August 8–15, 1996
cover story
And other tales from the Delaware River islands, where life is wild and the wildlife is sometimes human.
There are two calls on my answering machine in response to three weeks worth of searching for someone to take me out to the Delaware River islands.
The first is from the Coast Guard. After nearly a month of ignoring my phone calls, the guy in charge says he can't help me, but "maybe there are some old people" at Coast Guard headquarters "who might know about the river islands."
The other message is from Warren Seddon, a South Jersey FedEx route driver.
"Why don't you just show up?" asks Seddon, whose merry band of Peter Pan wannabes has been raiding one of those islands for the past 20 years, the last 19 aboard a 68-year-old, 900-pound steel lifeboat they refitted by hand.
Seddon adds another enticement:
"Expect a hot spicy assortment of meats and high-cholesterol, high-fat food products."
Thanks anyway, Coast Guard.
I'll run with the Rat Island Raiders.
For more than two decades, the tiny little spit of sand just off National Park, NJ, has lured a still tightly knit group of Audubon High School graduates who, twice a year since 1977, leave their wives or lovers for an overnight festival not unlike the initiation rituals of tribal peoples.
Most trips take place in cold weather.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, and again in February, each of the Rat Island Raiders is informed of the upcoming trips via a reminder mailed by Seddon.
The mailing is simple.
Merely a card with a black dot. On the dot is the date.
Nothing else needs to be said.
What is left unspoken is the nature of the ritual itself.
A group of camouflaged, often inebriated men on a cold one-acre island in the middle of the frigid Delaware, braving the elements and the madness that takes over when weather and the capricious flow of the river combine to steal warmth and dryness and sleep.
The madness has manifested itself in a variety of ways.
Men have vaultedbonfires with driftwood poles.
Tossed M-80 explosives at incoming members of their crew.
Suffered poison ivy blisters on the inside of their mouths after one of the Raiders immolated a field of the irritating foliage, inadvertently creating a cloud of airborne poison ivy oil which they all inhaled.
And once, a brawl between friends broke out over the fate of a Bert and Ernie cup tossed into a fire.
They've had bachelor parties, including one that featured porno films projected onto big white sheets tied to trees.
And, once, they had to fight off intruders who came to the island drunk, looking for trouble.
The men know that when the black dot arrives, it is time to get ready.
The women know that, on black dot day, they will lose their men to the call of the wild.
So what is it about Rat Island?
Compared to the rest of the islands clumped around the Greater Philadelphia section of the Delaware, Rat Island has little intrinsic value.
One of 62 islands in the stretch of the Delaware running from Easton south to the Delaware Bay, Rat Island has neither historical nor archaeological importance.
Other local islands have plenty of both.
There's Petty's Island, for instance, which lies just north of the Ben Franklin Bridge. Owned by the Southland Corp., Petty's now holds a marine terminal, an asphalt plant and petroleum storage tanks. Part of the island, however, is still wild and serves as a migratory bird stopover and a songbird nesting area.
But long before the heavy equipment came in, Petty's Island was a focal point for activity on the water.
Beating Ed Rendell by about 300 years, the Quakers used the island for riverfront gambling. And because the Quakers opposed slavery, Philadelphians interested in purchasing slaves could meet with traders on Petty's.
Pittsburgh may be home to the National League's Pirates, but the real buccaneers called Petty's Island — and many other Delaware River islands — home. It is a piece of historical perspective that is not lost on Warren Seddon and the rest of his motley crew, whose boat flies the skull and crossbones.
The Rat Island Raiders, however, are not the only ones interested in the Delaware River islands.
Besides Petty's Island, 18 other Delaware River islands have crucial wildlife and fish habitats.
Bald eagles and other protected fowl nest on Little Tinicum Island, a 157-acre oasis owned by the State Bureau of Forestry that sits just off Philadelphia International Airport.
So do peregrine falcons, sharp-shinned hawks and snowy owls.
And you can even find the storied yellow-bellied sapsucker there.
There are many mammals on the island as well.
Cottontail rabbits hop about Little Tinicum.
Muskrats mingle, weasels weedle, red bats swoop and, occasionally, white-tailed deer swim across from the shore if they are pushed out of their landlubbing territory.
A mile or so down the river, Chester Island hosts its own bounty of flora and fauna.
Owned by the DuPont Corp., the uninhabited and unimproved 140-acre island is an "important striped bass spawning area," a "migratory stopover for Canada geese and ducks" and an "overwintering area for ruddy duck and scaup," according to an inventory of the river islands compiled by the National Park Service.
Herds of deer roam Chester Island, which, just 18 miles from Center City by boat, is probably the closest hunting ground to urban Philadelphia. With the season opening in a month and a half, hunters are already on the island, baiting the shore with apples so that by mid-September the deer become used to galloping down for sweet fruit well within range of offshore guns.
South, toward the Delaware Bay lie two of the river's most important islands, historically and environmentally.
Reedy Island, across from Port Penn, DE, used to be an immigration quarantine station.
Now it's considered an important waterfowl area, home to black duck and mallard as well as osprey. The Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife would like to convert Reedy into a wildlife management area.
The last major island before the bay is Pea Patch, which is also the river's most historically significant.
According to the Independence Seaport Museum, the island got its name because in 1791, a ship loaded with peas and beans sank in the Delaware. The cargo, however, did not disappear. It washed up on a little mud shoal, where, years after the sinking, peas kept sprouting.
Starting in 1817, there were a couple of unsuccessful attempts to builda fort on the island, which, sitting at the mouth of the river, was of great strategic importance to the relatively new federal government.
These efforts finally resulted in the construction of Fort Delaware, which became a prison camp during the Civil War.After the Battle of Gettysburg, more than 12,000 Confederate soldiers were imprisoned at the fort, where horrific disease and starvation killed off 2,700 prisoners. Many Union soldiers guarding the prisoners died as well.
Today, the island is a tourist attraction.
Rat Island is not.
Which is probably one of the main reasons the Rat Island Raiders find it so fascinating.
Rat Island isn't much of an island to begin with.
On a good day, like this one, the island spreads out to a maximum of a little more than two acres.
A recent full moon has made the low tide even lower, increasing the island's girth.
But at high tide, on a moonless night, the river creeps up into the tree line, swallowing the rocks, the beach and anything that isn't rooted into the alluvial soil.
Perhaps befitting such a diminutive dot of land, the island doesn't even really have a name, at least not an official one. But it does have several monikers.
Rat Island was so named by the Raiders because of the scurrying sound of the rats creeping closer to the encampment as the fire dies down at night.
But many river vets swear that they know the island's real name.
One native calls it Sandy Hill Island.
The skipper of Holiday Boat Tours says that, without a doubt, it is called Mud Island.
The Coast Guard calls it No Name Island, which may be the most fitting, since maps don't even give it a name.
Whatever it's called, Rat Island is more than just an island.
For the Raiders, it is a state of mind.
The group's first attempts to reach this island were unsuccessful, resulting in frantic escapes from sinking homemade oil-drum-and-telephone-pole rafts in the middle of deadly swift river currents.
As luck would have it, before anyone could get killed trying to ford the river, Seddon and four of his compatriots walked into a deli about two decades ago where they met a weathered old man —"he looks like Popeye's grandfather," says Seddon — with an equally weathered old boat for sale.
The young men wanted the boat and tried to dicker.
"Twenty-five dollars," Seddon told the old man.
"Fifty," he answered and a bargain was struck.
Seddon and two of the other guys put up $10 apiece. Jeff Mitchell put up $20, giving him the biggest share of this impromptu incorporation; as a result, the boat has been stowed at his house ever since.
The boat has never been named.
That, says Seddon, is because he does not know its original name and it is considered bad juju — Rat Island parlance for karma — to change the name of a boat.
As Seddon is recalling this story, he has to shout to be heard over the loud drone of the 15 horsepower engine that came with the boat.
"It doesn't move too fast," says Seddon of the boat, which has a metal medallion on the starboard side announcing that it was completed on July 31, 1928.
Seddon is not overstating his boat's lack of nautical headway.
As the monstrously heavy steel vessel chugs along on the short trip to Rat Island, a 14-foot aluminum boat owned by Giant Bicycle salesman Bob Aceto is about to complete the round trip to the island, bringing even more supplies from the shore.
"During the winter trips, we run 23-hour-per-day shuttle service," says Seddon of another island ritual as he guns the boat toward Rat Island's rocky leeward shore. "You pull up to the shore, fire a red flare, and someone will pick you up. No flare, no ride."
As slow as this trip is, it can be even slower in the winter, says Seddon.
Especially when the gas line freezes up, forcing the unlucky ship-to-shore chauffeurto row all the way. No easy feat considering the weight of the boat, the speed of the tide and the chunks of ice that must be dodged. And that doesn't take into account the unpleasant task of jumping into freezing water to pull the boat ashore.
There are no such worries on this day, however.
Even though Saturday, like most other days over the past three weeks, started off with a drenching cloudburst.
"It's kind of nice out here today," says Rat Island-regular Ed Brady, a surveyor now living in Blackwood, NJ. "The rain will keep the tourists away. I hate coming out here in the summer. Too many people."
On a nice day, says Brady, a dozen or more boats may be anchored off the island. Dozens of jet skiers blitz the calm with their geyser-spewing, racket-making, expensive toys.
In the solitude of winter, explains Brady, Rat Island is a compelling destination, well worth the hardships. "Where else can you go and get crazy and play loud music without bothering anybody?"
Within minutes of landing, Seddon, Mitchell, Brady and Jan Lindquist, an office supplies salesman from Pine Hill, NJ, set about two of the most important tasks of the day.
The first is the gathering of the chaise lounges that have been left behind during previous sojourns.
A big part of Raider ritual involves furniture.
Either the sitting thereon, as is taking place on this cloudy weekend morning, or the lugging to the island thereof, which took place a number of years ago.
"We had furniture day," says Bob Borger, a chopper-flying rescue guy from Camden. "Jan thought he was the shit, sitting on his Barcalounger. That was until he saw us pull up to the island with a couch."
That furniture is nowhere to be seen anymore. Borger says it all "just recycled back into the earth."
The second important Rat Island task this morning is the firing up of the Coleman gas ranges.
Seddon was not kidding when he said to be prepared for "a hot spicy assortment of meats and high-cholesterol, high-fat food products."
His coolers are filled with pork loins, sausages, whiting medallions, hot chicken wings (drenched in a secret Rat Island hot sauce), french fries and home fries.
And of course, plenty of oil for frying.
Not to mention a fine assortment of specialty brew beers like Sierra Nevada, Harpoon IPA and Saranac Wheat.
"If we left a little bit earlier, I would have brought along my home brew," says Seddon, whose logic is immediately challenged by Mitchell.
"We left late, so you had more time to get the beer," he says.
My cooler is filled with a similar artery-clogging variety of goodies, including beef and lamb chops.
But I did break with the lipid-locked tradition by bringing along about a half-dozen salmon steaks, which I cooked up in a Rat Island recipe of my own connivance.
In minutes, the slightly fecal smell of the Delaware is replaced by the aroma of wings and pork frying and salmon sauteed in a special sauce of olive oil, garlic, lemon, Cajun spices and beer.
It is the beginning of a seemingly endless feast.
As a flock of ducks flies overhead, Brady talks about fauna, Rat Island variety.
"If you come out here in the winter and see any loons, it's probably us," he says.
In general, conversation on the island is sporadic. If for no other reason than it is impossible to hear another person speak over the ear-piercing whine of jets screaming out of Philadelphia.
"It's horrible to wake up to when you have a splitting hangover," says Keith Venable, a Xerox repairman and frequent receiver of Soldier-of-Fortune-type arms catalogs who muses twistedly about ordering something from one of the catalogues to take out the noisy jets.
He's only joking, but his words are chilling.
Jets would be sitting ducks fora Rat Islander with the right munitions.
"I would hate to fly right now," says Seddon, talking about what happened to TWA Flight 800 and how easily it could happen here. "There are just too many things that happen anymore."
The water lapping against the shore of Rat Island brings back memories to those who grew up with the Delaware River as their version of a backyard pool.
Ed Brady remembers how he used to swim at the shoreline as a kid while his parents water-skied.
"I can still remember after all these years one thing," he says as he stands knee-deep in the river, competing with the other guys to see who can skip a flat stone the furthest across the surface. "I remember how dirty the water was. It was gooey brown. It is much cleaner now."
Brady's observation is backed up by the State Department of Environmental Resources (DER).
In a 1995 study, the DER reported that the "Delaware Estuary has exhibited a dramatic recovery in water quality, especially in oxygen levels, compared to 20 years ago." Or, roughly, back in the days when the Raiders first started coming to Rat Island.
The water quality, according to the report, "is the result of wastewater treatment facility construction and, in part, the removal of industrial discharges due to the mandates of the federal Clean Water Act."
That, and the fact that 20 years ago there were a lot more industries along the Delaware.
The Delaware's water quality has improved so much that the river is once again considered "one of the major striped bass-producing areas on the East Coast."
And that is evinced by the plethora of boats — like the one trolling a shoal off the island's southeast side — who anchor off Rat Island in search of stripers, channel cats and even largemouth bass.
"This is great fishing out here," says Seddon, adding that he still wouldn't eat any fish he caught regardless of what the DER says.
"Would you?" he asks.
No way.
As clean as the river has become, Seddon and his mates don't spend their idle hours swimming off the island, either.
"You have to worry about the fecal content," says Seddon. "If you get that water in your ears, you are going to get an ear infection."
That, combined with Seddon's respect for the riptide swirling around the island, keeps the men from wading much deeper than knee-high.
For Bob Aceto, thoughts about the water have more to do with family memories than with ecology.
"I just bought this boat about two years ago," says Aceto as he sits in the back of the aluminum boat, his hand on the motor steering us through the river. "My dad always had a boat when we were growing up. I want to make sure that my son has the same memories."
Aceto, whose brother Bob is a Rat Island regular and the man famous for pole-vaulting bonfires, is only an occasional visitor. But he makes sure that he spends as much time on the water as his job allows.
Aceto has kindly offered to ferry myself and photographer Mpozi Tolbert to Little Tinicum, to see if we can find bald eagles, wayward deer or any other living creatures native to the islands.
"There are no bald eagles out there," grouses Brady before we set off. "You might find a couple of ducks."
But that doesn't really matter to Aceto.
"Our dad used to take us fishing and crabbing all the time," says the divorced Aceto. "My son Christopher is six. He loves coming out on the water. Sometimes when I'm moving real fast, he'll stand up in the front of the boat and hold the ropes. He's light enough so that soon I can take him water-skiing."
But not on this stretch of the river between Rat Island and Little Tinicum.
"It's like riding through a minefield," he says of the wide expanse of driftwood, plastic bottles and other flotsam.
Every so often, the swiftly moving boat bumps up against a log or some other junk.
But we don't have it nearly as bad as the owner of the big motorboat stuck just south of Little Tinicum.
Seeing that they are having some kind of motor problems, Aceto cuts his engine and glides silently toward the beefy vessel.
"The intake sucked up something," says the obviously stressing skipper of that boat. "It was a plastic bottle. But we'll be all right, thanks."
Assured that everything is under control, Aceto cranks up his engine, which is a mere Chihuahua compared to the giant inboards on the stranded boat.
Aceto's motor might not be as gargantuan, but it gets us to where we want to be. And, more importantly, it works.
"I always stop when someone is in trouble," says Aceto more matter-of-factly than bragging. "I've towed a couple of boats in. It would suck being stuck, so I help when I can. It's good juju."
A number of other boats are moored off Little Tinicum. We pass by one in which a tanned couple in the midst of getting dressed waves us an embarrassed how-do-you-do, apparently minutes after making love in the cabin below. On another, an older couple is preparing lunch, which makes us all groan about the massive proportions of dead flesh we consumed back on Rat Island.
All except the photographer, who has gone hungry so far.
He has the unenviable distinction of being the lone vegetarian among a pack of serious carnivores.
As we putter along off the western shore of Little Tinicum, we look for a nice place to pull up and check out the wildlife. For some never-to-be-known reason, we pass up stretches of sandy beach, opting instead to pull into a stand of lily pads.
"This is about as far as we go with the motor on," says Aceto, putting an oar into the water to prove that the bottom is only about six inches below us.
So out we hop.
And down into the slimy ooze we sink.
Though the water is barely ankle high, it seems much deeper because sucking mud holds us down, stealing our footgear.
Forward motion comes in fits or not at all because you need momentum to make your way through the slop. Stop for a moment, and be prepared to use your arms to pull your legs out of the mud.
But it is worth it.
Because Little Tinicum, with its tall stand of ducktails and wild rice, is a place out of time, an island that, with very few exceptions, is allowed to exist as if man never did.
I see no eagles or falcons nor even ayellow-bellied sapsucker.
But I do hear, through the reeds, all kinds of birds twirping and tweeting and bleating their island welcome.
As he wades through the muck, Aceto jokingly wonders how come Marlin Perkins isn't on the scene.
Tolbert talks about how wading ashore brings to mind stories his father told him about the days when he was an advance scout for the First Air Cav in Vietnam.
I stand in the goo and marvel at the island. And at the stark contrast the nesting birds provide to the hullaballoo overhead and across the river, as plane after plane pierces the stillness.
But enough of the ooze.
It is time to safari for living creatures we can actually see.
Making our way around the southernmost point of the two-mile-long island, we can spot in the distance, on the shore, a group of people frolicking in the water among several tied-up boats.
"Can you pull up over there?" I ask Aceto, who has been more than patient and hospitable with all our silly requests.
As we get closer, I can see that the island's denizens are a bit wary of our presence.
Finally, Aceto cuts the engine, the boat glides to shore and I hop out like MacArthur with a notepad.
"What do you want?" says the craggy-faced man with the ponytail.
When I explain that I am a reporter, not some government agent, the man lightens up and introduces himself as Keith Kauffman, a truck driver from Gibbstown, NJ, just across the water.
He is camping on the island with his wife Terry, children Zack and Tiffany, and three other couples and their children.
A couple dozen yards off the beach, the Kauffmans and their companions have set up camp, blue tarp slung over the tents to keep the ever-present rain from soaking their belongings.
"We've been coming out here for, oh, about 20 years," says Keith Kauffman, sucking down a puff of smoke from his cigarette. "But it's getting terrible anymore. See all this trash?"
Kauffman sweeps his arms to show piles of garbage strewn across the strand.
"Not to sound like I'm bragging or anything, but we always take our trash back to shore. But in the last couple of years, people have been dumping it here. It's awful."
As Kauffman talks, his six-year-old daughter plays in the water with her dog, who is fascinated by the duck decoy Tiffany drags behind her.
"I love coming out here," says Tiffany. "I love to go swimming."
Little Tinicum is the perfect getaway, Kauffman explains.
"It's close and we can even hunt deer," he says, acknowledging that he has yet to catch any of the animals he's shot.
Still, Little Tinicum is not the perfect idyll.
Like the Rat Island Raiders, Kauffman says that he too has had run-ins with drunken "river rats," residents of the New Jersey shoreline communities who often come out looking for trouble.
Island fighting is not a totally uncommon experience.
Nor is it new.
The most vicious battle over Delaware River islands took place during the War of 1812, according to the Independence Seaport Museum.
A fort on Mud Island (not to be confused with one of the other names for Rat Island) "withstood a terrific bombardment from 243 naval guns fired from the front and rear," reads a museum brochure.
The result, according to an official dispatch from the nation's capitol, was that "the works were entirely beaten down, every piece of cannon dismounted and one of the enemy's ships so near that she threw grenades into the fort and killed men upon the platform from her tops before they quitted the island."
Squabbles continue, but not quite on that scale.
According to Eugene E. Counsil, chief of the PA Division of Waterways Management, river islands, particularly those in the Susquehanna River, have been the scenes of some nasty territorial disputes.
"Squatters come in and build cabins," says Counsil. "They post 'No Trespassing' signs. It is quite humorous."
Well, not always.
Counsil says that squatters have been known to shoot at each other to protect their little spot, which they don't even own.
Several years ago, the PA Legislature passed a law that the state owns any island that does not have a land patent — proof of ownership by an individual or corporation.
Of the 62 Delaware River islands, 16 are owned by private individuals, 16 are owned by private corporations and 14, like Little Tinicum, have been acquired by either Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Delaware.
Nine islands, like Rat Island, have no known owners.
So who protects the islands and the native life forms from those who merely visit?
Good question.
The Coast Guard and State Police patrol the waterways and will occasionally stop to chat with people like the Kauffmans or the Rat Island Raiders.
Seddon recalls one time the Coast Guard tried to rescue them from Rat Island, against their wishes.
But the fuzz-faced young Coast Guardsmen backed off. It was soon apparent they had no business telling the wizened, then 30-something Raiders what to do.
Which is part of the problem with protecting the river islands.
A few years ago, the PA Legislature created a River Islands Task Force. It was designed to manage and protect the natural and historical beauty of the islands.
But that legislation had a big hole. No one was given final authority to control the islands. So no one really does have control, according to Dick Croop of the PA Division of Forestry.
The result, says Croop, is that the islands' delicate ecosystems and fragile historic treasures are being destroyed by insurgents who chop down trees and dig up ancient artifacts.
Croop and Counsil say they hope that the legislature will address that loophole in the next session.
We bid the Kauffmans and their clan adieu, hop back on the aluminum boat and head back to Rat Island.
On the way, we catch up to an unmarked Navy ship that is being towed into the shipyard, presumably for repairs. Dwarfed by its massive size, I feel insignificant, as if I were a cork just bobbing along.
After a few quiet minutes of gazing at the big ship, Aceto guns the engine.
When we arrive back at the island, the guys are doing exactly what they were doing hours ago when we left.
Cooking more meat.
Eating more food.
Skipping more stones across the water.
It has been this way for 20 years.
And it will still be this way, 20 years from now, if Warren Seddon and the Rat Island Raiders have any say in the matter.