Carolina coast shipwreck stories get better with age

Ocracoke, N.C., storytellers love to share the tale of the Black Squall, a ship that was carrying “precious cargo” – an entire circus – when it ran aground during a vicious storm in Ocracoke Inlet on April 8, 1861.

Philip Howard (shown below) of Ocracoke was a young boy when he heard the tale told by storyteller Arcadia (Kade) Williams in the 1950s.

 

The Black Squall was traveling from Havana, Cuba, to Philadelphia, Pa., laden with sugar…and also carrying Nixon’s Royal Circus & Menagerie of Living Animals.

All crew members and circus performers reportedly drowned in the shipwreck, including William Nixon, the adopted son of James Munro Nixon, owner of the circus.

Miraculously, some of the animals survived and made it to shore, including lions, tigers, bears, a giraffe and a hippopotamus as well as “two large, beautiful Arabian prancing horses bedecked with ribbons,” Kade said. “Their names were Nero and Zero.”

 

“They roamed about the island for years,” she commented. “The mare, Zero, was very timid and shy. But that all-fired Nero, the sassy devil, he would walk right into the house, go up to the fireplace and stick his nose in the cook pot.”

“Many’s the time I’ve run him out of the house with a cane,” Kade said. “But the imp would stand out in the yard and do his circus tricks while the mare looked on.”

The villagers gathered up the circus performers’ costumes, silks and satins by the hundreds. “And tents,” Kade remarked, “I’ll bet there was a thousand. The men folks made sails for their boats. One big tent got put up, and they held a camp meeting under it.”

 

“A preacher come and preached a sermon,” she said. “He started from Genesis on ebb tide and went to Revelations, then he turned around on flood tide and preached back to Genesis again.”

Did it really happen?

The late Judi Heit, a real estate agent in Oriental, N.C., enjoyed researching shipwrecks off the North Carolina coast. She wrote that the Black Squall was a two-masted brigantine sailing vessel “built in 1856 by Wilder Brothers.”

There was a Wilder family that operated a shipyard in Washington, N.C., during this period, and Richard Wilder owned a schooner. He imported molasses from the West Indies for distribution throughout eastern North Carolina.

An original play, “The Tale of the Black Squall,” written by Desirée Christa Ricker of Ocracoke, has been performed at the annual “Ocrafolk Festival” by Ocracoke Alive, a nonprofit arts organization.

 

Ricker is a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. She grew up in Hendersonville in Henderson County, south of Asheville. She spent 13 years studying drama in a youth program offered by Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theatre of North Carolina, located near Hendersonville.

 

Ricker went on to graduate from Appalachian State University in Boone, earning multiple bachelor’s degrees in dance studies, philosophy and religious studies, while minoring in theater arts.

She spent two years in New York City, honing her skills as a songwriter and lyricist, before deciding in 2012 to put down roots in Ocracoke. She viewed the island as the perfect location to pursue varied interests as a professional actor, dancer, singer, songwriter, musician, director, playwright and choreographer.

 

Give her credit. Desirée Christa Ricker is a “dingbatter” who is making every effort to blend in with the natives. (“Dingbatter” is a term to describe people who “visit coastal North Carolina…and then decide to move in.”)

Ricker will never be a true “O’cocker.” That title is reserved solely for those born and bred on Ocracoke.