Fort Ocracoke

The Confederate fort near Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina interests me. It was located on a small island called "Beacon Island" and was the last of four forts to be constructed on this island. From what I have read, they were probably all built on top of each other.

The Confederates built a bunch of forts along the North Carolina coast to prevent the Union navy from being able to land on the North Carolina coast. This fort was also known as Fort Morgan. At the peak, it appears that there were 500 COnfederates in the area. So whether they were all at Fort Ocracoke or on Ocracoke Island remains to be seen.

Evidently, some of the men were sent up to Hatteras Island when that fort was being shelled to help protect it and they left a skeletal crew at Fort Ocracoke. Supplies hadn't been received and they had no help, so when word got to them that Fort Hatteras fell, the men who were at Fort Ocracoke abandoned the fort but not before doing some damage to it.

Here is a description of the fort by Lt. Maxwell of the Union steamer Pawnee:
It is octagonal in shape, contains four shell rooms, about twenty five feet square, and in the center a large Bomb-proof, one hundred feet square, with the magazine within it. Directly above the magazine, on each side, were four large tanks containing water. The fort had been constructed with great care, of sand in barrels covered with earth and turf. The inner framing of the bomb-proof was built of heavy pine timbers. There were platforms for twenty guns, which had been partly destroyed by fire. The gun carriages had been all burned. There were eighteen guns in the fort-- namely, four eight inch navy sell gunes, and fourteen long thirty-two pounders.

When you visit Ocracoke Island, in the parking lot at the Visitors Center in the Ocracoke Village, there is a monument dedicated to the Fort. Here is what the monument says:
The remants of Fort Ocracoke are submerged in Ocracoke Inlet, 2 miles to the west-southwest, towards Portsmouth Island. The last of possibly four forts on Beacon Island, the mostly earthen Fort Ocracoke was constructed by mainland Confederate volunteers. Beginning on May 20, 1861, the day North Carolina seceeded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.

After Union victories on Hatteras Island in August, 1861, the Confederates partly destroyed the fort and abandoned it without a fight. Mainland Union forces completed the destruction in September, 1861. Beacon Island was consumed by the waters of Ocracoke Inlet in the first half of the 20th century. The forts remain where discovered and identified by members of Surface Interval Diving Co. in August, 1998, acting on a tip by Ocracoke charter boat captain, Donald Austin.

This is definitely a site worth exploring, although today, the island itself is under water, you can still stand and look out into the water and wonder "Just what DID that fort look like from this spot?"