Pirates, Ghosts, and Coastal Lore by Charles Harry Whedbee

Author:Charles Harry Whedbee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Folklore/Ghosts
ISBN: 9780895875006
Publisher: Blair
Published: 2004-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Currituck Jack

from Outer Banks Mysteries & Seaside Stories

The war of the American Revolution dragged on into the late seventeen hundreds. The British redcoats still occupied New York, and the British fleet still maintained a fairly effective naval blockade to the south, including the coast of North Carolina. Coastwise trade of the colonies was severely curtailed, and our fledgling navy was badly in need of the supplies and naval stores that eastern Carolina had in such abundance.

Up in Currituck County, near what is now known as Currituck Courthouse, there lived a middle-aged man, Caleb White, a devout Quaker and an American patriot, who was also a skilled shipbuilder by profession. He not only built beautiful and seaworthy vessels, but he sailed them as well, carrying vital cargoes up and down the coast in the face of the blockade. This was his contribution to the American war effort. Admittedly it was profitable, but it was also exciting, and it allowed him to satisfy the demands of his patriotism without violating his religious beliefs.

The business was not without its risks. In 1778 White had lost one of his finest ships when it was captured and confiscated by the British blockade, and that was painful both to his pocketbook and to his seaman’s pride. He always believed, did Caleb, that if he had been in command of that ship, she would never have been captured. But all that was in the past.

In 1779 Caleb White joined in a partnership with his cousin, Henry White, and they set out to build another blockade runner that would be capable of slipping through the British stranglehold, both because of her speed and because her low profile would make her very difficult to see. But they also had the pressing duty of designing and building the perfect shipping vessel, one that would be sufficiently broad of beam to accommodate a large cargo.

In the fall of 1779 she was completed and ready for the sea, and she was quite a thing of beauty to behold. Christened the Polly, she was a two-masted, schooner-type ship built with loving care out of juniper and cypress and heart-pine wood. She was broad of beam, but with relatively little freeboard, so that she would lie low in the water. Her jib boom extended a little farther than was usual in ships of her size, which gave room for the extra jib she would carry. This extra sail was calculated to give her greater speed and maneuverability and to counteract her broadness of beam.

Below deck, just abaft the mainmast, there was a comfortable cabin complete with bunks and a little cookstove. Two large hatches on the deck gave access to the cargo holds below, and over these were stout hatch covers whose outer surfaces were tarred canvas. Her hull, masts, and spars were painted black, and her sails were dyed dark brown. She would be hard to catch and even hard to see in poor light.

The two partners, Captain Caleb and cousin Henry White,

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