Photo by Kathy Hart 



Chris G ask ill 



Ocracoke, the sloops attacked. During 

 the ensuing fight, Blackbeard received 

 25 wounds before dying. His head, 

 severed from his body, was hung from 

 the ship's bowsprit, and his body 

 thrown overboard, where legend says 

 it swam around the sloop seven times 

 before sinking. 



In Blackbeard's day Ocracoke 

 stretched to a length of eight miles. 

 During the 1700s it joined Hatteras 

 Island for a union that was ended by 

 an 1846 hurricane. From the breakup 

 Ocracoke would gain eight additional 

 miles of soil. 



In 1715, the Colonial Assembly 

 recognized a settlement of ships' pilots 

 on the island and later appointed the 

 settlement a town. The pilots guided 

 ships through Ocracoke Inlet, making 

 it the primary trade entrance for 

 North Carolina. During the 

 Revolutionary War the pilots helped 

 patriots channel needed supply ships 

 through the passage. 



After the war two entrepreneurs 

 bought a small nearby island — a 

 massive bed of oyster shells — that 

 stood adjacent to the channel leading 

 from Ocracoke Inlet to the sound. The 

 men used the island, named Shell Cas- 

 tle, to offload supplies from seafaring 

 vessels to smaller craft for shipment 

 inland. 



Between 1798 and 1803, Congress 

 authorized the construction of a 55- 

 foot, wooden-frame beacon on Shell 

 Castle Island. It stood for about 15 

 years before it burned down. 



To replace the Shell Castle beacon. 

 Congress appropriated a new light- 

 house on Ocracoke Island. Built at a 

 cost of $11,359.35 in 1823, the 

 Ocracoke Lighthouse stood 75 feet tall 

 and included a one-bedroom keeper's 

 quarters. The tower, which still cau- 

 tions mariners today, is the second 

 oldest operating lighthouse in the 

 United States. 



Even a lighthouse could not save all 

 ships from the storms and shoals. 

 About 40 vessels were reported lost 

 near Ocracoke's shores. But many 

 crew members were rescued by the 

 heroic efforts of the villagers. 



What the sea so readily took from 

 these seafaring schooners, it often 

 returned to its island neighbors. 

 Ocracokers found the cargoes — 

 lumber, shoes and china — washed 

 ashore or available for easy pickings in 

 the surf. Elizabeth Howard, a 75-year- 

 old native, says her house was con- 

 structed from the lumber carried by 

 the Noamis. 



Christopher "Chris" Gaskill, 

 another Ocracoke native, recalls a 

 vessel known as "the banana boat." 

 The ship, laden with hundreds of 

 bunches of green bananas, ran 



Photo by Clay Nolen 



aground. "They wanted to lighten up 

 the ship to pull her off so they gave us 

 all the bananas we wanted," Gaskill 

 says. "I must've taken 200 to 300 

 bunches. I carried 'em to Washington 

 and sold about 100 for 50 cents a 

 bunch to a wholesaler." Older resi- 

 dents like Gaskill and Howard still 

 shake their heads over the banana boat 

 because of the island-wide sickness 

 that occurred after villagers gorged on 

 green bananas. 



For Gaskill, another story of 

 wreckage carried a special message. On 

 a March morning in 1941, Gaskill was 

 driving along the beach. He spotted 

 some wreckage — not unusual for 

 Ocracoke. But something drew Gaskill 

 to take a closer look. He found the 

 wreckage to be the door from a 

 pilothouse. On the back of the door 

 was the master's license of his cousin, 

 James Gaskill. The freighter his cousin 

 captained had been torpedoed by the 

 Germans offshore. 



A board bearing the freighter's 

 name, Carib Sea, also washed up in 

 front of the young man's Ocracoke 

 home that day, Gaskill says. Several 

 weeks later, the family was officially 

 notified of James Gaskill's death. The 

 sea delivered its message faster. 



German torpedoes also sunk the 

 HMS Bedfordshire, a British 

 trawler, off of Ocracoke in 1942. Gas- 

 kill found one of the four bodies that 



The lighthouse stands guard over an island steeped in tradition 



