Prologue

In the early-morning hours of October 5, 1881, William B. Daniel, the number three surfman from Life-Saving Station 17, on Pea Island, North Carolina, passed the cragged shapes of several old shipwrecks as he walked the south patrol. Just over the dunes from the station, broken seas ripped across the odd, cylindrical boilers of the sunken federal transport Oriental, a bearing Daniel took each night before setting off into darkness.

This stretch of coast was a graveyard for many ships and their crews. One-half mile away, the brig Star. Two hundred yards farther, an unknown wreck that had been ashore here as long as anyone could remember. Another one hundred fifty yards, the brig Parry. And a little farther still, where the rough surf washed over the beach, the schooner M&E Henderson. Surfman Daniel knew these and many more. Since his boyhood, he had heard the stories about this coast and its ghost fleet.

While most of the nation mourned President Garfield's death, surfmen along the Sand Banks of North Carolina were monitoring a rainy front with severe surf and fresh northeast ... read full excerpt from Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers ebook