Ocracoke Inlet never regained its prominence, and Portsmouth, the town dependent on its survival, gradually withered away. In late 1861, after the Confederate forts at Hatteras Inlet had been captured by Union forces, several stone-filled vessels were towed south to Ocracoke Inlet and sunk to block the channel. Within 15 years, when the Civil War spread to coastal North Carolina, Hatteras Inlet had replaced Ocracoke as the most important inlet along the Outer Banks. 1846, when a powerful hurricane opened two new inlets through the Outer Banks, Oregon Inlet and a new Hatteras Inlet. The decline of Ocracoke Inlet began on 7 Sept. In 1850 the official population of the town was 505. In 1840 a post office was established there, and in 1846 the federal government opened a marine hospital to take care of sick seamen. In a 12-month period in 18, more than 1,400 vessels passed through Ocracoke Inlet. With the advent of steam power, Ocracoke Inlet was used also by the new passenger-carrying steamships, especially on the route between New York City and New Bern. Northern Carolina planters continued to be dependent on Ocracoke Inlet both for shipping products abroad and for importing commodities that were not produced there. This left Ocracoke Inlet as the main port of entry for northeastern North Carolina, including the Albemarle Sound, the Pamlico Sound, and all of their estuaries. In the early 1700s, the other Outer Banks inlets-Currituck, Roanoke, and old Hatteras-became progressively less reliable, and by the late eighteenth century all three had closed. ![]() Early settlers and traders, bound for the ports on the Pamlico and Neuse Rivers, found Ocracoke the only deepwater inlet that connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Pamlico Sound. ![]() In 1585 the first colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh entered the inlet en route to Roanoke Island. Ocracoke Inlet, just south of Ocracoke Island, is the only inlet that has been open throughout North Carolina's more than 400 years of recorded history. Throughout the years, hurricanes have also closed a number of the state's inlets, some of which have been reopened at great public expense. A few important inlets have remained nearly permanent travel corridors between North Carolina's coastal towns and the open sea, while others, created in the Outer Banks during hurricanes and other severe storms, stayed open for very short periods of time. Several dozen inlets have existed along North Carolina's Atlantic coastline since European settlers first arrived in the sixteenth century. Additional research provided by Wynne Dough and Thomas J.
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