ISBN 13: 978-0-9791403-4-1 Distributed to the book trade by John F. Blair |
The Hatterasman:
—Jan DeBlieu, author of Hatteras Journal
"Ben Dixon MacNeill lived on a high Hatteras hill and from that prospect caught four and a half rich centuries of Carolina maritime life. It's all here: from 1497, when Amerigo Vespucci anchored in the Bight of Hatteras, up through the Civil War and, later, submarine warfare, until just before the coming of the Bonner Bridge. Blackbeard, King Pharaoh, and Bannister Midgett march through these lively pages, and MacNeill truly celebrates the Life Saving Service and the Coast Guard, the real men of the roiling surf. The return of The Hatterasman is a signal event for the literature and lore of the Southern coast." —Bland Simpson, author of Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals |
When the Publishing Laboratory set about to publish a title of literary and cultural significance to coastal Carolina, bringing Ben Dixon MacNeill's classic memoir of North Carolina's Outer Banks back into print was a perfect selection. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book's original publication, this edition features a new introduction by Philip Gerard (Cape Fear Rising), who cites The Hatterasman as a major influence. Winner of the 1958 Mayflower Award, The Hatterasman is part nature story, part historical narrative, part adventure story, and part rhetorical farce. "The language of the book is oddly timeless, archaic and colloquial at the same time, a chronicle of nested stories you might hear from a salty old-timer at the bait shack," writes Gerard. The combination of the author's unique voice, the book's value as historical and artistic record, and the illustrator's connection with UNCW (Claude Howell was the fledgling university's first professor of art) persuaded us that here was a work worth preserving in a way that would introduce it to a fresh generation of readers. |
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About the Author Ben Dixon MacNeill (1889-1960) was one of North Carolina's best-known journalists, reporting for the Wilmington Star-News and Raleigh News & Observer. In 1937 he served as the publicity director for the inaugural production of The Lost Colony, and that same year joined efforts to convince the federal government to preserve the Outer Banks as a national resource. This came to fruition with the establishment of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in 1953. He retired to Hatteras Island in 1945 and lived in a small house overlooking the sea and sand. Here he wrote The Hatterasman and a novel, Sand Roots, and here he died at the age of seventy-one, as much a legend as the Islanders about whom he wrote. |
