HATTERAS–Drew Pullen, an authority on the Civil War on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, give a free public presentation, “Flags Over Hatteras,” at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum on Wednesday, May 20, at 7 p.m.
In May 1861, the Atlantic Blockading Squadron Board of Strategy regarded the “…sterile, half drowned shores of North Carolina…” with little interest. Less than one month later, they acknowledged this same coast as “the most dangerous stretch of shore in the whole Confederacy.” The first ship-to-ship combat of the war occurred off Oregon Inlet.
Privateers took dozens of ships and millions of dollars in cargo. Blockade runners, two and three a day, passed through Hatteras Inlet to supply the Confederacy and frustrate the Federal Navy. Losses were so great that the nation’s six largest maritime insurance companies petitioned U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to destroy the “nest of pirates” and smugglers at Hatteras.
In response, Secretary Welles authorized the first joint operation of the war, and on Aug. 29, 1861, Hatteras and its defenses fell. Confederate forces withdrew from the Oregon and Ocracoke inlets in September.
Within the next seven months Roanoke Island, Winton, New Bern, Fort Macon, Beaufort and Morehead City were taken in fast succession, and the intracoastal supply route to Virginia was eliminated. The defeat at Hatteras, and subsequent Confederate reverses in Eastern North Carolina, underscored the inability of the Confederacy to set strategic priorities, with the Federal leadership recognizizing the full potential of coastal operations.
The campaigns demonstrated the effectiveness of naval assaults against shore fortifications, destroyed the Confederate intracoastal supply system, eliminated a principal privateering base and closed all North Carolina ports (except Wilmington’s) to blockade runners. Further, the loss of Hatteras and the Outer Banks boosted the North’s morale and undermined the South’s, and intensified the succession controversy.
Pullen will discuss the vital role Hatteras played during the Civil War, using drawings and journals of the period. He will also talk about activities planned for the 2011 Civil War Sesquicentennial on Hatteras Island.
A former history teacher and retired banker (who managed the East Carolina Bank in Hatteras for 27 years), Pullen is the author of The Civil War on Hatteras and The Civil War on Roanoke Island. He is a graduate of Houghton College and did graduate work at the State University of New York at Geneseo. He presently lives in Buxton with his wife, Jo Anne, whose great-great-grandfather was stationed at Fort Hatteras during the Civil War.
Pullen is chairman of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee for Hatteras Island and is secretary of the Board of Directors for the Friends of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
For more information, go to http://www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com or call the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum at (252) 986-2995. The museum, located next to the Ferry’s Dock in Hatteras, presents the maritime heritage and history of the shipwrecks of North Carolina’s Outer Banks; it is part of the Division of State History Museums within the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.