In the Spotlight: Ocracoke Village

19 April 2011

After stopping off at the Ocracoke Pony Pasture (post here), we continued on to Ocracoke Village, located at the southern tip of Ocracoke Island. A brochure we had picked up when we first arrived in the OBX provided us with all the guidance we needed to explore the area, starting with a stop at the US Navy Beach Jumper Marker on Loop Shack Hill.

Ocracoke Village map showing points of interest; the areas we visited are marked.
[scanned from brochure]

The marker is right on Route 12, just before you enter the village proper. But it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. I’m glad we stopped here as we learned about the top-secret WW II US Navy project called the Beach Jumpers, the precursor, if you will, to today’s elite Navy Seals.

In 1943, Ocracoke hosted an advanced amphibious training base where tactical cover and deception units were organized and trained. These units also monitored German u-boat activity off the coast during the war. This undercover military project apparently existed in other prime locations along the eastern seaboard as well.

And here’s a bit of Jeopardy-worthy trivia. This project was developed as a result of the efforts of a Hollywood star who gave up his acting career when the war started and joined the US Navy — Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Who knew! (More information about the Beach Jumpers is here.)

The Beach Jumpers’ motto can be loosely translated as "confuse your enemy."

From this first stop, we drove to the far side of the village where we knew there was public parking near the NPS Visitor Center. A surprise find there — only because we weren’t really looking for it — was the Ocracoke Civil War Memorial.

Fort Ocracoke was one of four fortifications on nearby Beacon Island. It was built in 1861 by Confederate volunteers from the mainland after North Carolina seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.

Following Union victories on Hatteras Island the summer of the same year, the Confederates partially destroyed the fort and abandoned it without fight. Union forces later completed the destruction. The remnants of the fort, discovered in 1998, are submerged in Ocracoke Inlet.

The image etched into the marker was inspired by a sketch that appeared in The Illustrated London Times, a copy of which I saw later when I visited the museum. The scene is said to be that of the Union forces completing the destruction as the crew of the USS Fanny looks on.

The final destruction of Fort Ocracoke.

A meandering walk next took us to the British Cemetery where we paid our respects to the four men whose bodies were recovered after the sinking of the HMT Bedfordshire in May 1942. The culprit — U-558, a German u-boat that was patrolling the east coast of the US.

These crosses were cast in 1942 to mark the graves; they have since been replaced by
regulation British grave markers.

The HMT Bedfordshire was an Arctic trawler built in 1935 in England. Four years later, it was sold to the Admiralty and converted to an armed vessel in the British Trawler force. It was one of 24 antisubmarine ships loaned to the US Navy for coastal patrols. When it was torpedoed by U-558, it sank with the loss of all hands — 4 officers and 33 crewmen. Only four of the bodies washed ashore; they were recovered and given a military burial.

The graves, with the regulation British markers, are maintained by the US Coast Guard;
a British flag flies above the site.

Another meandering walk led us back to the parking lot. We took our snacks to a picnic table overlooking Pamlico Sound for lunch. Away from the hustle and bustle of the village, which was overrun with school groups on Spring Break trips, we enjoyed a quiet rest. I’m really amazed that we didn’t encounter any crowds at the stops we made, but I guess that was because we got such an early start.

Next, while Mui participated in a work-related conference call, I checked out the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum, located in the David Williams House (ca. 1900).

The house belonged to Captain David Williams, the first chief of the US Lifesaving
Station on the island.

The small museum is free (donations gratefully accepted). Some of the rooms house exhibits fitting to a seafaring community; others are decorated with 19th century furnishings. Original photographs and artifacts give visitors a glimpse into life as it was back in the time. I easily whiled away an hour, and by the time I came out, Mui was off the phone and ready to do some more sightseeing.

Our last stop before heading to the ferry landing was the Ocracoke Lighthouse. I covered that portion of our day in an earlier post about the lighthouses of the OBX (found here), so I won’t revisit it again.

When we arrived at the ferry landing, there was already a long line forming for the return trip to Hatteras Island, including three busses filled with Spring Breakers. We lucked out and squeezed onto the next ferry, but only because there wasn’t enough room for the third bus in the queue.

The scene that greeted us when we arrived at the Hatteras ferry terminal can only be described as jaw-dropping — and not in a good way. Remember the empty lot that greeted us when we showed up shortly before 7:30a? Well, not anymore. At 1:00p, the line of vehicles was four deep and running all the way out of the parking lot and up the main road a good ways. So glad we got our Ocracoke visit in early!

Before we left Hatteras Village, we made a quick stop at the relatively new Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum near the ferry landing — mostly to check out the infamous Enigma cypher machine of WWII that was recovered from U-85, a German u-boat that was sunk with the loss of all hands off the coast of North Carolina in April 1942, just about 69 years ago.

An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher
machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was
invented by a German engineer.

I believe this painting is intended to depict the recovery of the Enigma machine after
U-85 was sunk.

After seeing all those vehicles lined up at the ferry terminal, we were a bit concerned about the crowds we might find at our next stop and on the way home. Well, there was quite a crowd at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and the lines were long enough that we decided not to climb to the top of the beacon. But we did have a nice wander around the new and old locations of this historic lighthouse. (Post here.) As for the drive back to the campground — that was a piece of cake.

I used quite a few collages in this post, so if you’d like to see full-size versions of the pictures from our visit to Ocracoke Island, visit my online gallery.