Due to Hurricane Sandy, we arrived at RV Resort at Carolina Crossroads in Roanoke Rapids, NC on 10/27/2012. After some rescheduling we traveled to Encore Twin Lakes Resort in Chocowinity, NC on 10/31/2012. On 11/04/2012 we visited Roanoke River Lighthouse 1866 Replica in Plymouth, NC and Roanoke River Lighthouse 1886 in Edenton, NC. It doesn’t take an astute observer to realize that the replica of the Roanoke River Lighthouse that was constructed along the banks of the Roanoke River in Plymouth differs dramatically from the historic Roanoke River Lighthouse that was relocated to Edenton. This can be a bit perplexing until one understands that there were actually two Roanoke River Lighthouses that served at the station located near the confluence of the Roanoke River and Albemarle Sound, some six miles northeast of Plymouth. The replica lighthouse is modeled after the original Roanoke River Lighthouse built in 1866, while the lighthouse in Edenton was built in 1887 to replace the 1866 lighthouse. The town of Plymouth, formerly known as Plymouth Landing, reportedly received its name because sailors from Plymouth, Massachusetts called there regularly for cargo. Flatboats carried products down the Roanoke River from outlying farms and forests to Plymouth, where they could be loaded on sailing vessels. Tobacco, corn, rice, turpentine, and masts were transported from Plymouth to ports as far away as the West Indies. In 1790, the U.S. Congress established Plymouth as a port of delivery with its own customs house, and by 1806 the town had twenty-five ocean-going sailing ships. Plymouth was one of six primary ports in North Carolina and ranked ninth in population. Congress appropriated funds in 1831 for a lightship to be placed near the mouth of the Roanoke River in Albemarle Sound to guide vessels to the river and the port of Plymouth upstream. A wooden-hulled, three-masted sailing ship was converted into the lightship, which was named “MM”. Whale oil lights shining through red, blue, and green lenses served as a beacon for mariners. When Union forces invaded eastern North Carolina in 1862, Confederates took control of the lightship and sailed it upstream to Plymouth. During the war, the ship was scuttled in the Roanoke River. Following the conflict, work on the Roanoke River Lighthouse commenced near the mouth of the river to replace the lightship. The design of the lighthouse was very similar to others used in North Carolina’s Pamlico, Albemarle, and Croatan Sounds: a square structure with a pitched roof surmounted by a lantern room that housed a Fresnel lens. The lighthouse was destroyed by fire in March of 1885 but was rebuilt and put back into service later that year. In winter, ice floes were a constant plague for screw-pile lighthouses, like the one at Roanoke River. In 1886, ice severed two of the Roanoke River Lighthouse’s spindly support legs causing the structure to collapse into the sound. A replacement lighthouse was activated in 1887 and served until the station was discontinued in 1941. The Picture is of the Roanoke River Lighthouse 1866 Replica.
The second Roanoke River Lighthouse was a two-story wooden structure with a square tower protruding from one corner of the structure’s pitched roof. This lighthouse was originally intended for Currituck Sound but was diverted to Roanoke River to replace the lighthouse lost there. The new lighthouse had two rooms on each floor, and families lived at the offshore station for several decades before keepers started commuting to the lighthouse from Plymouth. A fourth-order Fresnel lens was used in the lantern room. The Picture is of Roanoke River Lighthouse 1886.
We drove to Bass Lake Campground in Dillon, SC on 11/07/2012. We visited Bentonville Battlefield SHS in Bentonville, NC on 11/09/2012. The Battle of Bentonville, fought March 19-21, 1865, was the last full-scale action of the Civil War in which a Confederate army was able to mount a tactical offensive. This major battle, the largest ever fought in North Carolina, was the only significant attempt to defeat the large Union army of Gen. William T. Sherman during its march through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865. The picture is of the Union Earthworks.
The picture is of Abigail o a Union Cannon at the Union Earthworks.
On 11/11/2012 we took a Ferry to see Piece’s Creek Lighthouse in South Port, NC, Fort Fisher and Aquarium at Fort Fisher in Kure Beach, NC This rather decrepit and inaccessible structure is the only remaining evidence of the old system of range lights that served the once-bustling trade route along the Cape Fear River to Wilmington. For years, merchants and mariners had lobbied for lights to mark the twenty-five-mile-long passage, and in 1848 funds were finally appropriated for eight lighthouses. The beacons along the river were configured as range lights, built in pairs, with a shorter light in front of a taller light. By positioning their vessels so that the taller light appeared directly above the shorter light, the mariners knew they were safely in the center of the channel. The last of these range lights to be built, and the only one still standing, is the front range light at Price’s Creek, completed in 1849. Constructed entirely of brick, the walls of the twenty-foot-high tower taper from three feet thick at the base to two feet thick at the top. The diameter of the circular tower shrinks from seventeen feet to nine feet. At the top is a circular platform where the framework for the lights rested. The range light was originally fitted with eight lamps and eight fourteen-inch reflectors. These were eventually replaced with a sixth-order Fresnel lens that gave a fixed white light. Its sister light, located around 700-800 feet upriver, also served as the keeper’s quarters. It was a larger, square, brick structure with a lantern room on top and had an overall height of thirty-five feet. Although the first person appointed as keeper was Samuel C. Mason, for some reason he never took up the post, and John Bell worked as the first keeper. The glory days of the range lights occurred during the early part of the Civil War, when they served to guide daring Confederate blockade runners past the Union ships stationed offshore. Additionally, the Confederate army turned the brick keeper’s house into a signal station, which provided communication between Fort Caswell and Fort Fisher. The Union eventually did gain complete control of the coast, forcing the Confederates to retreat inland. Rather than let the lighthouses remain for the enemy, Confederate soldiers dismantled or destroyed as many lights as they could. The picture is of the Piece’s Creek Lighthouse ruins.
Until the arrival of Col. William Lamb in July 1862, Fort Fisher was little more than several sand batteries mounting fewer than two dozen guns. Under Colonel Lamb’s direction and design, which was greatly influenced by the Malakoff Tower (a Crimean War fortification) in Sebastopol, Russia, expansion of the fortress began. By January 1865, Fort Fisher embraced one mile of sea defense and one-third of a mile of land defense. More than five hundred African Americans, both slave and free, worked with Confederate soldiers on construction; occasionally as many as one thousand men were working, although maintaining adequate labor was difficult. Unlike older fortifications built of brick and mortar, Fort Fisher was made mostly of earth and sand, which was ideal for absorbing the shock of heavy explosives. The sea face, equipped with 22 guns, consisted of a series of 12-foot-high batteries bounded on the south end by two larger batteries 45 and 60 feet high. Of the smaller mounds, one served as a telegraph office and another was converted into a hospital bombproof. The land face was equipped with 25 guns distributed among its 15 mounds. Each mound was 32 feet high with interior rooms used as bombproofs or powder magazines and connected by underground passageways. Extending in front of the entire land face was a nine-foot-high palisade fence. Colonel Lamb recognized the importance of Fort Fisher to the defense system of the Cape Fear, to the security of Wilmington, and to the survival of the entire Confederacy. Massive and powerful, Fort Fisher kept Federal blockading ships at a distance from the Cape Fear River, protecting Wilmington from attack and ensuring relatively safe passage for Confederate naval travel. Wilmington was the last major port open to the Confederacy and the destination of steamers called blockade runners, which smuggled provisions into the Southern states and supplied General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. These ships traveled from Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Nova Scotia, where southern cotton and tobacco were exchanged for food, clothing, and munitions from British traders. The picture is of Shepherd’s Battery ad Shepherd’s Bombproof Magazine.
