Hatteras Island

Hatteras has long been known as a world-class sport fishing and windsurfing spot. Its famed lighthouse, historic lifesaving stations, pristine beaches, and six small towns are magnets for tourists. But the Hatteras soul is also built on an extraordinary history: early Native Americans who glimpsed Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci in the 16th century, raids by Blackbeard and other cutthroat pirates, hurricanes that ripped apart the island, so many shipwrecks that its treacherous coastline earned the sobriquet "Graveyard of the Atlantic," Civil War battles, and even a coastal war with German U-boats. It was here that radio pioneer Reginald Fessenden in 1902 transmitted the first musical notes received by signal, that a heroic lifesaving crew saved 42 British seamen whose tanker was destroyed by a German submarine in 1918, and that General Billy Mitchell's 1923 demonstration of the effectiveness of air power helped lead the establishment of the U.S. Air Force. Hatteras Island also includes the stories of fishermen, tourists, surfers, beachgoers, historians, and Hatteras families who have lived here for generations and others who hold dear this island constantly being redefined by wind and wave.