"Fortified by breakfast, we started for the beach in the morning. Several wet spots stopped us, but while we were trying to find a way out, the hotel [Pamlico Inn] truck came by and took us over the mile-wide beach to the ocean. Wrecks and parts of wrecks are strewn along this beach, less than a hundred yards apart from end to end of the island. Most of them were old, some very old. It is remarkable how long a keelson of Georgia pine timbers bolted with locust trenails, will last before it weathers enough to rot. Judged by the bleaching bones of ships along these beaches, only two parts of a wooden ship seem strong enough to even partially withstand the surf – the keel and keelson assembly, and the topsides clamped at the deck. These parts are doubled and tripled and bolted through and through. However, there is a limit to their strength as there were no sections visible longer than fifty or sixty feet. Two days later we visited a fresh wreck at Nags Head, a four masted schooner lying in the surf with masts still standing."
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| Wreckage of the Carroll A. Deering |
This month's Ocracoke Newsletter is an essay by Philip Howard explaining why he decided to stay on the island as Hurricane Florence approached. You can read it here: https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/why-i-stayed/.
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