About 40 years ago I had the very rare opportunity to interview 93-year-old Vernon Gaskill at his home in Wanchese. He was then the last living principal lighthouse keeper in North Carolina, having served at Bodie Island Lighthouse between 1920 and 1940. He told me many stories, many of which I’ve shared in my books. […]
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One day, when I was visiting my friend and mentor, the great Outer Banks historian David Stick, at his Kitty Hawk home, we discussed the durability of historical statements. In the course of our discussion, he made a comment for which I had no reply: “You know, Kevin, in the past 50 years, not once […]
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In 1759, a man named William Howard purchased North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island for the sum of 105 pounds sterling. Through genealogical records and oral histories, he is generally agreed to have been the wellspring of the many streams of Ocracoke’s esteemed Howard family. What has been less certain is whether the island owner was the […]
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The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Henry-Lepaute first-order Fresnel lens is the most historic lighthouse illuminating apparatus in America. It is the oldest extant lens of its size and design in the nation. It is also the most-traveled, most publicly viewed, and most-abused lighthouse artifact in the nation. Yet the lens possesses an unparalleled potential to educate […]
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Too excited to sleep, we set out in the middle of the night. Our heavy, steel-frame, 10-speed bikes were overloaded—tents, sleeping bags, and too many clothes. But despite the weight, the first few miles seemed effortless. Soon, the city’s streetlights receded and, without headlights, we rode down the dusky center line of the rural road […]
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Daniel, Knight, Martin, Morgan, Beard, Howard, Caesar, Salter, and Robins are among the names of men whose lives swirled around one of colonial America’s most infamous figures, yet a man whose identity, remarkably, remains unproven to this day. Is it possible that the solution to one of our greatest mysteries has been hiding in plain […]
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Coastal Review Online is featuring the research, findings and commentary of author Kevin Duffus. Crafted in France, admired by millions at a New York world’s fair, stolen from its lighthouse, buried during the Civil War, recaptured, returned and repaired at Paris, stolen again, and exhibited again: America’s most historic, most traveled, yet most disrespected lighthouse […]
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In 1942, more than 65 German U-boats waged a withering campaign along the nation’s eastern seaboard against Allied merchant vessels and their military defenders to disrupt or entirely sever transatlantic supply lines fueling the war effort in Europe. In just half a year, 397 ships were sunk. Nearly 5,000 people, including many civilians, were burned […]
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One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over…. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and an example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. […]
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Coastal Review Online is featuring the research, findings and commentary of author Kevin Duffus. Last of three parts “Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.” Who knows how many of General Ambrose Burnside’s more than 10,000 officers, soldiers and sailors could recite the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic 1798 poem, “The Rime of […]
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