The
Story of Blackbeard’s Cup
By Charles Harry Whedbee
They say that you should never tell a story in the first person. They say that it robs the story of some of its interest and that the teller limits himself unnecessarily. Well, they apparently
never heard of the popularity of true confessions magazines and the appeal of the “I was there” approach. Anyway, there are some stories that can’t be told in any other way.
The time was the very early nineteen-thirties, right in the middle of the late unlamented Great Depression. Nag’s Head and the remainder of the Outer Banks were still the “best kept secret”
in North Carolina. There were miles and miles of undeveloped beaches on both the sound and the ocean sides of the famous barrier reef, and the whole area was as close to being a modern-day Garden of Eden as it could be. I was, at the time, a student in the
law school at the University of North Carolina and already a veteran of early twenty summers of roaming and loving the Outer Banks.
Also in the same law school at the same time was a young man who shall be known here only as Jack to preserve his anonymity. He, also, was a habitué of this golden strand since childhood
and was a member of the finest families in eastern North Carolina. At that time Jack was even more conversant with the legends of the region than I, particularly the regions around Ocracoke and Portsmouth Island. A lifelong friendship had grown between us,
and we young blades spent countless happy and carefree days exploring these sands and drinking to the full mystery and wonder of the area.
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