THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603120418
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HATTERAS VILLAGE LENGTH: Long : 175 lines
Smashed on shoals, broken in seething storms and swept under by house-high waves, more than 1,000 ships have gone to the bottom in the treacherous waters off the Outer Banks over the past four centuries.
At least half of those hollow hulls have been identified. But hundreds of others lie - with their crews - in unnamed, watery graves.
Wizened captains have long claimed that the Atlantic waters along the white sands of the barrier islands are among the most dangerous passages in the world.
Now, after more than a decade of planning and preparation, a museum dedicated to the ships and sailors who perished in the ``Graveyard of the Atlantic'' finally is coming to life.
Officials plan to break ground for the 15,000-square-foot facility by fall. Doors are expected to open by the summer of 1997. Located next to the Hatteras Village ferry docks, the museum - paid for with private and state money - will commemorate the area's maritime heritage.
``The shores off the Outer Banks have one of the highest concentrations of shipwrecks in the world,'' said Joseph Karl Schwarzer II, the museum's executive director, who has been on board about six months.
``We're building a facility to reflect our nation's seafaring history from its formation right up to the present. The public is remarkably uninformed about the legacy off these islands,'' Schwarzer said. ``We want to present them with displays, photographs, maps, folklore and interactive opportunities that will depict the local, national and even international history that happened right here - and how it all relates.''
British exploratory voyages organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s, German submarine attacks on tankers and freighters in World War II, and the grounding, in the 1980s, of the commercial fishing trawler John Duke will be part of the presentation at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
Volunteer curator Danny Couch hasn't collected many items for the $1.7 million museum yet. But he's researched and found dozens of historic pieces from the Outer Banks' seafaring past.
And he has been promised donations of some of the pieces.
The crown jewels of the collection, he said, are relics from ``the ghost ship of The Diamond,'' a five-masted schooner called the Carroll A. Deering. The ship sailed from Bath, Maine, in 1919 and ended up aground on Diamond Shoals just after sunrise on Jan. 31, 1921. All the sails were still set on the 255-foot ship. Food was laid out in the galley and on the stove. But no sign of captain or crew could be found.
Historians still don't know what happened to the dozen or more men, who apparently abandoned their threatened vessel in lifeboats as a storm caused churning seas to climb.
One crew member had called through a megaphone earlier that they'd lost their anchors in strong currents off Cape Fear. Some suspected mutiny against the ailing Capt. Wormell. Others cried piracy by Russian rogues.
Despite the efforts of Coast Guard officers, local mariners and even wreckers who eventually dynamited the remains of the sinking vessel, nothing was ever found to clear up the mystery of the ghost ship.
Scores of relics, however, were reclaimed by salvagers who stripped the schooner from stem to stern.
``We have the capstan off that vessel, which was used to raise and lower the anchors,'' Couch said. ``And we've found the captain's desk, which I'm trying to acquire from a Hertford family. There also are chairs out there that we want to exhibit.''
Other items Couch hopes to display include:
A hand-hewn juniper oar that members of the U.S. Lifesaving Service used to row their surfboat through the breakers during a daring turn-of-the-century shipwreck rescue.
A Civil War-era cannon ball fired from a Confederate gunboat off the Outer Banks.
The journal of a local seaman who kept track of his voyages from 1845 through 1906.
A marine toilet off the steamer ``Proteus,'' which sank near Hatteras during World War I. The stained glass-inlaid doors from the captain's quarters of the 643-ton barkentine Priscilla, which smashed off Cape Hatteras in 1899.
``We've got to get that building built,'' Couch said. ``Then, other artifacts will start surfacing.
``We get tired of telling visitors, year after year, `Yes, the shipwrecks are out there somewhere.' We want to show them what they looked like, and what they meant to the world. This museum will be a destination point for Outer Banks visitors - and an added attraction for anyone who wants to be educated or just hear some heroic human interest stories.''
Financed with an initial $760,000 contribution from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, $800,000 from the North Carolina General Assembly and $100,000 from the Dare County Board of Commissioners, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum will be built on seven acres leased from the National Park Service.
Annual operating expenses for the nonprofit organization will average $200,000, including salaries, Schwarzer said. He estimates that admissions charges will be $4 a person.
``We're about to start a fund-raising campaign, and hope to get about $2.5 million to finish the building, install exhibits and establish a small endowment,'' said the new director, one of two full-time museum employees working in an office above the Hatteras Village Post Office. ``We've not actively sought private money so far. But we've already received donations from people living in Maine to Florida, New York to California, even some from Saudi Arabia.
``In 1995, two and a half million people visited Hatteras Island. Once this museum is open and operating, it will be able to support itself.''
Besides three separate areas of galleries - which will include exploration, transportation and commerce off the Outer Banks; piracy and warfare in the ``graveyard of the Atlantic''; and shipwrecks, studies and underwater archaeology - the facility will include some information about early sports-fishing expeditions and the evolution of the area's off-shore angling. There will be classroom and conference space under the same roof. And, of course, a gift shop whose proceeds will help finance operations.
Schwarzer said he hopes to offer new exhibits each season, so summer visitors will always have something different to see. And he's already arranged to display many National Park Service artifacts, now housed in a climate-controlled warehouse off a dirt road near Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island.
``We're not going to become a Disney World. But we are developing some interactive, engaging displays that people can get into,'' said Schwarzer. ``We're even hoping to put a camera on the (Civil War ironclad vessel) Monitor to allow people to see the sunken ship from inside the museum.''
Hatteras Village resident Belinda Willis, one of 10 volunteer board members overseeing development of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, said the nationally significant Monitor wreck site was actually the impetus for establishing a Hatteras Island marine artifact repository. When relics started turning up, people wanted a way to keep them on the Outer Banks.
``Then, we realized: There was no place to put them here,'' Willis said. ``Today, all the Monitor artifacts are in exhibits at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News. But once our own museum is finished, there may be an opportunity to get some of them back on loan to display here.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Left: The three-masted schooner Nomis stranded off Cape Hatteras
Aug. 16, 1935, in gale winds and heavy seas. Coast Guardsmen saved
the crew of six. The vessel broke up.
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
``We're building a facility to reflect our nation's seafaring
history,'' said Joseph Karl Schwarzer II, the museum's executive
director.
Graphic
HOW TO HELP
The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is scheduled to open near the
Hatteras Village ferry docks by the summer of 1997. Officials are
seeking artifacts, photographs and information for exhibits.
Individuals who have something to contribute to the Outer Banks'
maritime heritage are asked to call the museum offices at (919)
986-2295.
Museum employees have established a high school internship program
to let students to help organize museum displays and business
operations for the facility. Five interns are now working at the
Hatteras Village offices above the post office part-time. For more
details on that program, call Helen Wilson at (919) 986-2295.
To raise money for the nonprofit museum, employees also are
seeking private contributions - and are selling North Carolina
license plates emblazoned with ``Guardian of the Graveyard of the
Atlantic.'' The state-approved license plates include a graphic of
the spiral-striped Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. License plates cost $30
each - with $20 going toward the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
To give a donation, or to order a license plate, call (919) 986-2295
or write: The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, P.O. Box 191,
Hatteras, N.C. 27943.
by CNB