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THE LEGEND OF JACK MACKEREL

The adventure of Jack Mackerel, begins in the mid 1940's when a very young Jack Christmas, later to be known as Jack Mackerel walked into a navy recruiting office in Wilmington and lied about his age to go off and fight the Germans and the Japanese and see the world.

Jack spent most of his active service in the South Pacific where he learned to deep sea dive and picked up some piloting skills. After the war he settled in the Florida Keys where he and a navy chum bought a Grumman G-1 Goose sea plane and ran a charter service all over the Caribbean. Here he arm wrestled with Ernest Hemmingway and drank with Bogart. It was on one particular charter that the strange part of this legend begins.

Coming back from dropping off some clients in Aruba the Grumman Goose began to experience some odd mechanical difficulties and Jack was forced to land in a little cove on an uninhabited island in the British Wes Indies, we now know it as Norman island. Not being able to deduce the problem and figuring that he would be there for some time Jack began to comb the shore for coconuts, sea grapes and other sources of nourishment.

It was during this foraging expedition that he noticed a lone brightly painted blue, red and yellow wooden skiff down the shore. He approached it and looked for its owner. Not finding one he noted that the boat might be useful later and continued foraging. The odd thing was that no matter which direction Jack walked the bow of the boat seemed to follow him. That is when an urge came over him to push the boat in the water and get in. This he did and immediately, by some bizarre current, the boat began to float along the shore to the Northern ridge of the island where a series of caves appeared. Then he saw her.

The most beautiful girl he had ever seen, waist deep in the water out side of one of the caves. The boat floated towards her. There was no verbal communication. It wasn't necessary. He was instantly in love. She dove in the water towards the cave and as instantly as he fell in love Jack new that she would never be his as she was part of the land but also part of the sea. He had heard of this in stories, half woman and half fish.

She led him in the cave through a channel and he walked along the edge of the cave until they came to an old wooden chest. As quickly as she appeared, she disappeared. Jack would never see her again.

In the chest he found what appeared to be the belongings of a Confederate officer. Amongst these belongings was a map of Fort Fisher. He took these belongings back to the plane which miraculously started up. He didn't return to the keys however. He ended up here at Kure Beach where he built an old shack out near the estuaries. There he lived out his days in peaceful silence fishing and thinking about a mysterious love long gone.

Many years later he was fishing off of Fort Fisher, some say off of Bunker Buchannan, when he landed the biggest mackerel he had ever seen. When he took the fish home to clean it he discovered a gold coin with the profile of Jefferson Davis on one side and the letters C.S.A. stamped on the other. Curious he got his old diving gear and went down where he had caught the fish. There he found an old blockade runner full of Confederate gold coins sent by British sympathizers. No one has seen him since. Some say he went back to Norman Island in search of his siren. And still lives in the caves today.

A few years later a local artist found, among his belongings in his abandoned cabin, some paint chips, flecks of red, blue and yellow which she ground up and mixed with the paint she would later use to paint a replica of the wooden skiff Jack had found on the island. Jack gone and his cabin long since blown away by many hurricanes his memory still lives on and, so it seems, a little magic spirit.

You can walk into the "Skiff Room" and stare at the replica of the boat painted with the remnants of the original paint chips, walk from one end of the room to the other and, as on the island; it will follow you, perhaps calling you to some strange adventure.