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The Flaming Ship of Ocracoke
from
The Flaming Ship of Ocracoke & Other Tales of the Outer Banks
Some most unusual things continue to happen just off thenorthern shore of Ocracoke Inlet. Of course, this region isknown the world over as a part of the Graveyard of the Atlantic,and many are the tales of shipwrecks and sailors lost at sea and of treasures lying buried beneath the shifting sands of the DiamondShoals. Most of these legends have no recurring manifestations; but the Ocracoke Happening, they say, repeats itself year afteryear, always under the same conditions and always at the samespot. Many people have seen it time after time, and always onthe night when the new moon makes its first appearance inSeptember. Thus, the dates may differ from year to year, but thatsliver of new moon is always part of the scene.In the region itself, the most widely accepted explanation isa combination of history and folk memory which has been toldand retold by the older fisherman to their sons and grandsons.Many of these old-timers may not be able to name the current
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Secretary of the Interior, but they can tell you, with amazingaccuracy, of the time when Anne was Queen of Eng-land andmany efforts were being made to colonize the Carolinas. Thiswas a time when the continent of Europe was in a ferment.The tiny German Palatinate had been overrun, time and again, by the vicious wars between Catholic and Protestant armies.The people were weary with so-called religious wars, and theylonged for peace.In the beautiful Rhine River Valley in 1689, the retreatingarmies of Louis XIV had brutally scourged and laid waste theentire countryside, leaving everything destroyed and most of the people destitute. Some ten thousand Palatines, as they werecalled, flooded into England for refuge, and the authorities didnot know what to do with them. No beggars, these, but honestand skilled craftsmen, miners, and artisans of the first order.Such an influx of jobless thousands threw the British economycompletely out of kilter.The British people, though sympathetic at first, soon beganto complain, so the English Queen listened with favor whenthe Swiss Baron Christophe DeGraffenried, eager to mend hisown personal fortunes and to solve the problems of many of the Palatines at the same time, proposed taking several hundredof these poor people to the Province of Carolina in the NewWorld across the sea. England desperately needed colonists, andthe Palatines just as desperately needed new homes, so QueenAnne told DeGraffenried to go ahead with his plan.The mass migration, organized and directed by the good baron, was beset by trials and tribulations, but it finally resultedin the settlement of a large portion of land in what is now east-ern North Carolina. The settelement was known, at first, bythe Indian name Chattoka. Today it is identified as the beautifulcity of New Bern (formerly New Berne). Many people know
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The Flaming Ship of Ocracroke from Pirates, Ghosts, and Coastal Lore
The thirteen stories selected for this volume are Judge Whedbee's finest. "The Flaming Ship of Okracoke" chronicles the tale of poor lost souls just off the northern shore of Ocracoke Inlet.
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