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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Coastal Review Online is featuring the research, findings and commentary of author Kevin Duffus. Second of three parts “Never has any expedition in the history of the world had to pass through a severer ordeal; everything seemed to conspire against it —Nature with her storms, and human nature with her villainy.” So reported a correspondent […]
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Coastal Review Online is featuring the research, findings and commentary of author Kevin Duffus. First of three parts It was not Shakespeare but Pythagoras who likely first imagined the world as a stage “whereon many play their parts.” No more often am I reminded of this proverb than when I am traveling across the inlet […]
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Not unlike the time an earthquake rocked the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse “like a tree shaken by the wind,” there are subsurface rumblings on the Outer Banks that the National Park Service is considering taking back the historic but incomplete 1853 Fresnel lens from the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum and returning it to the top […]
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Dec. 16, 2020, marks the 150th anniversary of the first lighting of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Coastal Review Online is featuring the research, findings and commentary of author Kevin Duffus, including his findings pertaining to the lighthouse and its history. America’s celebrated historic structures may not be as ancient as many of the world’s classic architectural masterpieces, […]
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Coastal Review Online is featuring the research, findings and commentary of author Kevin Duffus. Second of two parts — read Part 1 Popular culture’s embrace of the adventure and romance of piracy has hidden the true reasons for Blackbeard’s demise at Ocracoke. After many years of research and study, my analysis is that Blackbeard was merely […]
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First of two parts The Battle at Ocracoke between the notorious pirate Blackbeard and Royal Navy Lt. Robert Maynard is among the best-known events of North Carolina maritime history. It may also be one of its most inaccurately interpreted stories. One modern historian wrote that the battle was “one of the most pivotal naval engagements […]
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