San Ciriaco and The Promise Land

By Mccabe Coolidge

A slow morning at the art gallery, so I awalk out onto the deck and check out the waterfront. A few tourists browsing in an antique store, a group of people waiting in front of the dive shop, some white wooden shrimpers docked in front of Otis’s Fish Market. I turn and glance west, kids on bikes, older folks swinging on the front porch, a clump of live oak trees providing a green canopy for one of Morehead City’s oldest neighborhoods, The Promise Land. An unusual name, filled with biblical imagery but its origins have little to do with Eden.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a hurricane started up south of Puerto Rico and slowly made its way north, devastating island after island. After it swept through Puerto Rico in early August, leaving over 3,100 people dead, it was given the name San Ciriaco. Today is June 1, 2004. The beginning of another hurricane season.

Several days later, on August 17, 1899, it rolled into the outer banks of North Carolina. First it came in from the northeast and brought a surge from Beaufort and Harkers Island sweeping over Diamond City and Shackleford Banks, a barrier island, then the wind shifted and it came in counterclockwise southwest from the Atlantic Ocean. The waters met and inundated the entire island except for a patch of high ground in the middle.

Sand and sea water covered gardens, contaminated drinking wells. Cows, pigs, goats, chickens, dogs, and cats were swept out to sea. Fishermen with the family names of Lewis, Willis, Salter, Styron, and Rose drowned. Cottages were dismantled, fishing boats sunk, nets, and fishing gear lost.

Last winter I walked through a grove of live oak on Shackleford Banks, near the location of Diamond City and found that patch of high ground, the cemetery. Familiar names, Guthrie, Lewis, Rose, Styron. No tombstones dated after 1898.

I decide to put out my sign, “Out to lunch, be back at 1,” and stroll west on Evans Street toward the Promise Land. I begin to imagine what the fall of 1899 and winter of 1900 might have looked like. Barges brought the remains of houses to the banks of Morehead City, to this quarter mile square of land bordering on Bogue Sound. Slowly, steadily, cottages were raised, using materials old and new. The city had given for free this land. They named it The Promise Land. Walking about I see cottages with signs on the porches, hand painted with pride. Guthrie, 1900, Salter 1901, Rose 1899. The lineage continues on the mainland.

Tom at the library showed me pictures of San Ciriaco hitting Beaufort. Working sailboats piled on Front Street, a hundred yards away from Taylor’s Creek. The stores along Front Street submerged in four feet of sea water, like Annapolis after the surging of Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

The cottages in Diamond City were built from ships sunk near Cape Lookout during hurricanes and winter storms. As I walk south toward Shepard’s Point, I pause to gaze at a cottage and trying to imagine where the planks, ribs, stern from an old sharpie fishing vessel might be. Can’t see it, but know it’s there, hidden somewhere in the foundation and structure. The owners will probably know, many of whom are descendents of those bankers.

Last Friday, Darlene Lewis came into the gallery during her lunch hour, “Hear you have a watercolor of Miss Darlene.” We walk over to a painting, a white wooden shrimp boat with Miss Darlene, Salter Path, written on her stern. Darlene gazes at it. “She was named for me, built by my father, now she’s fished by my husband. We’ve got her docked out in Salter Path.” Darlene has her First Citizens Bank nametag on but she’s a “banker.” Salter Path is on Emerald Isle, another barrier island, some fifteen miles west of Shackleford Banks. Those who didn’t want to live on the mainland sailed west and started again.

“Well, I better get back to work,” Darlene glances at her watch.

“You live over on Salter Path?”

“You bet. My parents, my husband’s parents, we’ve been there a good long time.” Darlene pauses, stares out at Bogue Sound and Sugarloaf Island. “I come over the bridge every morning and turn around and return after work each night.”

We stare at the water, a wind scuffling up from the southwest. Out here there is water everywhere, interspersed with islands and peninsulas like Morehead. Even bridges are a new thing, out to Harkers and beyond, bridges weren’t built until the 1930s. Most everything is saved, not much is lost, especially memory. Paul, who lives out on Harkers Island, told me his neighbors said that San Ciriaco was the worst storm in 75 years. Over a hundred years ago, like yesterday. The last hurricane, Isabel, cut a new inlet next to Hattaras Island. Families were cut from water and electricity, the children took a ferry to school but nobody moved away. Oh, maybe to another island or to spit of land sticking out, like Beaufort or Morehead but not away from the sea, the storm, the surge, the call of the wind, sail, shrimp, fish. A life filled with the promise of living off the land and sea.

I stroll back to the gallery, proud of these people, sticking to a life so different from mine. All night fishing for shrimp, waist deep in water, digging clams and oysters, pulling nets in filled with mullet and under a shady live oak, building another wooden shrimper. The arrival of a hurricane just ups the determination to stay, living another year on the edge.