Strangers Stranded on Shackleford Island

We reached Harkers Island via the new curved bridge. I’ve never experienced driving on a curved bridge before and I was struggling to understand why it was built this way; was it the terrain, was it politics, finance, or all of them?

The glossy brochure told us that Harkers Island is three miles long, one mile wide, and located at the southern end of the Outer Banks with amazing views of the furious Atlantic Ocean. The island is covered with maritime forests, salt marshes, and sandy shores. I counted at least three brick churches, a mom-and-pop grill, and several modest homes built decades ago but maintained and painted by their owners to prevent them from being decayed and eaten away by the oceanic salty spray.

Harkers Island is surrounded by the Core Sound in the west and Back Sound in the east. This thin stretch of land is now connected to the mainland by the Harkers Island Bridge, completed a year ahead of schedule in December 2023, and made of carbon-fiber reinforced steel which makes it more resistant to oceanic environments.

Previously inhabited by indigenous people, European settlers arrived on Harkers Island in the 18^th century, and they built a thriving fishing and boat-building industry. During the Civil War, Harkers was even a base for Confederate troops.

A visitor center at the end of the Harkers Island Road started our visit to the Cape Lookout National Seashore. On a cloudy and drizzly day, we were the only passengers on the 25-minute ferry to Shackleford Island and Cape Lookout Island.

Shackelford Island is certainly wild and undeveloped, and visitors must prepare everything they need – water, bug repellant, snacks, trash bags to bring refuse back, and everything else they may need to survive.

There are restrooms on Cape Lookout, but nothing on Shackleford Island except a herd of wild horses and a maritime forest and marshes. May through October, we were warned, there are voracious biting insects, mosquitoes, sand gnats, chiggers, and ticks.

Cape Lookout National Seashore with the Lighthouse

Constant rip currents make swimming a dangerous activity and boating is a challenge as the sound is shallow and it is possible to run aground as we have witnessed a beached boat on Cape Lookout. The husband, wife, and kid were waiting for high tide to float their boat again out to sea.

The tiny ferry which took us to Shackleford and Cape Lookout

After we left the main visitor center located on the eastern end of Harkers Island, we boarded the ferry. As we approached Shackleford Island, we saw two human figures waiting on the beach and they looked absolutely stranded and lost. Through the haze and drizzling rain, they looked marooned; the tune of Gilligan’s Island was dancing in my head. The man was clutching an expensive camera around his neck, and she had a smaller camera. 

Once aboard, the man explained meekly that they had hiked for 45 minutes across the island in search of wild horses, and they found four and they took pictures. I am not sure I would have been so brave to walk so far on an uninhabited island for a few pictures on a very cloudy and misty day.

Photo: Tripadvisor wild horses on Shackleford Island

Shackleford Banks is home to more than 100 wild horses whose behavior is highly unpredictable. They live in marshes on the island, and they have survived alone for more than 400 years. In recent times, they are monitored by the National Park Service which has partnered with the Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc.

Just like the herd on Corolla Island in the north, if a horse is treated by a vet for serious injuries when the stallions fight over a harem, they cannot be returned to the herd, they are domesticated and moved to a special ranch which cares for them for the rest of their lives.

Shackleford Banks was once attached to Cape Lookout. A 1780 map shows it connected to Cape Lookout and Portsmouth, but hurricanes and other storms separated it from Cape Lookout by Barden Inlet.

Shackleford is 9-miles long and less than a mile wide. The island has the largest maritime forest, long stretches of saltmarsh, and beautiful white sandy beaches on the southwest shore.

Historical Portsmouth Village was planned and laid out in 1753. According to the Archives, for more than a hundred years, it was the busiest seaport in North Carolina. Storms, hurricanes, and the endless motion of the sea changed the landscape over time and in 1846 a hurricane opened a new, deeper inlet at Hatteras and shipping routes shifted north.

The last male resident of Portsmouth was Henry Pigott who died on Ocracoke in the care of friends. Afterwards, the last two elderly residents, Marion Babb, and Elma Dixon, relocated to the mainland shortly thereafter in 1971. They had been residents of Portsmouth Village for decades.

The village is now empty and the wind howls through its loneliness devoid of the laughter of children and the presence of humans, who had lovingly tended to its existence.

Returning from Shackleford Island and Cape Lookout, the horizon looks darker, bleaker, and more ominous; the choppy waves have picked up. We are tired and watch the angry ocean in silence and awe. Despite rain jackets, we are soaked by the drizzly rain and the splashing of the waves cresting over the side of the ferry but are happy to have experienced for a moment in time such constantly shifting beauty.

The couple who was temporarily lost on Shackleford, are clutching their cameras with the precious pictures of the four wild horses they went to so much trouble to find. It was not a Gilligan’s Island adventure, but they were lost for sure.