Peter Martin Skrmetta, who founded Ship Island Excursion in 1926, will be inducted in to the Biloxi Maritime Museum Hall of Fame on Saturday August 2, 2014. The Skrmetta family boat service had its origins near the turn of the century. In 1903, 18-year-old Pete Skrmetta arrived in Biloxi from the Dalmatian Island of Brac to live with his uncle, Nick Skrmetta. Nick was a seaman who came to Biloxi after jumping ship in New Orleans in the 1890’s. Nick had been working in the Laz Lopez oyster cannery for several years. Lopez appreciated Nick’s hard working traits and invited his Croatian relatives to come to work in the factory. Skrmetta relations with names like Sekul, Pitalo and Barhonovich started arriving from Brac to work in the seafood plants. Pete went right to work crewing with his uncle and other island fishermen from the old country on the factory owned schooners. He became an excellent skipper, eventually piloting some of Biloxi’s most famous sailing schooners, including the I. Hiedenhiem and H. E. Gumble. A tireless worker, Pete quickly gained a reputation as a proven moneymaker for the factory owners and their employees whose salaries were dependent on the amount of the catch arriving each day by schooner. By the early 1920’s, Pete Skrmetta had his own boat built by the Fountain Shipyard in Biloxi. The vessel was a 56-foot, diesel-powered schooner lugger he named the Pan American.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 20:28:55 +0000
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