By JOAN SEARS

For the Daily News

When counting North Carolina’s lighthouses of past and present, many do not think of a lighthouse off the mainland of Hyde County in the Pamlico Sound, but a lighthouse was built at Gull Shoal in 1891. It was manned by Benjamin Cox for 15 years before he operated the Laurel Point Lighthouse of Albemarle Sound of Tyrrell County. Ben Cox was also the leader in getting the road from Hyde to Tyrrell County built. No wonder, with all those years watching over ships having to do all of the transports in our area!

The Gull Shoal lighthouse was one of 30 small lighthouses guarding North Carolina’s inlets and sounds in the late 19th century. It was located 4 miles off Bluff Point near Gull Shoal between Gull Rock and Swanquarter. The Pamlico Sound, with a depth of only 20 feet or less, was treacherous for sail and steamers, especially when carrying heavy cargo. Sunken sandbars and shifting shoals were treacherous in normal weather but also had to be navigated in choppy waves.

Gull Shoal was one of the most treacherous of the Pamlico’s shoals during the late 1800’s. When a U.S. Coast and Gedetic Survey schooner, Scoresby, struck in 1887, Congress authorized the light in 1889. The Lighthouse was completed in 1891 and remnants of the screw pilings remained almost a hundred years later. Many remember the old pilings as a great puppy drum fishing hole in the 1980s.