![]() It’s hard to sell tickets if the public can’t board the ship, and the battleship depends on roughly $3.5 million in revenue to survive.īragg noticed something else: The cypress trees on Eagles Island had turned a chalky white, many of them dead or dying from the elevated levels of saltwater intruding into the river, another impact of rising seas. The water sometimes reached the top of the fire hydrant that stands in the middle of the parking lot-and at times would make the main access to the battleship and the visitors center impassable. And yet it faces a new threat that will take a lot more than pocket change to fix.įrom his office in the captain’s quarters on board the North Carolina, Executive Director Terry Bragg began to notice something was amiss in 2015: Even on sunny days, water from the Cape Fear River would sometimes cover half the parking lot at high tide.Ĭlimate change is fueling sea-level rise, which has in turn made water levels in the adjacent river higher than it was in the past century. The most-decorated World War II battleship is now a museum and memorial to the 11,000 North Carolinians who fought and died in that great conflict. School kids across the state donated their milk money to help raise the $350,000 needed to buy the ship from the U.S. It was the culmination of a years-long campaign to save the storied ship from the scrap heap. In October 1961, tugboats pulled the USS North Carolina to its new home at Eagles Island, a tidal wetland and waterfowl habitat situated between the Brunswick and Cape Fear rivers, across from Wilmington. ![]()
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