Top: 



Though the Cape Fear 

 waters are peaceful now, 

 they were the backdrop 

 for violent struggle during 

 the Civil War, when 

 blockade runners 

 delivered war materials 

 and everyday goods to a 

 beleaguered South. 



Middle: 



Richard Lawrence, head 

 of the state's Underwater 

 Archaeology Unit, is an 

 expert on the maritime 

 history that has strewn 

 Civil War relics up and 

 down the Cape Fear 

 coast. 



Bottom: 



Archaeologist Nathan 

 Henry displays a rifle, 

 cannonballs and other 

 artifacts recovered from 

 shipwrecks in the Cape 

 Fear region. 



PiUttos by Scoll D. Taylor 



blockaders. England and the South 

 answered with ships designed to float low 

 and run fast: side-wheeled steamers with 

 low profiles and hinged masts, fueled with 

 smokeless anthracite coal. The nautical 

 game of cat-and-mouse began. 



Sailing largely from Bermuda and 

 Nassau, the blockade runners waited for 

 dark nights to shield their craft and for 

 rising tides to carry them over the Cape 

 Fear's shoals. If discovered, blockade 

 runners would cut and run. If cornered, 

 they would drive their craft to the beach, 

 where Confederate and Union forces 

 clashed over salvage efforts. 



"There were a lot of epic struggles 

 out there," Richard Lawrence tells me. 

 Lawrence is the head of the state's 

 Underwater Archaeology Unit (UAU), 

 housed in a compound of tan buildings and 

 brown sheds under live oaks on the Cape 

 Fear River near Fort Fisher. I visit him 

 there the day before my river trip, hoping 

 that he can show me the odd relic from a 

 blockade runner or two: a wormy piece of 

 ship planking, perhaps, or better yet a rifle 

 barrel or ship's wheel. 



Like most North Carolinians, I've 

 heard of blockade runners, and can sketch 

 in the merest notion of how the blockade 

 operated. But I really have no idea of the 

 strategic role Wilmington played in 

 maintaining the South' s armaments and 

 economy during the war. And I am 

 certainly surprised by the treasure that 

 reposes in the UAU's nondescript storage 

 houses. 



As many as 50 Federal ships were 

 stationed off the Cape Fear region's two 

 ocean inlets, but still there were 1,700 

 successful runs against the Union gauntlet 

 before Fort Fisher fell in January 1 865. 

 During the entire course of the war, 1, 149 

 blockade runners were captured, and 355 

 others were sunk or otherwise destroyed. 

 A tenth of those now lie underwater off the 

 Cape Fear shore. 



One of those is the Modern Greece, 

 a British screw steamer pressed into block- 

 ade-running service early in the war. On 

 the morning of June 27, 1862, the ship was 

 sighted by a Federal cruiser just three miles 



