Up top, it is a marvelous day. The Atlantic stretches like a rich blue carpet with cotton ball clouds in the distance at our location sixteen miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C. Grasping my face mask with my right hand and my weight belt with my left, I stretch the big floppy fin on my foot beyond the gunwale of the steel boat. In seconds, I am pulling myself down the anchor line, squeezing my nose and blowing to equalize my inner ear pressure.

The farther down I go, the better it gets. Visibility is Caribbean quality — about 80 feet at a bottom depth of 90 feet with no current. The water, not too far from the Gulf Stream, is a balmy 80 degrees. Scattered about the bottom, the remains of the 468-foot tanker, the Dixie Arrow, come into view. I concentrate on the giant engine block with partitions so large I can swim through them. Bright blue and red clumps of coral cling to the metal debris. Huge schools of shiny fish - tropical varieties such as spadefish and triggerfish – swim above me. Six-foot-long, big-eyed sand tiger sharks guard the sandy bottom, staring at me with lifeless eyes just 10 feet away.

For me, diving the Dixie Arrow is a special thrill. I have been a scuba diver since 1983 and have made dives around the world, from the Indian Ocean, to the Mediterranean, Hawaii and the Caribbean. Diving combines my love of the ocean along with my fascination with fish and other life under the sea. But diving my home waters off the Carolina coast brings about another attraction — maritime history. The temperamental Outer Banks serve up a treasure trove of wrecks, along with warm water and tropical fish, all within a five-hour car ride from Richmond.

A barracuda guards the wreck of the Dixie Arrow. Photo by Peter Galuszka

For all my wonder, I get a shiver in my spine when I think of the Dixie Arrow. This is no derelict sunk for the amusement of divers. She is the real deal and her story is one of tragedy and heroism. The Dixie Arrow, built in 1921 in Camden, N.J., spent 21 years plying the East Coast for Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, taking petroleum products from Texas and Aruba to industrial centers in the Northeast. On March 19, 1942, in the early days of World War II, the Dixie Arrow was steaming north, carrying 96,000 barrels of Texas crude to New Jersey. Her skipper was zig-zagging as he approached Diamond Shoals with a crew of 33.

At the time, Nazi Germany was picking off merchantmen like ducks in a pond, sometimes several each night. Cape Hatteras was a major choke point for essential war material, especially petroleum, which ships carried from the Gulf coast up to New York and Philadelphia. At the time, the U.S. had yet to build big fuel pipelines, such as the Big Inch, and some 95 percent of oil arriving at East Coast ports came via ship, according to historian Clay Blair in his 1996 book, "Hitler’s U-Boat War." These vessels could save fuel by coasting along the Gulf Stream near Hatteras, but they offered German sub commanders easy shots. According to Blair, one Nazi U-boat captain wrote in his log that on one January night in 1942, he saw "no fewer than 20 steamers, some with their lights" near Hatteras. Not only were merchantmen slow to adapt to wartime, high-ranking Navy officers stupidly dismissed the U-boat danger. Their negligence created such plentiful target opportunities that the German U-boat crews called the early days of 1942 "the Happy Time."

One victim was the Dixie Arrow. That night on March 19, despite the captain’s precautions, a torpedo fired from a U-71 suddenly erupted below the deckhouse amidships, instantly killing eight crewmen. Two other torpedoes hit, turning the Dixie Arrow into an inferno. As the ship buckled in the middle, crewmen tried to jump into lifeboats, but often were blanketed with burning oil. One heroic seaman named Oscar Chappell managed to reach the tanker’s still-working helm and maneuvered the ship against the wind to keep sheets of flame from inundating a packed lifeboat. Doing so, Chappell was burned alive. Besides Chappell, the Dixie Arrow lost 10 others, including her captain.

Today, the Dixie Arrow lies in big slabs and serves as an artificial reef for brilliant-colored fish. The sharks and barracuda ignored me, as I made my way up the anchor line.

Next, Captain John Pieno, the owner of Outer Banks Diving, headed west to the next dive, the wreck of the tanker F.W. Abrams. Ironically, the Abrams, a sister ship of the Dixie Arrow, was sunk about 10 miles away on June 11, 1942. Her story is not as dramatic. The Abrams, having been given bad information by the U.S. Navy, stumbled into a minefield and blew up without any crew losses.

So ended my second day of diving with Pieno, a George Clooney look-alike who skippers the 42-foot Bayou Runner, a tough workboat originally designed to serve oil rigs off the Gulf Coast. Pieno runs a fine, personally attentive operation. Another Carolina outfit that I have dived wrecks with is Olympic Diving Center in Morehead City. Their business is tight and efficient, if impersonal. While there are plenty of historic wrecks off the Virginia coast, the cold, murky water off the Old Dominion makes Carolina the better choice. Beware, however. The Outer Banks have some of the most changeable waters in the world. Visibility can slip to next to nothing in a few minutes and dangerous currents can kick up. Plus, the two hour-plus haul out to the dive sites can be rough on your stomach.

So, if you want easy and comfortable diving, head for the Bahamas. If you want to see tropical coral and fish this far north, along with some breathtaking bits of history, you don’t need to buy a plane ticket.

Sources: "Shipwrecks of North Carolina from Hatteras Inlet South," Gary Gentile, 1992
"Hitler’s U-boat War," Clay Blair, Random House, 1996