Folktales and ghostly legends are as much a part of American culture as the history of the founding of the nation. The thin lines between fact and fiction are easily blurred during the travels from mouth to mouth, and mouth to pen; all in the quest for making the tale even more remarkable than the previous story. In a place where there was a pirate jamborees, a lost colony, and countless shipwrecks, the truth can be much stranger and mysterious than an author’s imagination.
Off the coast of North Carolina, nestled between the Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean rests a small island chain. The names have changed several times over the years between the native inhabitants and the settlers who came later. Respectively the main islands of note as one moves down the coast are Bodie, Roanoke, Hatteras, and Ocracoke. The area is well-known for the shipwrecks that occurred in there, and is one of the two locations to be aptly nicknamed, “the Graveyard of the Atlantic.” The second graveyard is up north by Sable Island. The southern part of it runs along the entire North Carolina coast from Cape Fear up to Virginia, with the most treacherous part being the Diamond Shoals, an ever-changing series of sandbars off the coast of Hatteras Village on Hatteras Island.
Nearly a hundred of the vessels can be attributed to wars, most of that number came during the World War II. One of the more famous wrecks was that of the Monitor during the Civil War. Finally, there is the wreck that this article is about, the wreck and disappearance of the Patriot. Undoubtedly, there are many shipwrecks throughout the world that simply sunk, never to be seen again, and little thought has been given to them. After all, being a sailor was and still is a dangerous enterprise, and it is expected that sooner or later, there are people who went out on to the high seas never to return. For the Patriot, it is not so simple. There Wis a reasonable answer as to why the ship never arrived in port but that does not cover all the questions that have been raised over the years. Nor does it answer the fate of her ill-fated, respectable passenger Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of one of America’s most controversial figures.
Theodosia Burr was the only child of Aaron Burr, who is remembered by history as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. This has led some to theorize and believe that Hamilton laid a curse against the voyage. It is true that there is a certain amount of irony that accompanies the tale. As a young man, Hamilton was on board a ship that nearly sunk on the Diamond Shoals in 1773. From his own experience, and the horrific tales he heard from the coastal region, Hamilton urged Congress to build a lighthouse on the island to warn ships that they were approaching certain destruction. Authorization for the lighthouse did not come until 1794, with it being constructed in 1802, two years before Hamilton’s death. Where Hamilton almost lost his life, it is believed that near this area is where Burr’s daughter did lose hers.
Burr’s ship set sail from Georgetown, South Carolina on December 30, 1812. She was in failing health, partly due to the loss of her ten-year-old son to malaria and also because she had been suffering from ill health ever since the child was born. As a gift to cheer her spirits, her husband, South Carolina Governor Joseph Alston, booked her a voyage up the coast to visit her father in New York. Alston arranged for her to have passage on one of the reputed fastest ships available at the time; a retired privateer from the War of 1812, her guns had been dismantled and placed below deck and her name was painted over. The voyage, in total, should have lasted only five or six days, but weeks drove on and the ship never arrived in port. On the voyage north, a gale had set in off of Cape Hatteras; leading both her husband and father to believe that the ship was lost in the storm.
Reportedly, a British warship had stopped the schooner briefly to see the crew’s paperwork giving them the right to safe passage and nothing that the wife of the governor of South Carolina was on board. Though there has been no further evidence to show that the warships stationed off of the coast had stopped any vessels. The associate director of the Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies at Coastal Carolina University, Jim Michie, had followed the tale of Theodosia Burr’s final days intently, and he theorizes that the ship sank between 6 p.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. on Sunday. The dates being January 2nd and 3rd, 1813, during the gale. He recorded that considering the design of the ship, she would have been sailing close to the shoreline and would have been just north of Cape Hatteras when the storm struck. The town of Rodanthe is on the northern most part of Hatteras Island, beyond that is Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, Duck, and Currituck. There was a shipwreck that was discovered on the shores of Nags Head in January of 1813 that was assumed to be the ship in question, but there was no evidence to prove this point.
Other rumors have persisted over the years, telling of a fate worse than the forces of Mother Nature. Of the alternative ideas for the Patriot that have been discussed, one states that the ship was set upon by local shore pirates who made a habit of plundering ships and murdering their passengers and crew. This practice is how it is said that the town of Nag’s Head gained it’s name. Local coastal dwellers would tie a lantern around a “nag’s” or horse’s neck and walk it up and down the beach on foggy nights. Sailors who were unlucky enough to mistake the light as another ship would sail headlong into the bank. Then the “bankers” as these plundering land pirates were called, would rob the ships and kill the passengers. Such tales have been named as the cause for other disappearances up and down the coast.
Other stories say that ship had been captured by seafaring pirates, with Theodosia being linked with the names of several pirate captains, specifically John Howard Payne and Dominique You. Tales of piracy were not officially noted as a cause for the disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston and the Patriot until the 1830s. At this point in a time, a dying pirate in Mobile, Alabama made a confession that was recounted by one of the city’s merchants to the newspaper. Per the account, the pirates had overtaken the ship and had murdered everyone save for Theodosia. After drawing lots to decide who should be the one to kill her, since there was a great reluctance to do away with the gentle passenger, she was finally made to walk the plank. Other less popular confessions were also made in the years following the disappearances. The tales of pirates is supposedly backed by the possession of a painting believed to have been Theodosia. It is speculation as to whether or not the woman in the painting is the lost and only daughter of Aaron Burr. The painting hangs in the Lewis Walpole Library in Fairfield, Connecticut and is called the “Nag’s Head” portrait and is the main source of speculation against the theory of the ship sinking during a storm.
The portrait entered into the hands of Dr. William G. Pool from Elizabeth City, North Carolina in 1869. The doctor was on vacation in Nag’s Head when he was called to the bedside of Mrs. Mann. Inside her small, ragged cottage, he saw the portrait of a young woman in her mid-to-late twenties. She wore a white dress in the early 1800s style, her dark hair and eyes contrasting her fair, pale skin. So taken was the doctor by this painting that he questioned Mrs. Mann about it, though she was reluctant to speak on it at first, as the doctor continued to visit her and treat her illness, she came to trust him enough to tell the portrait’s story as far as he knew it.
According to Mrs. Mann, she was gifted the portrait by her first husband, Joseph Tillet, a local man who’s family’s descendants still call the island home. The portrait was on board one of the fated ships ransacked by the local “banker” pirates. Quite surprisingly in this case, when the ship with the portrait was boarded, the bankers found it deserted. There was also nothing on the ship to give any information about the ship, where she was headed, or who had been on board. All that Mrs. Mann could remember about the wreck was that it was found during a winter that the country was at war. Doctor Pool determined that this had to have been during the War of 1812.
Unfortunately for the doctor, there was no substantial way to confirm his speculations about the painting since all those who would have known Theodosia had passed away years ago. Even if the lovely young woman in the portrait is not Theodosia Burr Alston, then other questions are raised: who is the woman, why was her painting on board the ship, and why had that ship been deserted?
References:
Stick, David. Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina, 1952.
244, 255-257. Print.
Swenson, Charles. “History: Disappearance of Theodosia Burr a source of speculation for 200 years.” Coastal Observer. 2013.
22 Feb. 2015. https://www.coastalobserver.com/articles/2013/010313/4.html
Tharp, Mel. “Portrait of Nag’s Head.” Antique Trader. 24 Sept. 2008. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
https://www.antiquetrader.com/articles/feature-stories/portrait_of_nags_head.
Warnes, Kathy. “The Lady and the Patriot – The Fateful Voyage of Theodosia Burr Alston.” History Because Its Here. 22 Feb.
2015. https://historybecauseitshere.weebly.com/the-lady-and-the-patriot–the-fateful-voyage-of-theodosia-burr-alston.html
Image:
“Theodosia Burr.” Wikipedia. 22 Feb. 2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosia_Burr_Alston#mediaviewer/File:Theodosia_Burr_Alston_by_John_Vanderlyn,_1802.jpg