtedly, pirates out to hide themselves long ago guided boats up some of the creeks off the main waterway. But anyone can hide from the hectic pace of the world and find refuge in the calming atmosphere of Murrells Inlet, and eat well, too.