A friend, Lee W., sent me some information on Pea Island and the Life Saving Service on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. More travel log than an organized post, but hope you find it interesting, as I did. 

Oregon Inlet.  The surge under the old bridge and through the inlet was wicked!

They tore the old high bridge down and built a combination causeway and bridge on the sound side. See below.  The Station house that used to be on the spit of land to right. Now it has been restored at the Pea Island Wildlife Refuge.

Here is more about the Pea Island Life Saving Station & crew

In 1880 Captain Richard Etheridge, a former slave and Civil War veteran, was appointed as keeper of the Pea Island Lifesaving Station, 30 miles north of Cape Hatteras.

http://afscmecouncil8.org/richard-etheridge-and-the-pea-island-lifesavers/

Book: Fire on the Beach – Richard Etheridge “A Man among the Men”

Benjamin Bowser, Jr., who served with the United States Life-Saving Service at the Pea Island Life-Saving Station from 1884 until his death in 1900 honored in a ceremony

USCG photo. World War I Pea Island surfman

Pea Island LSS cook house reconstructed in Manteo

Map of the US LSS stations

Map by Mark Anderson Moore, courtesy North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh

Sumner I. Kimball, Superintendent of the US Life-Saving Service 1871-1915.

The Midgett and Etheridge families are still on the Outer Banks

 

USCGC Richard Ehteridge  WPC-1102