This cannon barrel, now displayed in the parade ground at Fort Macon State Park, saw duty during an 11-hour siege of the fort during the Civil War.

Built in the early 1800s at the tip of a barrier island on North Carolina’s coast, Fort Macon was intended to protect vulnerable Beaufort Harbor, the state’s only major deepwater port, from foreign threats.

Spanish ships had sailed through Beaufort Inlet and plundered the town in 1747. The same thing happened in 1782, only this time it was the British behind the guns.

When the war of 1812 convinced a young America that it really needed a system of coastal defense, the fort went up to guard Beaufort and its inlet.

Ironically, no foreign invaders ever showed up, and the fort’s most memorable role came during the Civil War. Confederate troops seized the fort from the Union two days after the war began April 12, 1861, and held it for a year until overpowered by Union troops on April 26, 1862.

The elaborate precautions the fort’s builders had taken against sea attack came to naught. The 400 Confederates holed up in the brick and stone fort did fine against the gunboats and floating batteries, but they couldn’t stand up to the 560 cannon shots lobbed from land.

They also had no use for their encircling moat. There weren’t any soldiers scaling the walls, says Jody Merritt, superintendent of Fort Macon State Park. The attack was entirely from artillery.

Now, after periods as a post-Civil War federal prison, a garrisoned fort during the Spanish-American War, and a return to fort-hood during World War II, an intact and restored Fort Macon is the centerpiece of a state park that appeals to history buffs and beachgoers alike.

It’s deliberately squat – a sunken fort among the sand dunes at the tip of Bogue Banks. Its builders, says Merritt, didn’t want to give enemy ships out in the Atlantic “a good sight view of the fort.” Besides surrounding it with a moat, they dumped dirt on it and grew grass on that. Cannons perched on top looked out protectively on Beaufort Inlet and the Atlantic, as two replicas do now.

Twenty-six vaulted rooms make up the five-sided fort, opening onto an inner parade ground. Some 10 rooms have been restored to show what life was like for the 400 men who lived there during the Civil War.

Original guns, uniforms, coins, eating utensils and the like have been preserved and are displayed alongside replicas in the restored kitchen, sleeping quarters, commissary, gunpowder magazine and other rooms. The fort’s bake oven, which made bread for the entire troop, and the hot shot box, which heated cannon balls so that they’d catch wooden ships on fire, have both been restored.

Guided tours of the fort will be offered by the volunteer Friends of Fort Macon several times daily Dec. 26 through Jan.1, 2009. They’re also conducted daily April 15 through Oct. 15. Or, visitors can take self-guided tours any time the park is open.

An original cannon barrel in the parade ground is fired by re-enactors on celebratory occasions. But a summer concert series is anything but militaristic. Musicians play in the parade ground, and listeners sit on top of the fort, watching occasionally for dolphins playing in the Atlantic and ships passing on their way to Beaufort Harbor.

A 1 ½-mile beach draws swimmers and sunbathers during warm weather, and anglers cast from a stone jetty. In winter, they’re trying for speckled trout, redfish and dogfish. The jetty is one of a series erected over the years to protect the fort from erosion.

Out in the inlet, the colorful parachutes of parasailers can sometimes be seen soaring by on their way to home berth at nearby Atlantic Beach or on the Beaufort waterfront some six miles away.

Beaufort is also home to the N.C. Maritime Museum, which counts among its treasures a ship’s bell, a brass blunderbuss barrel and cannon balls from a ship thought to be the pirate Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge. The ferocious pirate ran his flagship aground while entering Beaufort Inlet in 1718. The remains of an early 18th century ship discovered off the inlet in 1996 are presumed to be the Revenge, and divers for the state continue to explore it.

Other terrors of the sea, in this case sharks, are among the marine creatures on view at the N.C. Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores, eight miles away via N.C. 58 on the same island as Fort Macon.

Want to go?
Fort Macon State Park
2300 E. Fort Macon Road, Atlantic Beach
Phone: 252-726-3775
Email: fort.macon@ncmail.net
Web: www.ncparks.com
Admission: Free
Days: Daily except Christmas Day
Hours: 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Handicapped Accessible: No

N.C. Maritime Museum
315 Front St., Beaufort, NC
Phone: 252-728-7317
Web: www.ncmaritimemuseum.org
Admission: Free
Days: Daily except Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day, New Year’s Day
Hours: Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-5 p.m; Sat, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., 1-5 p.m.
Handicapped Accessible: Yes

N.C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores
1 Roosevelt Blvd., Pine Knoll Shores
Phone: 252-247-4003, 866-294-3477
Web: www.ncaquariums.com
Admission: $8, adults; $7, 62 and over; $6, ages 6-17; free, 5 and under.
Days: Daily except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day.
Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.
Handicapped Accessible: Yes.