THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408050545
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MARGARET TALEV, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NAGS HEAD LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
From the noisy chopper about 100 feet above water, Joe Friday of Greenville leaned out as far as his safety belt would allow, straining to see the dangling plaque sink into the ocean.
From the beach, the marker didn't look like much more than a big gray blob.
But to Friday, the plaque was the final chapter in a college master's thesis that formed one of the cornerstones of something much bigger: the USS Huron Shipwreck Preserve, North Carolina's first underwater historical site.
The site was dedicated in November 1991, but was incomplete until Thursday, when its official marker and commemorative plaque was lowered 20 feet beneath the ocean surface into the shipwrecked Navy vessel.
``Just to know you had a small hand in something like this makes you feel good,'' said Friday, 32, now a Greenville police officer working toward his second master's degree. Friday's research at East Carolina University helped the state's underwater archaeology unit create the historic site.
Friday, who has dived to the Huron, said that viewing the wreck was a ``pretty incredible feeling - like walking through history.''
The Huron had been in service two years when it was sunk in a storm 250 yards off the Nags Head coast en route to Havana, Cuba, from Hampton Roads. Lifesaving stations were closed, and 98 men on the ship died.
Stunned by the disaster, Congress funded additional lifesaving stations along the North Carolina coast.
A brief history of the ship's service is on the plaque, which was placed by divers in the engine room of the Huron. The marker has a concrete base with a blue and yellow silk-screen on top that is protected by clear plate glass. It features a drawing based on a woodcut of the Huron displayed in Harper's magazine about the time of the 1877 shipwreck. In addition, the silk-screen lists the launch and wreck dates, as well as the date of the 1991 dedication.
The 915-pound plaque was taken by helicopter tothe site, 250 yards off the Atlantic Coast just north of milepost 12.
Friday met Richard Lawrence and Leslie Bright of the underwater archaeology unit at the Dare County Regional Airport at 6 a.m. Thursday. An hour later, four North Carolina National Guardsmen arrived in an H-60 helicopter - which can lift 9,000 pounds - to transport the plaque and project organizers.
About 2 feet square, the plaque was attached to a 75-foot line that dangled from the copter.
It was dropped into the water at an orange buoy marking the location of the ship.
``I think it's great they have something that (divers) can look forward to seeing when they get down there,'' said Gary Graham, 40, of Binghamton, N.Y., who watched from the beach as the plaque was lowered.
A graduate student at ECU in 1986, Friday began work on his master's thesis, ``The History of the Wreck of the USS Huron.'' In 1987, the federal government passed the Abandoned Shipwreck Act, urging states to make wrecks accessible to divers. Work on the site soon began.
The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, which runs the underwater archaeological unit, the town of Nags Head and the U.S. Navy helped develop the site.
The Outer Banks Community Foundation funded most of the $3,000 cost. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
A 915-pound plaque was dropped in the water Thursday at the site of
the USS Huron Shipwreck Preserve. The plaque was placed in the
Huron's engine room by divers.
by CNB