Pamlico Sound is one of the most storied bodies of water among North Carolina's Outer Banks. Early colonists to Roanoke Island used it for protection. Blackbeard the pirate was killed there in 1718, and General Washington relied on it for transportation in the Revolutionary War. It wasn't a surprise, then, that the Confederate bastion of Fort Ocracoke was built in those same waters. Said to be capable of mounting fifty guns, the fort was part of the coastal defense system of the state. After Union victories on nearby Hatteras Island, the fort was destroyed and its whereabouts lost for generations. Author Robert K. Smith led an archaeological mission to find the once lost fort and presents the harrowing story of its past and discovery for the first time.
Robert K. Smith has been a diver for more than thirty years and was an archaeological technician on the Blackbeard Shipwreck Project. In 1996, Robert founded SIDCO, a nonprofit archaeological dive team, dedicated to the study of historic shipwreck and submerged sites in North Carolina water for the express purpose of education and display. He has since lead ten shipwreck investigations throughout the state.