"Once by Sea and Once by Land" a Beaufort Travel Page by grandmaR

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Beaufort chart

For hundreds of years, Beaufort could only be reached by boat.

I have only been to Beaufort NC once by water, and we just anchored and didn't get off the boat. The story of that trip is in the travelogue narrative. The chart of the anchorage is shown because I took no photos.

When we were traveling by boat since then, we've always bypassed it because we heard it was very expensive.

In 2005, when we were traveling south for the winter, we made a stop in Beaufort.

(Roads in early Beaufort were made of oyster shells and as I know from experience oyster shells really cut up your tires. So it is good that the roads are now paved just like most US and even NC roads.)

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Looking out over the Creek

Colonial History of Beaufort

The Beaufort website says:

· Farnifold Green was the first to obtain the patent for the land now known as Beaufort

· Beaufort was named after Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort , an English Lord

· Street names have been the same since 1713.
* Turner St. - Robert Turner, an earlier proprietor of Beaufort
* Moore St. - Col. James Moore who was responsible for bringing an end to the Tuscarora War.
* Pollock St. - Thomas Pollock, acting governor of the colony of NC from 1712-1714
* Queen and Ann St. - Named after Queen Ann the reigning monarch at the time.
* Orange St. - William III of Orange who had reigned in England before Ann.
* Craven St. - William Lord Craven, another English Lord

· Early names for Beaufort were “Hungry Town”, “Fish Town” and the Corree Indian name of “Cwariok”

· Mail from Raleigh took 2-3 weeks to arrive, while mail to NYC or Boston would take no more than 3 days, making communication with major trade ports much better than with the capitol of the state.

· In 1770, a cedar post was erected at the corner of Front St. and Pollock St. to discern between “Old Town” and “New Town”

· Spanish pirates attacked and pillaged the town twice during the summer in 1747, until driven off by local farmers and the militia. One of the Spanish pirate, during the invasion of 1747, was cornered and caught in the attic of The Hammock House, where he was killed on the spot. A list of the men who served at this time can be seen on display at Fort Macon

· The attacks by the Spanish in 1747 prompted the construction of Fort Dobbs in 1755 (Named after NC Governor Arthur Dobbs) on Bogue Island, followed by Fort Hampton, two miles southwest of Beaufort.

· For many years, “The Pirate Invasion” was re-enacted every year on the last Saturday in June on the Beaufort Waterfront.