. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. clothing and building supplies. The village also sheltered passengers and crew rescued from doomed vessels. Two sea captains who died in the early 1800s are buried on the beach side of the village. Portsmouth once shared North Core Banks, also called Portsmouth Island, with two other nearby communities. Overgrown foundations and lost gravestones are all that remain of Middle Community and Sheep Island. Accessible only by boat through treacherous waters, on an untamed, uninhabited barrier island, Portsmouth
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. clothing and building supplies. The village also sheltered passengers and crew rescued from doomed vessels. Two sea captains who died in the early 1800s are buried on the beach side of the village. Portsmouth once shared North Core Banks, also called Portsmouth Island, with two other nearby communities. Overgrown foundations and lost gravestones are all that remain of Middle Community and Sheep Island. Accessible only by boat through treacherous waters, on an untamed, uninhabited barrier island, Portsmouth now is an easily overlooked nook of North Carolina. For the first century after its 1753 founding, however, Portsmouth was among the largest and most important Outer Banks settlements. Ocracoke Inlet was the only access through the island chain to the colonial ports of Bath, New Bern and Washington. The ships of the day — traveling inbound with sugar and spices and fabric, laden with lumber and pitch outbound — drew more water than Ocracoke Inlet and Pamlico Sound provided. Portsmouth and nearby Shell Castle Island evolved as a "lightering" station. Using slave labor, cargo was transferred to and from lighter, shallow draft boats for the journeys beyond. Two-thirds of North Carolina's exports in the early 1800s passed through Ocracoke Inlet. Traffic was heavy enough to merit a mariners' hospital at Portsmouth to care for sick and injured seafarers. Its rainwater cistern — the sky is Portsmouth's only source of fresh water — still remains. In 1860, the population reached a high of nearly 700 people, including 117 slaves, and the town boasted more than 100 buildings — homes, warehouses and stores. The sea, though, already had begun to forsake Portsmouth. Ocracoke Inlet shifted and shoaled. Shell Castle Island, composed of oyster shells, eroded away. An 1846 storm sliced new inlets — and new trade routes — through Hatteras Island to the north. Other events
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
