Bland Simpson – författare

In Two Captains from Carolina, Bland Simpson twines together the lives of two accomplished nineteenth-century mariners from North Carolina — one African American, one Irish American. Though Moses Grandy (ca. 1791– ca. 1850) and John Newland Maffitt Jr. (1819–1886) never met, their stories bring to vivid life the saga of race and maritime culture in the antebellum and Civil War–era South. With his lyrical prose and inimitable voice, Bland Simpson offers readers a grand tale of the striving human spirit and the great divide that nearly sundered the nation.Grandy, born a slave, captained freight boats on the Dismal Swamp Canal and bought his freedom three times before he finally gained it. He became involved in Boston abolitionism and ultimately appeared before the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1843. As a child, Maffitt was sent from his North Carolina home to a northern boarding school, and at thirteen he was appointed midshipman in the U.S. Navy, where he had a distinguished career. After North Carolina seceded from the Union, he enlisted in the Confederate navy and became a legendary blockade runner and raider. Both Grandy and Maffitt made names for themselves as they navigated very different routes through the turbulent waters of antebellum America.

As compelling as fiction, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey tells the dramatic story of the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey from her riverside home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901. Bloodhounds, detectives, divers, and even a psychic were brought in to search for her, and the case immediately became a national sensation. Bland Simpson, who first heard the tale as an Elizabeth City schoolboy, weaves this true story into a colorful nonfiction account, told in three first-person voices: Nell's sister Ollie; famous newspaper editor W. O. Saunders, who covered the case as a young reporter; and Jim Wilcox, Nell's beau, who was implicated in the case. Nell and Jim's romance, her disappearance, the great search, the trials, and their aftermath are artfully reconstructed from interviews, court records, and newspaper accounts.

Into the Sound Country is a story of rediscovery--of two North Carolinians returning to seek their roots in the state's eastern provinces. It is an affectionate, impressionistic, and personal portrait of the coastal plain by two natives of the region, writer Bland Simpson and photographer Ann Cary Simpson. Here Bland Simpson tours his old waterfront haunts in Elizabeth City, explores scuppernong vineyards from Hertford to Southport, tramps through Pasquotank swamps and Croatan pine savannas, and visits Roanoke River oyster bars and Core Banks fishing shanties. Ann Simpson's original photographs capture both the broad vistas of the sounds and rivers and the quieter corners of mossy creeks and country churchyards. Her selection of archival illustrations ranges from the informative to the humorous, from a turpentine scraper at work in the 1850s to a pair of little girls playing with a horseshoe crab on a Beaufort porch at the turn of the century. A memorable journey into eastern Carolina's richly varied natural world, Into the Sound Country is for anyone who would spend a while in one of America's most intriguing and underexplored areas. |This is the story of the farmworkers--Italian immigrants, African American laborers, and imported workers from the Caribbean--who came to work in the fields of New Jersey, Georgia, and Florida in the decades after 1870. In 1933 Congress granted American laborers the right of collective bargaining, but farmworkers got no New Deal. Cindy Hahamovitch's pathbreaking account of migrant farmworkers along the Atlantic Coast shows how growers enlisted the aid of the state in an unprecedented effort to keep their fields well stocked with labor.

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina-Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America's most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of the Great Dismal Swamp and its people. For this edition, he has added an epilogue discussing developments in the region since 1990. |A lyrical tribute to the Great Dismal Swamp, the mysterious wilderness straddling the North Carolina-Virginia line. Includes a new epilogue by Bland Simpson, one of the region's most loved authors.

The extraordinary wreck of a majestic ship, a mysteriously missing crew, a message in a bottle, the lost captain's determined daughter - these are all elements of a great sea yarn, and one that happens to be true. Bland Simpson weaves them together in this compelling nonfiction novel, his reconstruction of a ghost ship's final voyage in 1921 and its baffling aftermath. To this day, the fate of the Carroll A. Deering has remained one of the great mysteries of maritime history. Simpson's haunting chronicle keeps the story alive, an apt memorial to the ghost ship and its lost crew.

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina–Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America’s most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of the Great Dismal Swamp and its people. For this edition, he has added an epilogue discussing developments in the region since 1990.

Into the Sound Country is a story of rediscovery--of two North Carolinians returning to seek their roots in the state''s eastern provinces. It is an affectionate, impressionistic, and personal portrait of the coastal plain by two natives of the region, writer Bland Simpson and photographer Ann Cary Simpson. Here Bland Simpson tours his old waterfront haunts in Elizabeth City, explores scuppernong vineyards from Hertford to Southport, tramps through Pasquotank swamps and Croatan pine savannas, and visits Roanoke River oyster bars and Core Banks fishing shanties. Ann Simpson''s original photographs capture both the broad vistas of the sounds and rivers and the quieter corners of mossy creeks and country churchyards. Her selection of archival illustrations ranges from the informative to the humorous, from a turpentine scraper at work in the 1850s to a pair of little girls playing with a horseshoe crab on a Beaufort porch at the turn of the century. A memorable journey into eastern Carolina''s richly varied natural world, Into the Sound Country is for anyone who would spend a while in one of America''s most intriguing and underexplored areas.

This book looks at some of the state's least-known special places. Blending history, oral history, autobiography, and travel narrative, Bland Simpson explores the islands that lie in the sounds, rivers, and swamps of North Carolina's inner coast. In each of the fifteen chapters in the book, Simpson covers a single island or group of islands, many of which, were it not for the buffering Outer Banks, would be lost to the ebbs and flows of the Atlantic. Instead they are home to unique plant and animal species and well-established hardwood forests, and many retain intriguing vestiges of an earlier human history.

Blending history, oral history, autobiography, and travel narrative, Bland Simpson explores the islands that lie in the sounds, rivers, and swamps of North Carolina''s inner coast. In each of the fifteen chapters in the book, Simpson covers a single island or group of islands, many of which, were it not for the buffering Outer Banks, would be lost to the ebbs and flows of the Atlantic. Instead they are home to unique plant and animal species and well-established hardwood forests, and many retain vestiges of an earlier human history.

The Coasts of Carolina captures the vibrancy of the North Carolina oceanfront, sound country, and interior shores behind the barrier islands. Scott Taylor, who has been photographing the coast for almost thirty years, and Bland Simpson, whose many coastal books have delighted readers for two decades, come together to offer an inviting visual and textual portrait organized around coastal themes such as nature, fishing, and community life, with an emphasis on particular places and seasons. Evocative text is woven together with 145 vivid color images to present a unique and welcoming vision of the coastal region. As natives of the area, the collaborators venture beyond the familiar to show us swamp, marsh, river, sound, and seashore, uncovering places of uncommon delight that most visitors rarely lay eyes on. Their work celebrates the beauty of this amazing region and embodies their distinctive sense of what makes the North Carolina coast so special.

In Two Captains from Carolina, Bland Simpson twines together the lives of two accomplished nineteenth-century mariners from North Carolina--one African American, one Irish American. Though Moses Grandy (ca. 1791- ca. 1850) and John Newland Maffitt Jr. (1819-1886) never met, their stories bring to vivid life the saga of race and maritime culture in the antebellum and Civil War-era South. With his lyrical prose and inimitable voice, Bland Simpson offers readers a grand tale of the striving human spirit and the great divide that nearly sundered the nation.Grandy, born a slave, captained freight boats on the Dismal Swamp Canal and bought his freedom three times before he finally gained it. He became involved in Boston abolitionism and ultimately appeared before the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1843. As a child, Maffitt was sent from his North Carolina home to a northern boarding school, and at thirteen he was appointed midshipman in the U.S. Navy, where he had a distinguished career. After North Carolina seceded from the Union, he enlisted in the Confederate navy and became a legendary blockade runner and raider. Both Grandy and Maffitt made names for themselves as they navigated very different routes through the turbulent waters of antebellum America.

As compelling as fiction, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey tells the dramatic story of the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey from her riverside home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901. Bloodhounds, detectives, divers, and even a psychic were brought in to search for her, and the case immediately became a national sensation. Bland Simpson, who first heard the tale as an Elizabeth City schoolboy, weaves this true story into a colorful nonfiction account, told in three first-person voices: Nell’s sister Ollie; famous newspaper editor W. O. Saunders, who covered the case as a young reporter; and Jim Wilcox, Nell’s beau, who was implicated in the case. Nell and Jim’s romance, her disappearance, the great search, the trials, and their aftermath are artfully reconstructed from interviews, court records, and newspaper accounts.

In the misty dawn of January 31, 1921, a Coast Guardsman on watch at the Cape Hatteras Life-Saving Station sighted a mighty five-masted schooner, all sails set, wrecked on the treacherous Diamond Shoals. Rescuers rushed to the ship, but when they arrived they found the Carroll A. Deering deserted, with no trace of the captain, Willis B. Wormell, or the crew. When, several months later, a bottle was found on a nearby beach, purportedly containing a note from a crew member who ascribed the schooner''s fate to its capture by pirates, a sensational panic in international shipping ensued. The captain''s daughter successfully lobbied for a federal investigation, but months of inquiry failed to turn up either the missing crew or a reason for the ship''s demise. To this day, the fate of the Deering has remained one of the greatest mysteries of maritime history.Bland Simpson assembles the known facts into a compelling reconstruction of the Carroll A. Deering''s final voyage and its baffling aftermath. Using contemporary sources including newspapers, FBI reports, ship''s logs, and personal and official correspondence, he weaves together historical narrative with the voices of key participants in the drama. Simpson''s haunting chronicle keeps the story of the Deering alive, an apt memorial to the ghost ship and its lost crew.

Bland Simpson regales us with new tales of the region's “water-loving land”, revealing how its creeks, streams, and rivers shape the region's geography as well as its culture. Drawing on their deep family ties and coastal travels, he and wife and collaborator Ann Cary Simpson tell the stories of those who have lived and worked in this country, chronicling both a distinct environment and way of life. Whether rhapsodizing about learning to sail on the Pasquotank River or eating oysters on Ocracoke, he introduces readers to the people and communities along the watery web of myriad “little rivers” that define North Carolina's sound country as it meets the Atlantic.With nearly sixty of Ann Simpson's photographs, Little Rivers joins the Simpsons' two previous works, Into the Sound Country and The Inner Islands, in offering a rich narrative and visual documentation of eastern North Carolina's particular beauty. Urging readers to take note of the poetry in “every rivulet and rill, every creek, crick, branch, run, stream, prong, fork, river, pocosin, swamp, basin, estuary, cove, bay, and sound”, the Simpsons show how the coastal plain's river systems are in many ways the region's heart and soul.

Bland Simpson regales us with new tales of coastal North Carolina''s "water-loving land," revealing how its creeks, streams, and rivers shape the region''s geography as well as its culture. Drawing on deep family ties and coastal travels, Simpson and wife and collaborator Ann Cary Simpson tell the stories of those who have lived and worked in this country, chronicling both a distinct environment and a way of life. Whether rhapsodizing about learning to sail on the Pasquotank River or eating oysters on Ocracoke, he introduces readers to the people and communities along the watery web of myriad "little rivers" that define North Carolina''s sound country as it meets the Atlantic.With nearly sixty of Ann Simpson''s photographs, Little Rivers joins the Simpsons'' two previous works, Into the Sound Country and The Inner Islands, in offering a rich narrative and visual document of eastern North Carolina''s particular beauty. Urging readers to take note of the poetry in "every rivulet and rill, every creek, crick, branch, run, stream, prong, fork, river, pocosin, swamp, basin, estuary, cove, bay, and sound," the Simpsons show how the coastal plain''s river systems are in many ways the region''s heart and soul.

In Two Captains from Carolina, Bland Simpson twines together the lives of two accomplished nineteenth-century mariners from North Carolina-one African American, one Irish American. Though Moses Grandy (ca. 1791- ca. 1850) and John Newland Maffitt Jr. (1819-1886) never met, their stories bring to vivid life the saga of race and maritime culture in the antebellum and Civil War-era South. With his lyrical prose and inimitable voice, Bland Simpson offers readers a grand tale of the striving human spirit and the great divide that nearly sundered the nation.Grandy, born a slave, captained freight boats on the Dismal Swamp Canal and bought his freedom three times before he finally gained it. He became involved in Boston abolitionism and ultimately appeared before the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1843. As a child, Maffitt was sent from his North Carolina home to a northern boarding school, and at thirteen he was appointed midshipman in the U.S. Navy, where he had a distinguished career. After North Carolina seceded from the Union, he enlisted in the Confederate navy and became a legendary blockade runner and raider. Both Grandy and Maffitt made names for themselves as they navigated very different routes through the turbulent waters of antebellum America.

Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina's sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state's Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portrait of the Old North State with care and humor. Three of the state's finest photographers come along to guide the journey: Simpson's wife and creative partner Ann Cary Simpson, professional photographer Scott Taylor, and writer and naturalist Tom Earnhardt. Their photos, combined with Simpson's rich narrative, will inspire readers to consider not only what North Carolina has been and what it is but also what we hope it will be. This book belongs on the shelf of longtime residents, newcomers, and visitors alike.

Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina’s sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state’s Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portrait of the Old North State with care and humor.Three of the state’s finest photographers come along to guide the journey: Simpson’s wife and creative partner, Ann Cary Simpson, professional photographer Scott Taylor, and writer and naturalist Tom Earnhardt. Their photos, combined with Simpson’s rich narrative, will inspire readers to consider not only what North Carolina has been and what it is but also what we hope it will be. This book belongs on the shelf of longtime residents, newcomers, and visitors alike.

Between North Carolina's coastal plain and the Blue Ridge Mountains lies the Piedmont: some 250 linear miles of rolling, long-settled lands covering almost half of the state. Geologically speaking, piedmont regions are found all over the world, but North Carolina's Piedmont is among the largest in the United States, sitting along an environmental crossroads where northern and southern flora and fauna overlap, offering an incredibly rich natural diversity. Inhabited continuously for thousands of years, the state's rural heartland is today home to an increasingly dense population. Yet most who reside in the region's cities, suburbs, and smaller towns still live within reach of red-clay farmland, oak and hickory forests watered by small creeks, and rocky river valleys. These places—as they have been and as they are now—remain essential to the character of life in the South. Through his long, celebrated writing career, Bland Simpson has earned a reputation as the bard of North Carolina's coasts and sound country. Here, for the first time, he trains his attention on Clover Garden, the Piedmont community where he has lived for some fifty years. With a naturalist's eye, a storyteller's mind, and a poet's soul, Simpson guides readers into a deep engagement with the Piedmont, both as a material place and as an idea. Illustrated with photographs by Ann Cary Simpson, Clover Garden invites us to think more broadly about the natural and human history of the piedmont South. This book will be treasured by all who seek to live deeply in the places we call home.

Between North Carolina’s coastal plain and the Blue Ridge Mountains lies the Piedmont: some 250 linear miles of rolling, long-settled lands covering almost half of the state. Geologically speaking, piedmont regions are found all over the world, but North Carolina’s Piedmont is among the largest in the United States, sitting along an environmental crossroads where northern and southern flora and fauna overlap, offering an incredibly rich natural diversity. Inhabited continuously for thousands of years, the state’s rural heartland is today home to an increasingly dense population. Yet most who reside in the region’s cities, suburbs, and smaller towns still live within reach of red-clay farmland, oak and hickory forests watered by small creeks, and rocky river valleys. These places—as they have been and as they are now—remain essential to the character of life in the South.Through his long, celebrated writing career, Bland Simpson has earned a reputation as the bard of North Carolina’s coasts and sound country. Here, for the first time, he trains his attention on Clover Garden, the Piedmont community where he has lived for some fifty years. With a naturalist’s eye, a storyteller’s mind, and a poet’s soul, Simpson guides readers into a deep engagement with the Piedmont, both as a material place and as an idea. Illustrated with photographs by Ann Cary Simpson, Clover Garden invites us to think more broadly about the natural and human history of the piedmont South. This book will be treasured by all who seek to live deeply in the places we call home.

Between North Carolina’s coastal plain and the Blue Ridge Mountains lies the Piedmont: some 250 linear miles of rolling, long-settled lands covering almost half of the state. Geologically speaking, piedmont regions are found all over the world, but North Carolina’s Piedmont is among the largest in the United States, sitting along an environmental crossroads where northern and southern flora and fauna overlap, offering an incredibly rich natural diversity. Inhabited continuously for thousands of years, the state’s rural heartland is today home to an increasingly dense population. Yet most who reside in the region’s cities, suburbs, and smaller towns still live within reach of red-clay farmland, oak and hickory forests watered by small creeks, and rocky river valleys. These places—as they have been and as they are now—remain essential to the character of life in the South.Through his long, celebrated writing career, Bland Simpson has earned a reputation as the bard of North Carolina’s coasts and sound country. Here, for the first time, he trains his attention on Clover Garden, the Piedmont community where he has lived for some fifty years. With a naturalist’s eye, a storyteller’s mind, and a poet’s soul, Simpson guides readers into a deep engagement with the Piedmont, both as a material place and as an idea. Illustrated with photographs by Ann Cary Simpson, Clover Garden invites us to think more broadly about the natural and human history of the piedmont South. This book will be treasured by all who seek to live deeply in the places we call home.

Bland Simpson regales us with new tales of coastal North Carolina''s "water-loving land," revealing how its creeks, streams, and rivers shape the region''s geography as well as its culture. Drawing on deep family ties and coastal travels, Simpson and wife and collaborator Ann Cary Simpson tell the stories of those who have lived and worked in this country, chronicling both a distinct environment and a way of life. Whether rhapsodizing about learning to sail on the Pasquotank River or eating oysters on Ocracoke, he introduces readers to the people and communities along the watery web of myriad "little rivers" that define North Carolina''s sound country as it meets the Atlantic.With nearly sixty of Ann Simpson''s photographs, Little Rivers joins the Simpsons'' two previous works, Into the Sound Country and The Inner Islands, in offering a rich narrative and visual document of eastern North Carolina''s particular beauty. Urging readers to take note of the poetry in "every rivulet and rill, every creek, crick, branch, run, stream, prong, fork, river, pocosin, swamp, basin, estuary, cove, bay, and sound," the Simpsons show how the coastal plain''s river systems are in many ways the region''s heart and soul.

Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina’s sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state’s Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portrait of the Old North State with care and humor.Three of the state’s finest photographers come along to guide the journey: Simpson’s wife and creative partner, Ann Cary Simpson, professional photographer Scott Taylor, and writer and naturalist Tom Earnhardt. Their photos, combined with Simpson’s rich narrative, will inspire readers to consider not only what North Carolina has been and what it is but also what we hope it will be. This book belongs on the shelf of longtime residents, newcomers, and visitors alike.

As compelling as fiction, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey tells the dramatic story of the disappearance of nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey from her riverside home in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in November 1901. Bloodhounds, detectives, divers, and even a psychic were brought in to search for her, and the case immediately became a national sensation. Bland Simpson, who first heard the tale as an Elizabeth City schoolboy, weaves this true story into a colorful nonfiction account, told in three first-person voices: Nell’s sister Ollie; famous newspaper editor W. O. Saunders, who covered the case as a young reporter; and Jim Wilcox, Nell’s beau, who was implicated in the case. Nell and Jim’s romance, her disappearance, the great search, the trials, and their aftermath are artfully reconstructed from interviews, court records, and newspaper accounts.

Into the Sound Country is a story of rediscovery--of two North Carolinians returning to seek their roots in the state''s eastern provinces. It is an affectionate, impressionistic, and personal portrait of the coastal plain by two natives of the region, writer Bland Simpson and photographer Ann Cary Simpson. Here Bland Simpson tours his old waterfront haunts in Elizabeth City, explores scuppernong vineyards from Hertford to Southport, tramps through Pasquotank swamps and Croatan pine savannas, and visits Roanoke River oyster bars and Core Banks fishing shanties. Ann Simpson''s original photographs capture both the broad vistas of the sounds and rivers and the quieter corners of mossy creeks and country churchyards. Her selection of archival illustrations ranges from the informative to the humorous, from a turpentine scraper at work in the 1850s to a pair of little girls playing with a horseshoe crab on a Beaufort porch at the turn of the century. A memorable journey into eastern Carolina''s richly varied natural world, Into the Sound Country is for anyone who would spend a while in one of America''s most intriguing and underexplored areas.

Blending history, oral history, autobiography, and travel narrative, Bland Simpson explores the islands that lie in the sounds, rivers, and swamps of North Carolina''s inner coast. In each of the fifteen chapters in the book, Simpson covers a single island or group of islands, many of which, were it not for the buffering Outer Banks, would be lost to the ebbs and flows of the Atlantic. Instead they are home to unique plant and animal species and well-established hardwood forests, and many retain vestiges of an earlier human history.

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina–Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America’s most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of the Great Dismal Swamp and its people. For this edition, he has added an epilogue discussing developments in the region since 1990.

The Coasts of Carolina captures the vibrancy of the North Carolina oceanfront, sound country, and interior shores behind the barrier islands. Scott Taylor, who has been photographing the coast for almost thirty years, and Bland Simpson, whose many coastal books have delighted readers for two decades, come together to offer an inviting visual and textual portrait organized around coastal themes such as nature, fishing, and community life, with an emphasis on particular places and seasons. Evocative text is woven together with 145 vivid color images to present a unique and welcoming vision of the coastal region. As natives of the area, the collaborators venture beyond the familiar to show us swamp, marsh, river, sound, and seashore, uncovering places of uncommon delight that most visitors rarely lay eyes on. Their work celebrates the beauty of this amazing region and embodies their distinctive sense of what makes the North Carolina coast so special.

In Two Captains from Carolina, Bland Simpson twines together the lives of two accomplished nineteenth-century mariners from North Carolina — one African American, one Irish American. Though Moses Grandy (ca. 1791– ca. 1850) and John Newland Maffitt Jr. (1819–1886) never met, their stories bring to vivid life the saga of race and maritime culture in the antebellum and Civil War–era South. With his lyrical prose and inimitable voice, Bland Simpson offers readers a grand tale of the striving human spirit and the great divide that nearly sundered the nation.Grandy, born a slave, captained freight boats on the Dismal Swamp Canal and bought his freedom three times before he finally gained it. He became involved in Boston abolitionism and ultimately appeared before the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1843. As a child, Maffitt was sent from his North Carolina home to a northern boarding school, and at thirteen he was appointed midshipman in the U.S. Navy, where he had a distinguished career. After North Carolina seceded from the Union, he enlisted in the Confederate navy and became a legendary blockade runner and raider. Both Grandy and Maffitt made names for themselves as they navigated very different routes through the turbulent waters of antebellum America.