With its two stations and five outbuildings, Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station (pronounced chi-ka-ma-COM-i-co) is the most complete site of all remaining life-saving stations in North Carolina and one of the most complete sites in the nation. This site and museum is located on Hatteras Island in the village of Rodanthe on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
isitors will find heroes, the early history of US Life-Saving Service/US Coast Guard in North Carolina and the home of the state’s first trained, shore-based rescue responders at Rodanthe’s Chicamacomico Life-saving Station. Chicamacomico was the first of seven Life-Saving Stations built in North Carolina in 1874 and is one of the most unique historical maritime sites on the East coast. The original building at Chicamacomico, commissioned Dec. 4, 1874, was the first Life-Saving Service staffed in North Carolina. It houses all of the equipment for fundamental Life-Saving Service training, such as drill pole, breeches buoy and cart, a rare life-car and original surfboat.
Chicamacomico features two original Life-Saving Service/Coast Guard station buildings and their accompanying structures, such as cook houses, stable, water towers, a potable water beehive cistern, and assorted period rescue equipment. The unique historic site is carefully preserved and protected by the Chicamacomico Historical Association with help of dedicated local volunteers and generous contributors.
The US Coast Guard recognizes the 1918 “Mirlo" rescue by the Chicamacomico station as one of the top rescues in maritime service’s history. Late in World War I, daring, well-trained Chicamacomico surfmen, led by the station’s Keeper John Allen Midgett, saved 42 sailors of the British tanker Mirlo from a fiery Atlantic after the ship was struck by a torpedo from German U-boat 117. The actual surfboat No. 1046 used in the Mirlo rescue, photos, interviews, period and replica equipment which would have been used by these heroes and a sense of their daily lives can be found at the Chicamacomico site.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service