North Carolina

North Carolina Shipwrecks are prevalent on the coast, and the area has been nicknamed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”  This graveyard is significant due to the conditions at Cape Hatteras.  Cold water flows down the coast from the north and collides with the warm Gulf Stream current from the tropics.  Sailing vessels during the nineteenth-century coastal trade heydays could not round Cape Hatteras for weeks because of the combined forces of the Gulf Stream and prevailing winds from the southwest.  When the wind finally switched from the north, some vessels would end up on the shore.

Contributing to the cause of all the wreckage is the fact that there is not a dependable harbour of refuge between the Chesapeake Bay and Beaufort Inlet, which is a distance of 200 miles.  Inlets along this coastal area would close without warning, and channels shifted nonstop.  The low-lying coastline was also tricky for mariners to figure out the difference between an inlet and a low beach.

The famous pirate Blackbeard used the shallow inlets to hide his shallow draft ships from the Navy in this area.  His crew made many attacks and seizures of vessels in this area of the US coastline.  Blackbeard’s ship wreckage, the “Queen Anne’s Revenge,” was found in this area in shallow water.  Visitors can see the artifacts of the “Queen Anne’s Revenge” at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, North Carolina, not far from Moorehead City.  Artifacts from the wreck can also be seen at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh, the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.  Historic Bath in Bath offers visitors the chance to walk some of the same paths that Blackbeard would have walked.

The Civil War brought more wreckage to the North Carolina shore.  More than 60 vessels were lost during this war.  At least 15 ships were sunk by German submarines (U-boats) during World War I.  In less than three years during World War II, approximately 90 more vessels were lost, including three German U-boats.  There are an estimated 1,000 vessels lost in the shipwreck inventory of the North Carolina shoreline.