#Hatteras Island

[oldnorthcarolina]

Sow and Pigs, Cape Hatteras, NC, ca. 1900. Herbert Hutchinson Brimley Photograph Collection. State Archives of North Carolina.

[travelella]

Hatteras Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA

Taken by Gene Gallin

[hatterasislandv]

Luxury Soundfront Vacation Rentals in Outer Banks, NC - Hatteras Island Rentals

With our luxurious soundfront vacation rentals on Hatteras Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, you can find the ideal retreat. Savor the stunning views of the Pamlico Sound from the comfort of our opulent residences, which come equipped with game rooms, private docks, and swimming pools and hot tubs. Our rentals are perfect for those who enjoy water sports because they provide easy access to fishing, windsurfing, and kitesurfing. Secure your ideal house up to two years in advance when you reserve your soundfront vacation rental today. Visit Hatteras Island Vacation Rentals to learn more.

[byjove]

This summer, do NOT let go and unwind on Myrtle Beach time.

Myrtle Beach South Carolina is what people who have never been to America think America is like. If I had a foreign friend who was into Americacore and really wanted the American experience, I’d take them to Myrtle Beach. Traumatizing, overwhelming, severely taxing on the senses and wallet and full of fascinating specimens of the southeastern hard drinking hard working lower middle class.

[ltwilliammowett]

In door no. 10 we have a couple today. The US Brig Niagara and HMS Bounty, aren't they cute together?

More about them here:

The Bounty was a British three-master on which one of the most famous mutinies in maritime history took place on 28 April 1789 near Tonga. Since then, the story of the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ has repeatedly become the subject of novels, non-fiction books, films, theatre plays and radio plays.

The merchant ship, built in Hull in 1784 and originally used as a coal freighter under the name Bethia, was purchased by the British Admiralty for an expedition to the South Seas. After extensive modifications, it set off on a voyage to Tahiti in 1787 under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh of Spithead to bring cuttings of the breadfruit tree from there to the Antilles. After their exploits, the mutineers settled on the remote island of Pitcairn. Off its coast, they set fire to the Bounty.

The Bounty here, however, was a replica from the 18th century built in 1960 and 1961. It was built especially for the film Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). The ship was sometimes referred to as HMS Bounty II or variants thereof to distinguish it from the original, but neither the abbreviation HMS, which is reserved for British naval vessels, nor the numbers were part of the ship's name. After being used in several other films, she was used for charter and adventure trips with passengers and as a museum ship.

Unfortunately, she sank off Cape Hatteras during Hurricane Sandy on 29 October 2012 with the loss of two crew members.

The U.S. Brig Niagara, otherwise known as Flagship Niagara. This version here of ‘the Brig’ is a replica reproduction of Oliver Hazard Perry's relief flagship during the American victory at the Battle of Lake Erie on 10 September, 1813. All iterations of this ship were constructed within the sheltered natural harbour of Presque Isle Bay in Erie, Pennsylvania including this version which began construction in 1988. Her first sailing season commenced in 1992 and has been sailing nearly continuously since.

[softspiderling]

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

You rarely had a night by yourselves most days.

Majority of them, you were either hanging out with Rafe, yours or his place, didn’t really make a difference, or you were out with your friends.

This Saturday night, you were by yourself, a rare occasion.

Rafe and Sarah were in Charleston with their family for some charity that Rose was a part of. When Rafe first invited you to come, you declined, saying you’d rather stay home and hang with your friends or something (he was huffing and puffing about it for hours afterwards, until you made it up to him). When the weekend came around, you realized that all of your friends seemed to be busy: Cleo and Pope were driving out to fish with his parents and made a whole weekend out of it, John B and JJ went to Hatteras island for some surfing competition and Kie had to help her parents at the Wreck because they were hosting an event.

John B and JJ had invited you to tag along, but you a: you weren’t a good enough of a surfer to participate in the competition and b: you didn’t want to sit at the beach by yourself while the boys were in the water. You had half a mind to take up Rafe for the invitation to the charity but it was extremely last minute and you didn’t have anything to wear so you scratched that idea and came to terms with spending your Saturday night by yourself.

Since the event at the Wreck didn’t start until 7, you spent the day hanging out there with Kie, snacking on some fries, drinking your weight in iced tea and texting Rafe until you had to leave to let Kie prep for the event.

you: i’m actually so bored, i’m starting to regret not coming with you 😞

rafe❤️: told you to come, didn’t i?

rafe❤️: shows that you should always listen to me.

you: pfff, please, that is not the moral of the story.

you: maybe i’ll just go to a party 🤪

rafe❤️: funny.

You tossed your phone on the couch and ran your hand through your air, sighing in frustration. As you reached for your phone again for mindless scrolling, your eye caught onto your nails, and you paused. You hadn’t done your nails in a while, mostly because you were so busy. But now would be the perfect opportunity. So you got all your nail polishes and tools out of your closet and started on prep.

About four hours later you still weren’t done. You spent the first hour on looking for inspiration on Pinterest and then the next half hour booting up Netflix so you had something to watch while you were doing your nails. Your iced coke was chilling on the table, the UV lamp curing the last layer of polish on your right hand before you could finish with top coat. Your phone was long dead, but you were too lazy to get up from the table to plug it in, your back killing you from sitting hunched over your table for so long. Yawning, you put on the top coat on your last nail before sticking your hand under the lamp, ready to fall go to bed right after you were done. Now you remembered why you hadn’t done your nails for a while. After you were finished, you packed all the things away, plugged your phone into the charger and passed out in bed.

You woke up with a start, disoriented for a second. It felt like you’d been asleep for barely an hour, but you were unsure what woke you from the slumber, when the door bell rang again.

“What the hell,” you muttered to yourself, throwing a sweater over before you padded downstairs, hearing that the person at the door has begun to knock excessively.

“Jesus Christ, I’ll be right there!” you called, hurrying down the stairs. You glanced through the window, trying to see what psycho was ringing on your doorbell in the middle of the night, just to see Rafe standing in front of the door, clearly upset.

You opened the door, barely getting a word in before he rushed inside, grabbing your arms.

“Rafe, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked hotly, staring at you before looking you up and down. “Who have you been with? Why the fuck didn’t you text me back?”

You were starting to get anxious from his behavior and you cupped his face. “Rafe, stop. Breathe. What happened?”

Rafe took a deep breath, shutting his eyes for a second.

“You haven’t replied to a text since like before eight, and your last message was about going to a party. I thought something had happened,” he gritted out. “No one was able to reach you and my calls weren’t getting through to you.”

You exhaled deeply. “God, I thought something happened to Sarah. I’m fine, babe. I was doing my nails and my phone died,” you explained, lifting your hand to show off your nails. Rafe looked at him, his eyes narrowed.

“Pretty,” he grunted, before wrapping his arms around you. “Never do that again.”

As you hugged him, you could feel the tension bleed out from his limbs and you couldn’t help but smile into his shirt.

“You’re crazy, Rafe. As if I would ever go to a party by myself,” you huffed, pulling away to look up at him. “How did you even get here so fast? I thought you guys were supposed to spend the night in Charleston.”

Rafe clenched his jaw. “I took the boat. Ward is super pissed off because I left them stranded.”

You bit back a laugh, only shaking your head at your boyfriend.

“You’re such a worrier, I was asleep.”

“Yeah, well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that?” he muttered, pulling you back into his arms.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

author's note: quick lil drabble bc i thought of how unreachable i am when doing my nails

[thegenxorcist]

The Grey Man of Cape Hatteras

The Grey Man of Hatteras is an indistinct, shadowy figure who walks the beaches of Cape Hatteras as a hurricane is approaching. He appears as the first winds of the storm touch the island whenever a hurricane is a threat to the island and its inhabitants.

He never speaks, or at least no one has ever heard him speak. No one has ever gotten close enough. If anyone approaches the Grey Man, his form slowly fades into the salty air...

[rae2velarisart]

art by @bibillustrate

Screenshots:

ACOSF Bonus Chapter Azriel

https://everygirllovessparkles.com/blogs/news/what-is-the-rarest-stained-glass-color

https://islandfreepress.org/hatteras-island-features/a-beachcombers-view-purple-seaglass/

[starswallowingsea]

I have one (1) person saying they'd like a post about different styles of lighthouses so that's what this is going to be. As lighthouses serve as aids to navigation both during the day and at night, they have to stand out from each other so every lighthouse will look unique in some form or another. On top of that, many lighthouses were built out in the water and their structures had to be able to withstand the harsh weather in the open water (which not all of them did, several structures have been washed away in particularly powerful storms and had to be rebuilt). Under the cut will be several images of various lighthouses and the different classifications of these structures.

The first type of lighthouse we'll discuss in this post is the integrated lighthouse. Wikipedia describes these lighthouses as "...a lighthouse in which the tower and keeper's dwelling are united in one structure." This refers to lighthouses on land almost exclusively, but these lighthouses take on many different appearances. There are some standard designs, such as the school house design used at South Fox Island and Copper Harbor in Michigan (below), and others are more unique in their designs.

Both of these lighthouses, South Fox Island and Copper Harbor respectively, follow a standard "schoolhouse" design in their basic structure, however to tell them apart, they were given different daymarks, such as South Fox Island's whitewashed brick compared to Copper Harbor's natural cream brick. These differences help sailors to identify which specific lighthouse they're passing by and every single lighthouse will look at least slightly different, especially if it was constructed during the golden age of lighthouse construction, generally considered to be from about 1840-1910 (and obviously lighthouses were constructed before and after this period, but these 70 years saw a huge expansion in lighthouse construction, in part, due to the invention of the fresnel lens and the ability to mass produce them in France).

Not all lighthouses constructed on land are considered to be integrated lighthouses, however. Lighthouses like the one at Cape Hatteras are simply the tower, with the keepers' quarters often being nearby to the structure, but not attached. Cape Hatteras is also one of very few lighthouses bearing a "barber pole" daymark. So far as I can tell, only three lights in the US have this daymark, including St. Augustine in Florida and White Shoal in Michigan (which we'll discuss a little later).

Pictured above: Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, North Carolina, United States // Contis Plage Lighthouse, Landes, France. Both of these lighthouses are towers detached from any keepers quarters.

These are the two most common lighthouses you'll find on land, but what about those lighthouses built on the water? Well, they're divided into a few different categories: Caisson lighthouses, Screw-pile lighthouses, and Crib lighthouses.

Let's start with the Screw-pile lights. These were some of the first lighthouses built out on the water, with their piles being screwed into the mud and sand. These are actually slightly modified from older straightpile or simply pile lighthouses, differing mostly in the shape of the structure. Straightpile lights were taller and more skeletal compared to screw-pile lights. These structures had open legs which helped alleviate some pressure from the waves crashing on the structure, literally just giving them less surface area to hit and damage.

Above: Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, Florida, United States // Chesapeake Bay Lighthouse, Maryland, United States. Fowey Rocks is a Pile Lighthouse and Chesapeake Bay is a Screw-pile lighthouse. Both types of lighthouse included a keepers quarters in the structure above the water on a suspended platform, but are not considered integrated lighthouses like their mainland counterparts.

Caisson Lighthouses were created in response to Screw-pile lights, being both cheaper to build and sturdier as a structure. These lighthouses were built on metal or concrete caissons which were screwed into the sediments, with the rest of the structure completed on top. These lighthouses weren't immune to accidents though, as seen with the Sharps Island lighthouse in Maryland, which was knocked on an angle from an ice floe in 1977 and remains at a tilt to this day. It was decommissioned in 2010.

Above: the Sharps Island Lighthouse, Maryland, United States. This lighthouse actually replaced earlier screw-pile lighthouses that were also destroyed by ice floes through the area. The keepers quarters on the last Screw-pile lighthouse was fully lifted off its legs and carried safely away by the ice floe and none of the keepers inside were hurt.

The final type of lighthouse built out on the water are the crib lighthouses. These lights were built on wood and concrete cribs, often in the Great Lakes region due to the composition of the lake beds. The first crib light was built in 1851 on Waugoshance Shoal and more lighthouses soon followed. The most striking of these crib lights is White Shoal, located near Waugoshance, which has the only red and white barber pole daymark in the United States. Both of these lighthouses are located in the Straits of Mackinac region, which has ~15 lighthouses, including several crib lights (Gray's Reef, Poe Reef, and Spectacle Reef, just to name a few).

Above: Waugoshance Shoal Lighthouse // White Shoal Lighthouse, both located in the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan, United States. Waugoshance Shoal sits in just 4 feet of water, making it very difficult to access for repairs and restoration. The lighthouse was used as bomb target practice during the second World War due to it's location inland and the fact that it had been decommissioned in the 1930s. It still retains it's iconic birdcage lantern room, one of only four that survives in the United States.

There is one more type of lighthouse to discuss, and those are skeletal tower lighthouses. Not every skeletal tower light is considered an official lighthouse for a variety of reasons, but there were a number of lights built in this style. They are very reminiscent of pile lighthouses with their open frams, though skeletal towers can be built on shore as well. They became popular due to the relative ease of construction in remote locations, and that they could be deconstructed and reconstructed if need be. One of the most famous lighthouses built in this manner is Whitefish Point, where the modern Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is located and where you can still go and see the bell of the infamous Edmund Fitzgerald, which was the last major wreck on the lakes occurring in 1975.

Above: Two different angles of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse. It contains a central staircase in a white column. This lighthouse was not operational during that November gale in 1975 when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, as the captain noted how inconvenient it was that the light was out in one of his final transmissions. Thankfully there has not been a major shipwreck since then, though shipping culture on the Great Lakes is a whole other post in and of itself.

These are just a few examples of lighthouses, and these structures decorate the coasts of our oceans and several lakes in the world to help ships navigate the rough waters and stay safer on their journeys. I hope you learned something about lighthouses here and can appreciate the effort put into creating them just a little bit more! If you'd like to learn more about American Lighthouses, I'd recommend reading Brilliant Beacons by Eric Jay Dolin, which is where I got a lot of this information, and it includes a lot of anecdotes about lighthouses and their keepers throughout the country.

Above: Cape Agulhas Lighthouse, South Africa // Yokohama Breakwater Light, Japan. Just showing some more examples of lighthouses outside of the United States. Can you identify what types of lighthouses these are?

[oldnorthcarolina]

Razor back Hog, Cape Hatteras Beach, ca. 1905. Herbert Hutchinson Brimley Photograph Collection. State Archives of North Carolina.

[wandering-jana]

Bodie Island Lighthouse.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore, North Carolina.

April 2022

[dailylighthouse]

Keep putting it off

Here's the latest of my lighthouse adventures!

Featuring Bodie Island Lighthouse, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum and The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse

Bodie Island was definitely a highlight this time! We climbed it at night during a full moon and went back for more pictures another night.

[hatterasislandv]

10 Bedroom Vacation Rentals

Discover luxurious 10 bedroom vacation rentals in the Outer Banks at Hatteras Island Vacation Rentals. Enjoy expansive oceanfront views and ample space for large groups or families. Book your perfect 10 bedroom vacation house rental in OBX for a memorable beach getaway!

[holycatsandrabbits]

On this day in 1921, the ghost ship Carroll A. Deering was found aground on the Diamond Shoals with its sails still set.

The ship had clearly been abandoned; the life boats and navigational aids were missing. The ship was damaged, but it is not known if that occurred before its abandonment or not. It seemed the crew had left in a hurry, as food preparations were underway. But no trace of the crew has ever been found.

Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post on the Deering for more on the story and some ghost ship writing prompts, such as:

Creepy cottagecore.The Deering was deemed a hazard to shipping and was dynamited in March, 1921. When wreckage washed ashore, locals used the boards to build houses on Hatteras Island. Perhaps using the wood from a ghost ship to build houses might lead to some sort of horror story plot?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

[rprjr]

Left, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse under extensive restoration. 4/2025

Right, Bodie Island Lighthouse. 4/2025.