Wooden decoys carved by Knotts Islanders are part of the local heritage. 



linked by the inlet to foreign ports and 

 their ways. "Sailors from North and 

 South met here," Ansell recalls his 

 elders telling him. Cut off from the sea, 

 Knotts Island languished as Currituck 

 Sound went from saltwater to freshwater 

 sea. The salt marshes died, the great 

 oyster beds vanished, the mullet and 

 flounder disappeared. And without a 

 navigable inlet, Knotts Island was 

 suddenly a lonely backwater. 



During Ansell's boyhood, a new, 

 more reclusive economy haltingly 

 unfolded at Knotts Island. Thick 

 growths of freshwater grasses gradually 

 blanketed Currituck Sound. The tender 

 grasses attracted huge flocks of migra- 

 tory ducks and geese, and waterfowl 

 gunning, not maritime trade or commer- 

 cial fishing, became Currituck's major 

 industry. 



The nor'easter of 1846 hit when 

 Knotts Islanders had just adjusted to the 

 ecological upheaval caused by the 1826 

 hurricane. They had adapted to it with 

 grace and ingenuity. Led by local 

 gunners Wilson Cooper and Timothy 

 Bowden, they pioneered new ways of 

 waterfowl hunting, including the 

 wielding of better muskets, shooting in 

 the air and the first local use of wooden 



decoys. They shipped their prizes by the 

 thousands to far-off cities. And if 

 islanders no longer had oysters to 

 harvest, they sent freshwater fish such as 

 perch and chub to Norfolk's markets. 



Then, in early March of 1846, a stiff 

 breeze blew from the northeast, increas- 

 ing bit by bit, every day for a week. 

 "The wind still increased," Ansell 

 remembers, "the old Atlantic was 

 plunging on its shore with a mighty roar, 

 as if a squadron of modern war ships 

 were practicing their heavy artillery." 

 When the storm finally reached its full 

 strength, he goes on, "the creaking joints 

 of the housetops and the roaring of the 

 blast in the tall old trees, mingled with 

 the ocean's roar, were appalling." Old- 

 timers had not seen a storm like it since 

 the American Revolution. Ansell never 

 forgot how, in his words, "all stood 

 aghast." 



For a day and two nights, the winds 

 blew with increasing rage. Then they 

 shifted, just as hard, a bit more north, 

 and snow began to fall. "The next 

 morning found devastation complete — 

 trees uprooted and in confusion; the 

 earth strewn with limbs and boughs, and 

 covered with three inches of snow," 

 Ansell recalls. 



The Knotts Islanders at last ventured 

 warily into the dying gale. Ansell and his 

 father walked down to the marshy 

 freshwater bay between Knotts Island 

 and Currituck Banks. "Such a sight," he 

 writes, "was never seen before." Rising 

 on a spring tide, the storm had buried 

 Currituck Banks: "No marsh, no beach, 

 nothing to be seen oceanward except a 

 few tops of the large mounting sandhills." 

 A stunned Ansell found that "the great 

 salt waves were breaking at our feet." 



Knotts Island had been devastated. 

 Homes and fences were washed away. 

 Graveyards were upturned. Great schools 

 of chub perished when the ocean's waves 

 rolled over the bay. Corpses of hogs, 

 cattle and sheep bobbed in the surf. 



As the islanders gathered by the bay, 

 someone asked what had become of the 

 only two families that lived directly 

 across from Knotts Island at Currituck 

 Banks. Cooper and Bowden, the two 

 expert gunners, were native Knotts 

 Islanders. They had moved to the banks 

 to be closer to the waterfowling grounds. 

 When the Knotts Islanders learned that 

 the families were missing, they sent out 

 a rescue party. Borrowing Col. John B. 

 Jones's fishing boat, 13 volunteers 

 ventured directly into the nor'easter's 

 headwinds to find them. "With sturdy 

 oars," Ansell writes, "these men rowed 

 against waves and flood and gale over 

 bay and marsh." 



The rescue party discovered 

 Cooper's house abandoned and drifting in 

 a copse of live oaks. "Over to Bowden' s 

 they went," Ansell recounts, "and found 

 his house anchored and tied to the 

 surrounding live oaks, tumbling about, 

 but being kept on its balance by many 

 devices." The Coopers and Bowdens 

 were crowded into a rooftop garret, and 

 salt water lapped at the joists just below 

 them. The panicked families boarded the 

 fishing boat and returned to Knotts 

 Island. Nobody would live on that part of 

 Currituck Banks again for many years. 



The nor'easter of 1846 affected 

 Knotts Island's ecology long after the 

 debris had been cleared, the dead 

 livestock burned and the homes repaired. 

 For one thing, the freshwater bay 



24 MARCH/APRIL 1997 



