About Wilmington, N.C.'s Eagles Island-- Part 1: Rice Plantations

I came across an article in the March 28, 2021, Wilmington Port City Daily (NC) "Conservationists aim to turn Eagles Island  into 'Central Park' for the region" by Mark Darrough."

I got to wondering exactly where it was and what role it might have played in the Civil War?  Turns out that I have been there on several occasions thanks to this little old World War II battleship located there.

From the Wilmington (NC) Star-News  "My Reporter:  What is Eagles Island?" by Ben Steelman.

It is right across from downtown Wilmington and is  a group of closely spaced  swampy islands roughly  2 miles wide and 7 miles long between the Cape Fear River and the Brunswick River.  It has had several names, but its present one comes from brothers Joseph and Richard Eagles who settled in the area in 1725 with land grants.  (I would have guessed it came from the eagle birds who might have been there.)

Parts of Eagles Island were used for rice  planting and there were even two rice plantations there as late as 1900.

By the 1800s, Eagles Island  seems to have functioned  as an industrial district for Wilmington with saw mills, turpentine distilleries and similar operations.  Various ferries operated between Wilmington and the island from the 1760s until the completion of the completion of the Twin Bridges in 1929. 

--Old B-Runner

150 Years Ago-- April 21st, 1864: Capture of USS Petrel

APRIL 21ST, 1864: Union ships attack Yazoo City and came under fire. The USS Petrel was disabled and captured. Confederate Gen. Wirt Adams wrote: I removed her fine armament of eight 24-pounder guns and the most valuable stores and had her burned to the water's edge.

**  Boat crews from the USS Ethan Allan landed near Murrell's Inlet, SC and destroyed a large salt work. The Union sailors mixed the 2,000 bushels of salt into the sand and then burned the four salt works and 30 other buildings.

**  Boats from USS Cimarron destroyed a rice mill and 5,000 bushels of rice stored at Winyah Bay, SC.

**  Boat expedition from the USS Sagamore took over 100 bales of cotton and destroyed an additional 300 near Clay Landing, on the Suwannee River, Florida.

--Old B-Runner

Letter From Wilmington 18 October 1863-- Part 3

"I saw along the west bank of the river the first rice plantations I have yet come across. They are dismal looking places on which the owners dare not spend a single night for about six months in the year. Rice in the straw is issued down here as forage for horses, and most excellent forage it is.

The blockade-running still goes on, and there is not a night that does not witness an arrival or departure. A day or two ago the Douro was pursued beached and burned by the Blockaders, but when one meets a like fate 20 come through scat free.

I was told that the aggregate of sales at the late sale of blockade cargoes amounted to about 5 millions of dollars, and the prices brought were beyond anything ever heard of before.

--Old B-Runner