. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. A Hunt clubs have grown up around the area's abundance of waterfowl. These clubs are on Swan Island between Knotts Island and Currituck Banks. nor'easter blew an icy mist across Currituck Sound when I visited Knotts Island recently. I walked along Great Marsh for hours and never saw another soul. Even the tundra swans and snow geese had retreated into thickets; I heard only a solitary marsh rail beckon- ing somewhere far off. A real tempest was blowing, but I hardly noticed: I had come to this remote penin
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. A Hunt clubs have grown up around the area's abundance of waterfowl. These clubs are on Swan Island between Knotts Island and Currituck Banks. nor'easter blew an icy mist across Currituck Sound when I visited Knotts Island recently. I walked along Great Marsh for hours and never saw another soul. Even the tundra swans and snow geese had retreated into thickets; I heard only a solitary marsh rail beckon- ing somewhere far off. A real tempest was blowing, but I hardly noticed: I had come to this remote peninsula between North Landing River and Currituck Sound, just south of Virginia, to mark the anniversary of a far worse storm that hit Knotts Island many, many years ago. On March 6, 1846 — more than 150 years before my visit — the most wicked nor'easter of modern times hit Knotts Island. Descending from the North Atlantic in bone-chilling fury, the storm drove snowy gray breakers across Currituck Banks and into Knotts Island. Creeds El Back 9 Virginia Bay Am Beach. Fish camps and gunners' homes disappeared under the waves. Dunes and forests vanished overnight. Mari- ners caught at sea could only be pitied and, later, mourned. A storm like that bears remember- ing. And, in truth, I had wanted to visit Knotts Island since I first read about the nor'easter of 1846 in Henry Beasley Ansell's Recollections of a Life Time and More. Born on Knotts Island in 1832, Ansell spent most of his life there and in Coinjock, on the mainland of Currituck County. Sometime around 1907, after he had retired as county surveyor and clerk of court, "the panorama of his birthplace passed ... before him," and he began to write the story of his boyhood years. Never published, his recollections are now preserved in the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before the hurricane of 1828 closed New Currituck Inlet, Knotts Island had been a busy maritime
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
