Story by: Maeve Sheehey
Graphic by: Natalie Huggins
James Charlet can’t quite name the force that drew him to that old, dilapidated building in the Outer Banks. He just knows the building caught his attention enough that he pulled into its parking lot on his way back from a job interview for a school principalship.
The gate in front was closed — not that it did a whole lot, seeing as there were big gaps in the fence surrounding the building. Charlet could have walked right up to it, but something inside of him told him to respect the gate. And the gate said to stay out, so he stayed out.
The middle school teacher stood outside the threshold of the gate, staring at this abandoned building with its paneling askew. Just a North Carolina history teacher admiring a piece of North Carolina history the origins of which were a mystery to him.
And then, something happened. Something that had never happened to Charlet before, and never would again. Something he still feels funny talking about.
On that day, Charlet’s voice spoke out inside his head without him commanding it.
“I have to help this place,” it said.
He didn’t know where the sentiment came from, and the old building on Hatteras Island could have been anything. But a few years and a career change later, Charlet was back in the Outer Banks as a seasonal ranger at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. He was assigned to eight programs — one of which was to be part of a beach apparatus drill at the Chicamacomico Life Saving Station.
His first thought when he saw the station? “Oh, that’s what that building is.”
Built in 1874, the station at Chicamacomico was the first Life-Saving Service staffed in North Carolina. The men involved patrolled the beach, kept watch and, when needed, saved lives.
While the Life-Saving Service was active, nearly 300 life-saving stations existed across the country. It was relatively short-lived — it merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to form the United States Coast Guard in 1915 after less than 50 years of action. This means the efforts of the lifesavers who were part of the service go largely unremembered. They’re left out of textbooks. They’re not the stars of blockbuster historical biopics.
These lifesavers’ histories could be left to fade like footprints in the sands they once patrolled. But Charlet isn’t about to let that happen.
Charlet wrote the book on the Life-Saving Service. It’s called “Shipwrecks of the Outer Banks: Dramatic Rescues and Fantastic Wrecks in the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” released in 2020.
Beyond that, Charlet and his wife, Linda Molloy, don period attire and give presentations about the local history. These performances, which are part of their company, Keeper James, give audiences a firsthand visual of their historical knowledge.
And once they have their audiences on the hook, Charlet delivers the thrust of their mission:
“In the 44-year history of the service nationwide, these men, under extremely adverse conditions, responded to over 178,000 lives in peril from the sea — of which they saved over 177,000,” he says. “But somehow, America forgot these peaceful heroes.”
***
The Outer Banks of North Carolina’s perilous waters and ever-shifting sandbars have earned the coast its nickname: The Graveyard of the Atlantic.
Estimates vary, but experts say there have been more than 2,000 shipwrecks off the coast of North Carolina. Nathan Richards, director of maritime studies at East Carolina University, said these wrecks range all the way from Native American dugout canoes to World War II ships to cargo ships.
“We’ve got a fantastic collection of really fascinating shipwrecks,” he said.
This long maritime history makes the Outer Banks a fitting lens through which Charlet and Molloy can view the life-saving service. Nowadays, the shores of the Outer Banks are home to sunbathers and vacationers and fishermen, everyday people looking for entertainment or relaxation from the expanse of ocean ahead of them. Most of them have no idea about the maritime drama that once happened on the now-peaceful beach.
But 100-some years ago, it was a different story. Picture this: One surfman walks in his designated direction during his designated watch, from sunset to 8 a.m. In the wee hours of the morning, as the sun begins to reflect off the upper sheen of the ocean waves, he spots something out of the ordinary:
A shipwreck.
The surfman sends up a flare, alerting the nearby station crew that it’s time to jump into action. The flare also tells the distressed individuals on the wrecked ship to stay put until they can be saved, and the surfmen on patrol to return to their station for wreck-rescue. The Life-Saving Service has, in effect, turned a possibly fatal shipwreck into a victimless one.
These incidents — they’re part of what keeps Charlet so captivated by this history. He sees these men as heroes.
“And when I think of what Americans think of as heroes, today, we’re talking about people playing games like baseball and football,” he said. “And people who are movie actors, or singers, we call those heroes.”
“We need some real heroes.”
Charlet has a photo of a group of lifesavers in Creed’s Hill Life-Saving Station, located in Frisco, N.C. On the photo, an arrow points to one of the men. Scrawled by it are the words: “Struck by lightning and killed while in beach patrol.”
Men like him are the ones Charlet hopes to honor when he puts on his uniform. It’s a full replica keeper’s uniform, with the hat and the double-breasted jacket and everything, by the way. When he puts it on, he looks like a 19th-century Life-Saving Service keeper reporting for duty. As it turns out, he feels like it, too.
He’s Keeper James, plain and simple.
***
That name started back when Charlet was the site manager at Chicamacomico. One of his friends, a retired Coast Guard commander, used to greet Charlet by calling him “keeper.”
“So I kind of felt like I was Keeper James,” Charlet said.
The name stuck, becoming not only his historical persona, but also the name of the company through which he does historical presentations with his wife. Their website calls Charlet the “Keeper of the Iconic Outer Banks History Stories.”
Charlet and Molloy met at a reception for an event that Molloy’s theater group was hosting. They began their relationship from there, and both of them ended up working at Chicamacomico. Molloy remembers Charlet regaling her with tales of the lost colony, the Wright brothers and, of course, the Life-Saving Service.
When they weren’t at the site, they were planning things, getting ready for the next day’s events and discussing local history.
“We basically lived it 24 hours a day, even when we weren’t at the site,” Molloy said.
Charlet’s brain is a historical archive and Molloy’s first love is the theater. Their interests intersect as if destined by the cosmos — the perfect match to teach the world about maritime stories.
The first time Molloy put on an unscripted historical presentation, she was asked to fill in after the regular storyteller at Chicamacomico was unavailable due to health reasons.
“Of course I will,” she responded, before starting to worry about whether her theater skills would translate over to the historical angle.
But when she got started presenting to the couple-hundred people in the crowd, she was a natural. People came up to her afterward and asked if she was a schoolteacher. Her mind was spinning with different characters she could use to tell different histories.
“They were probably sorry they ever asked me because they couldn’t stop me once I got started,” she said.
Once Charlet and Molloy started working together, they developed the Keeper James character and the other part of his “matching set,” the keeper’s wife. They left Chicamacomico in 2015 and now they focus on Keeper James together.
Molloy, who loves to create costumes and accessories for the characters, has a variety of late-1800s and early-1900s garb she wears. From simple clothing to the most ornate outfits, Molloy notices that when she puts them on, her speech and terminology revert back in time. Like Charlet when he puts his keeper’s outfit on, she becomes the characters she plays.
Molloy is fascinated by the stories behind new pieces of history she learns. Right now, she’s focused on a woman named Martha Coston from Philadelphia, Pa.
Coston was married to a Naval officer and inventor. When he died young, she picked up where he left off and created a variation on signal flares that’s now known as the Coston flare. Molloy is fascinated by how Coston kept “blazing on” through the hardships in her life to become part of maritime history.
“I just recently got a copy of a book that she wrote in her later years, which I didn’t even know existed,” Molloy said. “So I’m just elbows deep in that — her own words.”
Eventually, Molloy hopes to develop a character based on Coston and do a tribute show to her. She and her husband’s portrayals are all part of a larger quest to keep maritime memories like these alive.
Yet, the Outer Banks are constantly changing.
Visitors at Chicamacomico used to say to Charlet, “I was here 20 years ago and so much has changed.” He’d fire back, “It’s changed since yesterday.”
Sands shift, winds and waves come and go, storms happen. Shipwrecks get uncovered. But what stays constant on the Outer Banks is the sense of history. The original buildings at Hatteras Island are even made of ship timbers.
Histories like that of the Life-Saving Service give a sense of permanence to a place where so little is permanent. Keeper James won’t let these memories get washed away by the tide.
