I first saw it in the night. A large shape laying in the trough of the waves of the retreating tide. It was windy, and the sea was running high. The troughs of the waves were deep. The large, black shape lay in the water about 50 yards off shore. It looked big.
I was star gazing off the deck of the rented cottage on Bogue Banks, North Carolina. I looked up at Orion and his nebula. I watched Canopus, the navigator, rise and then set on the southern horizon. The moon was full and reflected off the face of the running waves. I turned my glasses to the waves to see what might be out there. I was startled when I saw a black mass rise above the surface of the water and then submerge. It was truly big. I estimated it to be no less than eight-feet long above the water with what appeared to be a humped back. Was it a shark? But there was no fin. A dolphin perhaps? But again no fin. What creature could have this shape? But it did not seem to move. It lay in the water and let the waves pass over it seeming to rise in the trough and to disappear as the crest of the wave passed over it. My mind imagined all sort of creatures, mythological as well as real. But what would venture into the surf and lay there?
The next morning when the tide was high I went out to the beach to see if anything with fins or limbs had washed up in the night. There was nothing there. And there was nothing to be seen in the surf. The next low tide was in the early afternoon. We were having cousins over for lunch, and I planned to ask them what they might have heard about something in the water, whether creature or fish tale, since they were familiar with the goings on in the area. I planned to broach the subject privately with one or two of my cousins rather than ask the entire group. Before I had a chance to ask, I heard someone say, “Look, there’s a turtle in the surf.” We all went out onto the deck to get a glimpse. We could see a dark shape about 100 yards away. It would appear in the troughs of the waves and then submerge as the wave crest passed. Was this the creature that I had seen in the night? Was this the mystery solved? But we all noticed that what first appeared to be motion was the wake of the passing water. This shape did not move.
Then the thought struck me. The question was not what it was. The question was where was I?
I did a little research and realized that the deck I stood on was on the location of the old Iron Steamer Pier at Bogue Banks. Just offshore was the grave of the Confederate ship SS Pevensey, an iron-clad blockade runner. She had been chased inshore by the Union vessel SS New Berne in June 1864. The Pevensey broke and sank there. Parts of her boilers and machinery remain on the bottom about 150 yards off-shore. The Iron Steamer Pier had been built over the site of the wreck since the sunken ship made a good artificial reef which attracted fish. The pier and adjacent motel lasted through storms and hurricanes for more than 50 years. The pier was finally broken by the surf and wind of a hurricane and then closed for good in 2004. Since then the land was developed, and beach cottages, similar to the many that line the Banks, were built on the site. The old sea wall from the pier forms the sea wall for the properties.
The edges of the submerged ruin were exposed by the falling tide and appeared as a dark shape that would rise and fall as the wave trough passed over its resting place.
So it was not a creature or a myth that lay and rose and fell in the troughs of the waves at low tide, but the ruins and ghosts of a broken ship.
Additional information on the wreck of the SS Pevensey and the old Iron Steamer Pier may be found at http://pineknollhistory.blogspot.com/2015/07/iron-steamer-pier-retrospective.html. That site is also the source of the picture of the ship.