CruisingNorth AmericaUSA

The first flight and the first English settlement in one week

By July 18, 2010 No Comments

We started the week off by getting a ferry across the Ocracoke Inlet to Portsmouth, which is a ghost town ran by the National Park Service.  The town was established in 1753 and had a population of 685 in 1860.  From that point on the town decreased in size until the last two ladies moved to the main land in the mid 1970’s.  We got to see the general store, school, houses, church, and a life saving station (before the US Coast Guard).  This was a different ghost town in that the building are in great shape and you could image people still living here.  They all just walked away.

On Tuesday we had a great sail (15-25 knots on the stern) to Roanoke Island (site of the first English colony which disappeared).  From there we all chipped in and rented a car to drive to Hatteras Lighthouse (worth the $7 to go up), the Wright Brother’s Kitty Hawk site (this was very cool in a historical way), the earthen Fort Raleigh (very small and simple), Festival Park (a recreation of the ship that brought the settlers over, the settlement, and an Indian village), and the highlight for me was seeing the legendary play “The Lost Colony” (it started in 1937 and Andy Griffith got his start here).

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