between Knotts Island and Currituck 

 Banks turned salty again, damaging the 

 waterfowl feeding grounds and 

 interrupting the freshwater fishing on 

 which Knotts Islanders had come to 

 rely. Dolphins, stingrays and small 

 oysters even returned to local waters 

 for a few years. 



Great Marsh Bay suffered a 

 different fate. The freshwater marsh 

 separates Knotts Island from the 

 mainland of Currituck County. Flooded 

 by salt water, the freshwater grasses 

 died off and the bay was left, in 

 Ansell's words, "in drift, mire, mud 

 and slime." The brackish pools of 

 muddy water made an ideal breeding 

 ground for mosquitoes. For years, 

 Knotts Islanders cursed Great Bay's 

 flooding for a plague of mosquito bites 

 and mosquito-borne disease. 



Knotts Islanders did not realize the 

 nor'easter's greatest damage until the 

 summer of 1 846. With much of the 

 island deforested in the 18th century 

 for fuel and naval stores, they had long 

 relied on the longleaf pine timber from 

 a vast swampy tract of Great Marsh 

 Bay. "When it came time for these 

 trees to commence their summer's 

 growth, they died," recalls Ansell, 

 "together with all the firewood and rail 

 timber on the adjacent knolls." 



Six decades later, Ansell could 

 still write of the storm's destruction of 

 the longleaf forest: "From this loss the 

 island to this day has not recovered, 

 nor can it ever recover. This timber ... 

 grew scarcer and scarcer as the years 

 rolled on, and at present little can be 

 found." 



Out on Currituck Banks, the 

 nor'easter had flattened the sand dunes 

 and ridges. From beneath the sand, 

 Ansell remembers, "appeared, to the 

 great wonder of the young, a large 

 thicket of dead cedars, whose gigantic 

 arms stretched impressively heaven- 

 ward." (Such "ghost forests" are 

 caused by wind-driven dunes that 

 migrate over maritime forests.) His 

 uncle Johnny Beasley recalled how he 

 had boiled salt under their boughs 

 during the War of 1812, screened from 



A watery view of Knotts Island 



the view of the British ships by their 

 thick foliage. After the storm, he 

 recovered salt pans that had been 

 buried by sand for 30 years. Other 

 islanders dug out the ghost cedars and 

 sold them for vessel timbers. 



Things only got worse that fall. 

 Another storm, a vicious hurricane, hit 

 Knotts Island in September of 1846. 

 Best remembered today for opening 

 Hatteras and Oregon inlets, the 

 hurricane struck Knotts Island when 

 gardens and fields were brimming with 

 produce. According to Ansell, "the few 

 cattle and hogs" left after the nor'easter 

 "were swept away as before." Many 

 families must have gone hungry that 

 winter. 



I thought about Ansell and the 

 nor'easter of 1846 as I left Great 

 Marsh. Until hurricanes Bertha and 

 Fran, many of us had forgotten how 

 sudden, cataclysmic forces shape our 

 coast. Mountains are pushed upward 

 with staggering patience by slow 

 tectonic grinding, an inch or two a 

 year, until they reach the sky. But that 

 has never been our coast's way of 

 doing things. Disaster and upheaval are 

 its lifeblood, just as much as sand and 

 salt water. Ansell learned that lesson 



150 years ago, and it is a lesson best 

 not forgotten. 



A cool drizzle descended on the 

 state ferry back to Currituck. For a 

 long time, I stood at the stern and 

 watched the distant, crowded lights at 

 Currituck Banks. That horizon would 

 have been pitch dark a few years ago. 

 Now it glows with condos, shopping 

 centers and movie stars' homes. I 

 couldn't help thinking that somewhere 

 out in the North Atlantic a nor'easter is 

 waiting to be born, a storm that will 

 rival the one in 1846. It may hit 

 Currituck Banks next year, in 10 years 

 or in 150 years. But sooner or later, 

 that sky will once again be just as 

 dark as the night Ansell heard the 

 Atlantic's waves pounding the shores 

 of Knotts Island. □ 



David Cecelski is a historian at 

 the University of 

 North Carolina- 

 Chapel Hill's 

 Southern Oral 

 Histoi-y Program 

 and a regular 

 columnist for 

 Coastwatch. 



COASTWATCH 25 



