America's Wetland: An Environmental and Cultural History of Tidewater Virginia and North Carolina

10. Intracoastal Waterways: War Canals

146 10 Intracoastal Waterways War Canals The Outer Banks is called the ‘‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’’ for good reason. At no other point along either coast of America has shipping been so hazardous literally for centuries, from shoals, storms, pirates, and other hostile attack. Little-known events during World War I reexposed this vulnerability in a modern world. Few people are aware, for example, that between 5 June and 17 August 1918 a total of ten ships were sunk by German submarines off the Outer Banks.∞ The need for a more secure inland waterway system was conceived in the nineteenth century, and work toward such an ambitious project had been advancing slowly for decades. As early as 1880 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers presented plans to the U.S. Congress for an intracoastal waterway from Norfolk through the Dismal Swamp to the Albemarle Sound and then south.≤ In 1916, prompted by the probable entry of the United States into the European war, the Washington Post carried an article entitled ‘‘A War Coast Canal from Boston to Mexico’’: One of the most important plans for preparedness in event of war now under consideration by the United States government is the creation, or rather the linking together, of a strategic waterway extending all the way from Boston to Texas just inside our coast line. The War and Navy departments are both most anxious to see the project carried out. To complete this coast canal, already begun, would not take more than five years. All Intracoastal Waterways W 147 the plans are made: It only remains for Congress to provide the money. Its cost will be around $200,000,000. Already the future of the Albemarle peninsula was being determined, as the article continued: From the head of Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk is clear sailing. For some years past the army engineers have been opening the water passage from Norfolk to Beaufort, by digging short canals to connect the rivers and sounds along the route. . . . [Even in times of peace shipping] would thus avoid the perilous trip around Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout, the dangers of which, with incidental wrecks, add much to freight rates.’’≥ The earliest inland waterway link in the Albemarle-Pamlico region was completed in 1911. Known at the time as the Boston-Beaufort Inland Waterway Canal, it linked the Neuse River (Adams Creek) with Newport River (Core Creek). World War I interrupted further plans, but immediately after the war the federal government refocused on the need for a safe passage between Norfolk and Beaufort, bypassing the Outer Banks. As originally conceived, the proposed waterway route from Norfolk was via the Dismal Swamp Canal to Albemarle Sound to Alligator River to Lake Mattamuskeet to Rose Bay (a local route first proposed in 1833). Instead, the Corps of Engineers decided on a different route, via the (widened) Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal to Albemarle Sound to Alligator River. From there they proposed an ambitious two-hundred-footwide canal to the headwaters of the Pungo River, thereby cutting an eighteen-mile swathe through the pristine swampland of the Albemarle peninsula. After the war, in 1919, Congress appropriated $500,000 to cut the proposed Alligator-Pungo canal. Constructing the canal through miles of swamp, however, was technically and legally challenging for the Corps of Engineers. At the outset draftsmen had to determine its exact routing, and then lawyers had to acquire land on behalf of the federal government , typically through unwelcome purchases invoking eminent domain at one dollar per acre. Surveyors laboriously marked the rights of way so that woodsmen could clear a path through ancient swamps. These timeconsuming preparatory steps had to be well advanced before digging could start.∂ 148 W America’s Wetland Steam dredge boat at official opening of the Intracoastal Waterway linking Neuse River (Adams Creek) to Newport River (Core Creek) on 6 January 1911. (Frank C. Salisbury Collection [#99], Special Collections Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC) Alligator-Pungo Canal: Last Link of the Nation’s Intracoastal Waterway Dredging commenced late in 1922 at Winn’s Bay on the Alligator River. For this purpose the Corps of Engineers brought the survey boat Pungo and the coal-fired dredge Currituck from Norfolk. These vessels moored for long periods on the main river at Gum Neck, the largest community on the lower Alligator River. As administrative base for such a long-term...