Pirate lore has it that in the late 17th century, horses bearing lanterns were led along the barrier islands near Beaufort, luring ships to be pillaged and sunk. But that was only one of many perils by which the North Carolina coast earned the nickname Graveyard of the Atlantic.

From the Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard's hijacked French slaver, to the Monitor, the ironclad Civil War vessel, many a ship has been doomed by converging currents, rocky shoals, treacherous storms and, in World War II, lurking U-boats. In 1921, the schooner Carroll A. Deering was stranded in a storm on Diamond Shoals; rescuers found it abandoned, making the fate of the crew one of the enduring mysteries of maritime history.

But the seascape that for centuries menaced sailors is, it turns out, a Xanadu for scuba divers. The water is clear, warmed by the Gulf Stream and populated by tropical marine life against the operatic backdrop of the mammoth, ghostly shipwrecks. Unlike reef diving, wreck diving offers both natural splendor and human narrative -- lionfish and octopus, rust and cannon.

And although one doesn't scuba dive alone, there is something intensely private about it. There are no guides, no audio tours, no placards.

Exploring the Indra

As a novice, I began my trip on one of the shallower wrecks, the Indra, a repair ship that took two direct hits in Vietnam. The day was uninviting -- cool and drizzly, with a sea choppy enough to make the captain consider canceling the dive and, for a few scary moments, to make me wish he had.

But once below the surface, I immediately forgot everything above it.

Descending the line from the boat to the deck of the 328-foot Indra was like landing on the moon -- a mute, airless planet of pipes, bollards and hatches encrusted with red, bright yellow and purple coral. Fleets of silver amberjack sailed past, and jellyfish the size of bubbles caught the light.

The Indra was not a victim. It was scuttled in 1992 for North Carolina's artificial reef program.

But armed with fins and an air supply, I still felt like a cross between an explorer and a forensic investigator visiting a disaster scene. The feeling would only intensify as I visited tragic ships like the one commonly identified as the Papoose, a torpedoed tanker lying bottom-up, its featureless belly exposed and cracked.

Although swimming into the wreck without special training is not advisable, there were enough gaping holes and glassless windows to get a good look.

I wove in and out of silent steel cathedrals and poked around amid dangling loops of cable and wire. Some ships were broken in two or their hulls were sheared away, their insides on view -- like giant dollhouses.

Dramatic sights

Of the hundreds of shipwrecks in the Graveyard of the Atlantic, about 30 are regularly visited by dive operators based in Beaufort or nearby Morehead City. The offshore wrecks, those between 10 and 30 miles out, are among the most dramatic. One of the most popular sites is the German U-352 submarine that was sunk by the Coast Guard in World War II.

The wrecks draw people from all over, but proximity and warm water make them particularly appealing to North Americans. Claude Dumoulin, a Canadian who traveled to the Beaufort area last year with his local dive club, compared it favorably with what one might encounter on a more traditional diving trip, particularly because of the variety.

"This is some of the best diving I've seen anywhere," he said. "I went to Turks and Caicos -- every day it was the same. It's neat and everything, but it's the same thing twice a day."

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