The Rocks, a natural landing on the Christina River, was critical to Wilmington's Underground Railroad network. Captain James Watson Fountain outfitted a schooner to secretly carry freedom-seekers north from North Carolina and Virginia. Black pilots like Harry A. Craigg, Jr. waited for the signal to bring passengers ashore, where Black and white agents sheltered them until they could safely continue onward. Craigg, the Black operative most noted in Wilmington's resistance movement, owned property, had a family, worked as a brickmaker for abolitionist John Hilles, collaborated with Thomas Garrett and William Still of Philadelphia, petitioned against oppressive Black laws, and co-founded a masonic lodge. He moved to Philadelphia in the early 1860s and died there in 1894 at age 73. Fountain and Craigg lived in East Side near The Rocks, and Fountain's father-in-law was the Keeper of the Christina Light House, from which he could see ships come in. Southern officials readily suspected northern ship captains of transporting fugitives, and in the 1850s Virginia mandated inspection of all departing vessels. In 1855, as Norfolk representatives searched for runaways, Fountain furiously took an axe to his ship's deck, and the startled inspectors left without finding 21 people hidden below. In 1862 Fountain joined the Union Navy as a pilot and acting-master. Thomas Garrett later wrote to William Still that Fountain had arrived safely with the human cargo Still had asked about, that men had waited until 12 o'clock ready to receive them, and that they learned he had landed them at The Rocks, near the old Swedes church, in the care of an efficient pilot employed by John Hilles, who then had them in charge.