During the antebellum period, Edenton harbor was the town's industrial center, with wharves, shipyards, and maritime activity. North Carolina's small, ill-protected harbors prevented the development of major ports and limited the growth of the state's plantation economy, but the same difficult coastline offered enslaved workers hope of passage to freedom. That hope was precarious, marked by many failed attempts and harsh reprisals, yet coastal slaves continued to risk the sea in search of freedom until the Civil War. Runaways depended on maritime blacks in coastal ports like Edenton, where black seamen worked as stewards, cooks, and skilled crewmen, ferrymen carried passengers and goods from local docks, slave women sold food and provided laundry services at the wharves, and slave artisans caulked, refitted, rigged, and rebuilt wooden vessels. This maritime culture created a web of informants, messengers, intermediaries, and collaborators that helped fugitives escape, including Harriet Jacobs, whose escape from Edenton by sea in 1842 was arranged by the town's African American community, including black seamen, on a schooner bound for Philadelphia.