Friendly, knowledgeable volunteers stationed throughout the ship engage visitors in specific subjects and areas including gunnery, radar, sick bay, galley, engineering, and daily shipboard life.

Try on helmets, raise signal flags, “text” using semaphore flags, tap out your name using Morse code, type on vintage typewriters and more!

A great event for all ages. Bring your questions and cameras!

 

10:00 AM to 3:00 PM

Free with Battleship admission.

(910) 399-9113

 1 Battleship Road, Wilmington, NC 28401

January 19th marks the 155th anniversary of the Second Battle of Fort Fisher.

In the final years of the war between the States, Wilmington, North Carolina was the second most important city to the Confederate States of America. Only Richmond, the Confederate capital, was more crucial to the South’s fortunes.

Wilmington, connected to Richmond by railroad, was the closest seaport that could supply Lee’s Army. By late 1864, in fact, virtually every other Southern port on the Atlantic seaboard had been closed by the Federal blockade.

But south of Wilmington the Confederate army had constructed some of the world’s most sophisticated fortifications for the time, and blockade runners could still get into the port city. Mighty Fort Fisher and the other defenses successfully frustrated Union efforts to close the two entrances to the Cape Fear River and this to Wilmington.

After the Union’s disastrous attempt to take Fort Fisher in December 1864, a second massive attempt was undertaken in January 1865. The second assault was all out.

The Union navy unleashed the largest bombardment in history up to that time, and the federal army landed an overwhelming number of soldiers to assault Fort Fisher from the land.

Col. Lamb and his men made a truly heroic defense but to no avail. The young colonel was badly wounded and the fort fell.

The garrisons of forts Holmes, Campbell, Pender, and Caswell were withdrawn to reinforce Fort Anderson, whose turn would be next.

By January 19, 1865, Federals controlled everything up to Battery Lamb, only four miles from Fort Anderson but they waited to amass overwhelming force before attacking.

By February 1865 the Confederates had managed to assemble about 2,300 men to defend Fort Anderson. This would be a pitiful force, however, compared to the
numbers against them.

When word reached the commander of the Cape Fear District, Gen. Hoke, that Fort Anderson was about to be invaded from the rear and cut off from Wilmington, he ordered the fort evacuated to save its garrison.

The defenders of the fort quietly slipped out on the night of February 18 and marched up the road to Town Creek, where they took up new positions to further delay the fall of Wilmington.

With the dawn, the Union tide broke over the empty fort and was greeted by shells from their own ships in the river. The last shots fired at Fort Anderson were blue on blue! The Union navy was fighting against the Union army.

The excerpt you are reading is from the book “Tales of the Silver Coast” by author and illustrator Miller Pope and author Jacqueline DeGroot.

Buy it in the Island Living Store here!

 

 

 

January 18th and 19th will commemorate the 155th anniversary of the second battle of Fort Fisher. This two-day, family-friendly event will feature a tactical battle scenario (1 pm Sat and 10 am Sun) with hundreds of reenactors in period uniforms.

It will also include living history demonstrations, musket demonstrations, artillery firings, period music, guided tours, and special guest speakers to educate and entertain.

While the program is free and open to the public, donations are appreciated.

All Fort Fisher programming is made possible by the Friends of Fort Fisher and its sustaining members, as well as from generous support from the town of Carolina Beach and the town of Kure Beach.

In a time when scientific study has taught us a great deal about earlier civilizations, we know relatively little about Eastern North Carolina’s original inhabitants.

The indigenous peoples of the region were relatively isolated. Today, sandy soils make archeology difficult. But researchers believe that native Americans arrived in the Cape Fear area by at least 10,000 B.C.

Shell middens found on Bald Head Island, where Indians left the remains of their oystering and shellfishing, have been dated back eight hundred years.

When the Italian explorer Giovanni Da Verrazano visited the area in March 1524, sailing for Francis I of France, he found the natives friendly.

“They go nude of everything,” Verrazano wrote in his report to the king on July 8, 1524, “except that at the private parts they wear some skins of little animals . . . a girdle of fine grass woven with various tails of other animals which hang around the body as far as the knees; the rest nude; the head likewise. Some wear certain garlands of feathers of birds.”

Scholars believe these people were the Cape Fear Indians, who inhabited the river areas in present- day Brunswick and New Hanover Counties.

Like their northern neighbors, the Croatans, the Cape Fear Indians probably relied heavily on coastal estuaries for food, seining the sounds for small fish and collecting oysters and clams.

The Cape Fear Indians might have hunted extensively in coastal swamp- lands, stalking deer, bear, turkeys, and game birds with bow and arrow.

When Capt. William Hilton scouted the area for the English colonists from Barbados in 1662, he visited Necroes, a Cape Fear village in Brunswick County about twenty miles north of the river’s mouth.

The Indians seemed eager to trade, offering a variety of fish and acorns. This festival of friendship climaxed on December 1, 1663, when the chief WatCoosa deeded the river and contiguous lands to the English settlers.

The chief even gave the English two of his daughters to cement the deal.

From this point, however, American history slipped into a pattern it would often repeat. Disease introduced by the white explorers accounted for dreadful loss, and wars between the Indians themselves were made worse by the introduction of the white men’s firearms.

In 1715, Col. Maurice Moore and a force of Tuscaroras, heading to fight the Yamassee Indians in South Carolina, detoured to fight the Waccamaws and the Cape Fear Indians, driving most of them from the region.

The Yamassee War largely finished the native Americans in coastal North Carolina. In southeastern North Carolina, traveler Hugh Meredith reported to Benjamin Franklin in 1730, “There is not am Indian to be seen in this place.”

Not all Indian presence was eradicated, though. Many Native American groups survived, apparently by moving inland through the Green Swamp into counties where their descendants can be found today.

The Museum of Coastal Carolina in Ocean Isle Beach devotes an entire section to the first inhabitants of this region, with many artifacts found in the immediate area. It is well worth a trip to see some of its wonderful exhibits.

 

The excerpt you are reading is from the book “Tales of the Silver Coast” by author and illustrator Miller Pope and author Jacqueline DeGroot.

Buy it in the Island Life NC Store here!