The North Carolina barrier islands, a 325-mile-long string of narrow sand islands that forms the coast of North Carolina, are one of the most beloved areas to live and visit in the United States. However, extensive barrier island segments and their associated wetlands are in jeopardy. In The Battle for North Carolina's Coast, four experts on coastal dynamics examine issues that threaten this national treasure. According to the authors, the North Carolina barrier islands are not permanent. Rather, they are highly mobile piles of sand that are impacted by sea-level rise and major storms and hurricanes. Our present development and management policies for these changing islands are in direct conflict with their natural dynamics. Revealing the urgency of the environmental and economic problems facing coastal North Carolina, this essential book offers a hopeful vision for the coast's future if we are willing to adapt to the barriers' ongoing and natural processes. This will require a radical change in our thinking about development and new approaches to the way we visit and use the coast. Ultimately, we cannot afford to lose these unique and valuable islands of opportunity. This book is an urgent call to protect our coastal resources and preserve our coastal economy.

Examines the impact the Civil War had on coastal North Carolina, describing the key battles that took place on the state's coast during the war.

Battle for North Carolina's Coast: Evolutionary History, Present Crisis, and Vision for the Future

The ports at Beaufort, Wilmington, New Bern and Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks (a chain of barrier islands that sweeps down the North Carolina coast from the Virginia Capes to Oregon Inlet), were early involved in the chaos that grew into the Civil War. Though smaller than their counterparts in South Carolina, the small river ports were useful for the import of war materiel and the export of cash producing crops, through their use of the inlets that led from sounds to sea. Written from official records, contemporary newspaper accounts, personal journals of the soldiers, and many unpublished manuscripts and memoirs, this is a full accounting of the Civil War along the North Carolina coast.

There was more fighting along the coast of North Carolina then in all other parts of the state combined. The reason for this was simple: there were important strategic objectives to be won along the coast, and they were within easy striking distance of the main federal naval base at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. North Carolina's well protected coastline offered a perfect refuge for privateers who sailed for and captured so many union merchant vessels in the early days of the war that maritime insurance companies in the North went into a panic, forcing the government to mount an expedition against Cape Hatteras, North Carolina's coastal counties, and the state's coastal railroad systems, were vital to the feeding and resupply of Robert E. Lee's Army. And even after the tightening blockade and powerful federal assaults closed off the ports of Charleston, New Orleans, and Mobile, the city of Wilmington continued to provide a haven for the blockade runners. The city eventually became the most strategically important location in the entire Confederacy, more so even than Richmond itself. The campaign's that resulted from this strategic situation are exceptionally interesting since they foreshadow the amphibious campaigns of WW II. There was so much fighting along the sounds and rivers of North Carolina that the U. S. Navy ordered crash courses in those Civil War campaigns when it became involved in riverine warfare during the Vietnam conflict. In these pages, the reader will encounter such men as William Cushing, often referred to as "Lincoln's commando," who led raid after raid deep into Confederate territory and whose bravery was matched by his good luck; and handsome, gallant young William Lamb, a journalist by trade who designed and commanded Fort Fisher, the largest earthwork fortress in the world, and defended it heroically against the mightiest armada the U.S. Navy had ever launched to that point in its history. The story of the coastal war is one of frustration, missed opportunities for both sides, lopsided victories and heartbreaking defeats, illuminated at every turn by flashes of extraordinary bravery and tactical brilliance. This book tells the story in more detail than it has ever been told before.