9/8/2015 - When I first came here, my goal was to get to the legendary Cape Hatteras lighthouse. The idea that there was this strip of land-an island chain-facing the open Atlantic made me just want to be there. That was 16 or 17 years ago, when I turned around at Pea Island-the second in the chain-because it was foggy and cold and I couldnât see anything. Last year, I dragged my brother along to complete that task of reaching the Hatteras light. Like other destinations during my Year of Discovery, I visited places I missed years ago, some by only a few miles. It was January and started clouding up and raining as we got further south-hard rain on the way back. So it was funny today that I saw some amazing clouds which produced rain about halfway down Hatteras Island.
Hatteras Island was formed in 1846 when a hurricane separated it from Bodie Island to the north, forming Oregon Inlet between the two. When allowed to âact naturallyâ the Outer Banksâ islands separate and come together during storms and due to shifting sand and wind. Pea Island was also created by a hurricane in 1738 but has mostly been attached until 2011, when Hurricane Irene separated it from Hatteras again, forming the uncreatively named New Inlet. The Island is home to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. With 900 feet between ocean and salt ponds/marshes, it is home to a multitude of bird species permanently and seasonally. With the Atlantic, brackish water wetlands, and the Pamlico Sound within feet, the area is an all-you-can eat plethora of food.
I had revisited Hatteras during orientation week in April (finally climbing the light), but with the events of this spring and a desire to avoid traffic over the summer kept me away until now. My goal today was to drive the island end-to-end and take some time with sights along the way. My first stop was on the south end of Oregon Inlet to walk the shore and check out a building I had seen there before but never stopped or found out what it was. The structure is restored on the outside but sits empty. Turns out it is the historic Oregon Inlet Coast Guard station, completed in 1897. The station and its predecessors track the natural history of the Outer Banks, with structures built, moved, destroyed, and rebuilt depending on the movement of the islands and ocean. This building was abandoned for the last time in 1988 when Oregon Inlet threatened to overtake it. The Coast Guard built a new station on the north side of the inlet. Oddly enough, the old station is safer now, with large dunes protecting it-for how long no one knows. Unfortunately the structure is empty, stripped of everything that was inside by thieves and vandalized.
At the end of the island is the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. The museum touches on so much of the areaâs history it is hard to imagine how small it is. The displays, though small, include Blackbeardâs flagship, the Civil War, lighthouses, salvaged shipwreck items, World War II, and stories of the revolutionary USS Monitor and early airpower demonstrations. The museum is named for the nickname of this section of the Atlantic. With the Diamond Shoals and the place where the Labrador Current and Gulf Stream violently meet, the area offshore relentlessly claimed ship after ship, life after life. Edward Teach, the pirate Blackbeard, operated from the Caribbean to the mid-Atlantic in the early 1700âs. He lost the flagship of his pirate fleet off southern North Carolina in 1718. He lost his life off Ocracoke Island, just south of Hatteras. The museum tells the story of many shipwrecks by preserving salvage household items from the wrecks. âBankersâ had rules about salvaging, but kept what they found washed ashore. Of course I was drawn to the display featuring a huge cast iron skillet, old Singer sewing machine, and hefty rolling pin. There are two stories displayed from the Civil War. The Union campaign for the Outer Banks, conquering Forts Clark and Hatteras, which guarded the commonly used Hatteras Inlet is told with a basic display, but the stunning centerpiece is a restored silk ensign (8âx12â naval flag) from the USS Monticello, which took part in the bombardment of the Confederate forts, one of the few (silk) left in existence. The museum also has a few artifacts from the USS Monitor, involved in the first battle of ironclads, which was lost off Cape Hatteras in 1862. Unfortunately the wreckage was found before this place was founded and artifacts awarded to another museum. The other fascinating display is on a German World War II submarine, the U-85. Early in the war, the Germans sunk an average of one ship every day. The Atlantic region off the Outer Banks took on another name-Torpedo Alley. As the war progressed into 1942, more ships were assigned as technological breakthroughs and an array of weapons-air and sea based-were brought to bear. In April 1942, U-85 sat brazenly in the water near Bodie Island. She was discovered by the USS Roper and sunk with machine gun fire and depth charges. Artifacts from the U-boat are here, especially its Enigma machine, which encoded and decoded messaged aboard the subs but whose codes were eventually broken by a hoard of codebreakers in England. The machine was recovered in 2001, returned to the German government, which then loaned it to the museum. It is about 90% complete. The story of Enigma and the breaking its encryption may be the greatest non-lethal (non-battle or Holocaust) World War II story. The museum also tells part of the story of military ârebelâ General Billy Mitchell, who in a series of aerial bombing demonstrations against ships, showed how vulnerable any navy could be-at the time, there was a US Presidential cabinet-level Department of the Navy and as always in the military, a bunch of old thinking. The navy wanted to keep building battleships and Mitchell backed strategic airpower, which was left unfunded after World War I. Mitchellâs demonstrations culminated in the sinking of two battleships by Martin B-2s in 1923 from an airfield built on Hatteras Island near Frisco. Two years later, Mitchell was court-martialed and resigned from the service. Eighteen years later the US Pacific fleet was decimated by Japanese naval airpower.
