55 Above: The Civil War-era Bachman map is distinctive in its reversed orientation (north looking south) and its illustration of ongoing military operations along the North Carolina coast. Opposite: John Newland Maffit’s map of the Cape Fear is notable for its value as art, as well as for its meticulous charting of the area’s geography. Like many collectors, the man who owns these historical treasures has more in his collection than he has wall space to display. One piece is an original US Army Engineer map of the 1865 battles at Averasboro and Bentonville during the Civil War, clashes that were the last gasps of a Confederacy doomed to defeat. Three charts by Confederate blockade runner and com-merce raider John Newland Maffitt detail the treacherous waters at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. Maffitt was among the most successful of the South’s commerce raiders, in part because it was his job to survey the waters around East Coast ports for the United States Coast Survey as an Army officer in the years before the war. The boy, who had been born aboard ship en route to America from Ireland in 1819, was commissioned in the US Army as a lieutenant in 1842. Maffitt spent a great deal of time mapping the entrances and shoals of the Cape Fear River while based at Fort Johnston, in modern Southport. He married a local woman, and took up residence in Wilmington and Smithville (the Civil War era name for Southport). After the war broke out, Maffitt became a naval aide to General Robert E. Lee, and com-manded a number of ships, including the CSS Florida, the iron-clad CSS Albemarle, and the blockade-runner Owl, where he put his knowledge of coastal waters to use. As a Confederate officer, Maffitt captured or destroyed 70 prizes valued at between $10 and $15 million (in Civil War dollars). The maps are tinted in soft pastel colors that bring out the delicate lines and notations of the charts, detailing Frying Pan Shoals, Old Inlet between Bald Head and Oak Islands, and New Inlet, opened by a colonial-era hurricane at the southern tip of New Hanover County. Alexander Dallas Bache was the superintendent of the US Coast Survey in the years prior to the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. Maffitt worked under his direction before choosing to serve the Confederacy. “Our first one of his we saw had Maffitt and Professor Bache’s names on them,” the collector remembers. “I look at some of these studies that they did of Bald Head and other places, and how they managed to do that (make such accurate surveys), I really don’t know.” The collection is a remarkable record of North Carolina’s past, dating from the days when Englishmen first set foot on the American mainland, to the years when North Carolina joined its sister colonies in claiming their independence, to the anguish-filled years of the Civil War, when brother faced brother and the nation bled itself to exhaustion. North Carolina’s past is displayed with pride in the maps of one admittedly amateur collector. Amateur or not, the collector treats his maps and charts with all of the love and care they deserve, as the irreplaceable works of art and historical gems they are. www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
2014-3
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