Ghost Ship Month
Join Us at the Library in February for “Ghost Ship Month”
The Chapel Hill Public Library Foundation is sponsoring a month-long “One Community, One Book” event in February that will appeal to kids of all ages, from preschoolers to the “kids” still inside us at the age of 80!
The selected book is local author Bland Simpson’s Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. Ghost Ship is a nonfiction novel about the real-life mystery surrounding the disappearance of the crew of the Carroll A. Deering when it ran aground on a sandbar off Cape Hatteras 1921. All the sails were set and the galley was prepared for a meal, yet there was not a soul onboard! To this day, no one knows what happened to the crew.
February’s “Ghost Ship Month” will be fun for everyone in the community. The Library Foundation is bringing to town a bunch of interesting speakers, museum artifacts, old photos, and documentary films to inform, entertain, and intrigue our community. Click here for a calendar of events.
Some of these speakers will be making presentations not only at the Library but also in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools! For example, the Director of the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station will do a ship rescue demonstration – using turn-of-the-century lifesaving techniques and equipment – for fourth-graders at Scroggs Elementary School.
If you cannot wait until February to learn more about Ghost Ship, visit the Chapel Hill Public Library and check out a copy of Bland Simpson’s Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. You might also want to check out these very cool web sites!
Confirmed Speakers for “Ghost Ship Month”
- Bland Simpson, author of Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals;
- Kevin Duffus
- President of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, North Carolina;
- Producer of several documentaries about the many shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast (often called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic”);
- Discoverer of the missing Fresnel lens, which was taken from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse during the Civil War and not found until 140 years later, when Duffus unlocked the key to its hideout;
- Author of Lost Light, about his search for the Fresnel lens; and
- Producer of a still-in-the-works documentary about Blackbeard;
- Richard Lawrence, of NC's Underwater Archeology Unit, which has researched over 900 shipwrecks in NC and currently is supervising the recovery of Blackbeard's ship, "The Queen Anne's Revenge";
- Linda Molloy, Director of the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station. She will be joined in the presentation by her husband, who will be wearing the traditional uniform of a Keeper of a lifesaving station;
- Tim Noonan, who chronicled the recovery of the largest amount of gold ever brought up from the ocean floor (the S.S. Central America, otherwise know as “The Ship of Gold,” which sunk off the Carolina coasts in the late 1800s);
- Carole Boston Weatherford, author of Sink or Swim, a book about the all-African-American lifesaving station on the Outer Banks;
- Bill Hooks, author of The Legend of the White Doe (about Virginia Dare of the Roanoke Island’s “Lost Colony”); and
- Elizabeth McDavid Jones, author of Ghost Light on Graveyard Shoal (a children’s “History Mystery” about the daughter of a lifesaving station keeper in 1895 on the Outer Banks).
Cool Websites
- The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum
- www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com — This websites outlines the clues concerning the mystery of the Deering and proposes several possible theories.
- Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station
- www.chicamacomico.net
- Recovery of Blackbeard’s Ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge
- www.qaronline.org
- Recovery of the S.S. Central America’s cargo of gold, often known as “The Ship of Gold”
- www.shipofgold.com
