State keeps museum afloat

Takeover welcome - Museum is safe

HATTERAS -- Large wooden beams curving over the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum resemble the skeletal remains of shipwrecks that occasionally poke up along the Outer Banks.

The museum, built by Hatteras Island residents to evoke the mystery and allure of shipwrecks, nearly ended up sinking financially. For years, supporters have been raising money but still needed about $2.1 million to complete the museum and keep the doors open.

Now the state has come to the rescue.

The state Department of Cultural Resources took over the museum from a private board recently after approval by the legislature and the N.C. Council of State. The museum, which is on the southern end of Hatteras Island, last week became the eighth facility in the Division of State History Museums.

"We're just ecstatic," said Danny Couch of Buxton, chairman of the museum's board of directors.

State support will boost awareness of maritime history and Hatteras Island's tourism-based economy, Couch said.

The museum, which opened in 2002, has attracted about 56,000 visitors a year, even though it was only partially complete.

"We thought it [the state takeover] was a no-brainer given the visitation," Couch said.

Although the museum has struggled financially, Couch said, it was turned over to the state debt-free. Supporters obtained about $7.8 million, mostly in state and federal funds, to build and operate the museum.

Monitor items sought

Hatteras Island residents mounted a campaign in the mid-1980s to build a home for artifacts from the USS Monitor, the famous Union warship that sank off Cape Hatteras in 1862. Federal agencies made the Mariner's Museum in Newport News , Va., the primary repository.

Undeterred, islanders established a museum highlighting maritime history and hundreds of wrecks in an area off the coast dubbed the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Construction on the 19,000-square-foot building began in 2000 on a 7-acre site owned by the National Park Service near the state ferry docks.

Supporters have struggled to raise enough money to complete the building and install exhibits. The legislature last year authorized a study on the feasibility of the museum becoming part of the state historic sites division. The study said the museum was a better fit with the museums division.

Dr. Jeffrey J. Crow, deputy secretary of archives and history, said Monday that the study determined that the museum would be a good addition to an array of regional museums, provided it received adequate funding. The legislature this year earmarked $300,000 a year for the museum.

"This was something the General Assembly asked us to do," he said of the takeover.

Crow said other details on staffing and completion of the museum will be worked out later. He said the state still hopes the museum can obtain some Monitor artifacts.

The museum now features exhibits on the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse's original lens, the radio shack where aviator Billy Mitchell worked on his attempts to prove that airplanes could sink battleships, and a coding machine retrieved from a German submarine that sank off the coast.

Most of the museum's 2,000 artifacts remain in storage, according to the state feasibility study. In addition, officials said, there are thousands more potential artifacts in the Hatteras community and 40,000 owned by the National Park Service that could be displayed.

Despite the museum's location on an island vulnerable to storms, artifacts should be safe. The building is designed to survive the kind of storms that put vessels on the sea floor. Standing 12 feet above sea level, it can withstand sustained winds of 135 miles an hour and gusts of 250 mph.

Couch said the museum has survived four hurricanes, including Isabel in 2003. Isabel cut an inlet through Hatteras Island and left debris around the museum, he said, but the museum was unscathed.

"The building is a tank," he said.