Derelicts

From the very beginning, the North Carolina coast has been feard by mariners because of its treacherous coastline and hidden shoals.The Cape Fear in particular has haunted the nightmares of those sailors who have had the bad luck to be on its waters when the whitecaps churn or the cannons roared. James Sprunt served as purser aboard the blockade runner Lilian when just a teenager during the American Civil War. During those years he became inimately acquainted with the daring men and fast ships that challenged the might of the Union navy and its blockade of North Carolina and Cape Fear ports. There were Captains John Newland Maffitt, John Wilkinson, and Joseph Fry. Jim Billy Craig and others piloted the sleek steamers carrying the lifeblood of the Confederacy into the port at Wilmington with steady hands. Characters like Thomas Taylor, Daisy Lamb and the rebel spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow all played their parts in the drama that took place off the Cape Fear between 1861 and 1865. There were the men and ships of the U.S. Navy: Porter and Lee, Cushing and Braine, and all of the enlisted sailors and marines who stood watch on fog-slicked decks, trying to plug a bottle with two openings. Too often they were unsuccessful, but if they could close the Cape Fear and the rest of the North Carolina coast, they just might end a long and costly war. These are their stories, told by a man who saw it all happen first-hand.