N.C. coastal region once supported 4 ports of entry

For most of the colonial period, there were essentially four working ports of entry to serve maritime traffic within the territory that became North Carolina.

Operating under the authority of the Lords Proprietors, Gov. Charles Eden decreed Port Bath as the first official port in 1716. 

Located on Bath Creek, a tributary of the Pamlico River, in present-day Beaufort County, Bath is North Carolina’s oldest town, having formed in 1705. 

Initially, Port Bath served as a primary gateway for ships navigating through the Ocracoke Inlet.

Port Roanoke was located at Edenton in Chowan County near the western end of Albemarle Sound, near the confluence of the Roanoke and Chowan rivers. 

Interestingly, the settlement was originally known as “the Towne on Queen Anne’s Creek,” but was renamed as Edenton in 1722 as a tribute to Gov. Eden shortly after his death.

 

Port Beaufort in Carteret County was strategically located near Cape Lookout with ocean access through present-day Beaufort Inlet.

 

The fourth North Carolina port was established in 1726 and located on the lower Cape Fear River in Brunswick Town. In short order, Brunswick Town became the busiest of the four North Carolina ports.

 

When Wilmington was incorporated in 1739, the port facilities and customs collection office were moved there, about 10 miles upriver from Brunswick Town.

 

In the spring of 1776, a British raiding party burned Brunswick Town to the ground during the American Revolutionary War. The town was never rebuilt.

Combined, these four ports “were essential elements in the development of commerce in North Carolina,” wrote historians John Hairr and the late David Stick, coauthors of a 2006 essay titled “Ports and Harbors” published by NCPedia.

Although Beaufort was a vibrant community with maritime significance, former Gov. John Motley Morehead envisioned the establishment of a new port, one built from the ground up for industrial-scale shipping.

 In the 1850s, he selected Shepard’s Point on the Carteret County mainland as the preferred location, because it offered a better, deeper and wider channel to accommodate large ships.

A major factor was the construction of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad from Goldsboro to the coast, an extension of the North Carolina Railroad from Charlotte. 

It was here, at the end of the rail line, where a “bustling commerce center specifically designed for shipping” would blossom, Morehead proclaimed.

 Morehead and others purchased 600 acres and formed the Shepard Point Land Company. A town was laid out, and lots were sold in 1857, specifically to coincide with the arrival of the railroad in 1858. The settlement was chartered in 1861 and named Morehead City, in honor of John Motley Morehead.

Author Herbert W. Stanford III said the Civil War years, followed by the hurricane of 1879, “hampered development of the Morehead City port.” 

It was now obvious, Stanford said, that Morehead City was not going to meet the expectations of former Gov. Morehead and grow into the “New York City of the South.”

Stanford said the port facilities at Morehead City “fell into disrepair and disuse by the end of the 19th century. The port was closed to shipping in 1904.”

However, to Morehead City’s benefit, a movement for state-owned ports began to gain momentum in the state legislature during the 1920s, Stanford wrote.

Gov. Cameron A. Morrison established the State Ship and Water Transportation Commission (SSWTC) in 1923. Its purpose was to “study the possibility of establishing docks, wharves, terminals and other facilities to promote waterborne commerce.”

 

The SSWTC affirmed that localities lacked the resources to build the infrastructure, concluding that any initiative had to be state-driven and state-funded.