The abandoned communities of 



Shackleford 

 Banks 



The Cape. Diamond City. Sam Windsor's Lump. 

 Wade's Shore. Whale Creek. Guthrie's Hammock. 

 Mullet Pond. 



The names of these communities ring with the 

 sound of fiction and fantasy. But, in fact, they were 

 once as real as Beaufort and Wilmington are today. 

 These communities dotted the shores of Shackleford 

 Banks before the turn of the century. And families 

 with names like Lewis, Davis, Guthrie, Chadwick, 

 Willis, Rose, Wade and Moore eked out an existence 

 along their shores, often battling the vagaries of the 

 sea. 



But it was the sea that drew people to settle 

 Shackleford's shores around 1700. Whales, which were 

 common in the waters off Cape Lookout, attracted 

 Shackleford's earliest settlers. But the bank's first 



to make their catch. They 

 depended on beached whales for their livelihood, 

 wrote John Lawson in his 1714 history of North 

 Carolina. They used no boats or harpoons like their 

 northern neighbors. 



But northern whalers soon ventured south to teach 

 their counterparts a few whaling lessons. They lived in 

 crude huts built between the dunes during whaling 

 season. When a whale was sighted, they shoved off in 

 their whaling boats, using harpoons to make the kill. 

 Eventually some of these whalers decided to move 

 their families to Shackleford. The Chadwick family 

 along coastal North Carolina are descendents of a 

 northern whaling family that moved south. 



On early maps of North Carolina, the whaling 

 village at Shackleford was called Whaler's Hutts. It 

 would be another century before the village would be 

 named Diamond City. 



But Shackleford Banks may not have been pop- 

 ulated entirely with whalers. Beaufort historian 

 Grayden Paul says that North Carolina's most 

 famous pirate, Edward Teach or Blackbeard as he was 

 more commonly called, may have left some of his 

 marauders on Shackleford Banks in 1718. Paul says 

 that Teach left one boat in need of repairs in Cape 

 Lookout Bay, while he traveled to Edenton for his 

 yearly rendezvous with Governor Eden. The plan 

 called for Teach to pick up the boat and crew on his 

 way south. But Teach was captured and killed. Paul 

 says the crew decided to give up their pirating ways 

 and settle down on Shackleford Banks. 



And just as Blackbeard used Cape Lookout's 

 bay to harbor his crew, other privateers and pirates 

 used the sheltered bay. To stop such use, several of 

 North Carolina's royal governors appealed to the 

 crown for money to construct a fort at the cape. But 

 all pleas were ignored. In 1777, the Continental Con- 

 gress considered building defenses at the cape. Again 

 the consideration amounted to only talk. 



But a spunky Frenchman, Captain de Cottineau de 

 Kerloguen, finally made the fort a reality in 1778. 

 Cottineau, bound for the colonies in an armed frigate, 

 met with a chase from several ships of the British 

 Royal Navy. To evade his pursuers, Cottineau sailed 

 into Cape Lookout Bay, assuming the whalers' huts 

 were part of a colonial fort that could offer him 

 protection. 



Cottineau was dismayed to find no fortress at the 

 cape, says William Pohoresky, a Newport historian 

 and writer. To remedy that oversight, Cottineau 

 quickly wrote the North Carolina General Assembly, 

 informing them of his plans to build a fort near the 

 whalers' huts, which overlooked the entrance to Cape 

 Lookout Bay. 



With the help of the men from his frigate, Cot- 

 tineau began to build the fort. On April 23, 1778, the 

 North Carolina General Assembly authorized the for- 

 tification of Cape Lookout Bay and provided 5,000 

 pounds to pay for the construction. Cottineau outfit- 

 ted the fort with guns from his frigate because arms 

 were scarce. The fort was called Fort Hancock after 

 Enoch Hancock, the man who owned the land the 

 whaling village and fort were built upon. 



After completion of the fort, Cottineau sailed on to 

 play a larger role in history. He and his frigate fought 

 at the side of John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme 

 Richard in that famous naval battle where Jones ut- 

 tered, "I have not yet begun to fight." 



No one knows whether Fort Hancock ever saw any 

 Revolutionary War action, but on May 4, 1780, the 

 state senate ordered the "colors" to be lowered over 

 the fort. Nothing remains of the fort today. Only 

 through colonial histories can its existence be traced. 



After the war, the Shackleford Bankers continued 

 to depend on the sea for their livelihood. Though 



Launching the boat for a nighttime rescue 



