The cures of bath

Bath town sits on the mouth of the Pamlico River. In the Eighteenth
Century, Bath was an important port for the Carolina colonies. Ships
traveling across the Atlantic Community would stop there, selling,
resupplying, and trading. And not all of this traffic was legitimate.
Bath was a favored haunt of pirates. The pirates appreciated Bath Town's
 habit of not asking too many questions about where a cargo came from.
It was also very conveniently located with easy access to both the open
sea and the mazes of inlets and hidden coves that shape the North
Carolina coastline. This gave those with reason to hide many routes to
quietly sail off into when the British Navy showed up. The most famous
of North Carolina's pirates, Blackbeard himself, is said to have had a house and a wife or two in the town.

With all of this money pouring into the town, Bath soon developed a
reputation as a freewheeling, easygoing kind of place. Liquor flowed
freely, parties lasted all night long, and there was a good time easily
had by anyone who wanted it.

But, as is the way with these things, inevitably someone shows up who
 not only doesn't want a good time, but who doesn't want anyone else to
have one, either.

The traveling evangelist George Whitefield was one of the first
celebrities in the American colonies. This staunch, cross-eyed, strictly
 Calvinist evangelist was reputed to have a voice that would carry for
five miles. He used that voice to preach a grim vision of hellfire and
damnation all up and down the American Colonies.

Whitefield was one of the prime movers of the wave of religious
fervor that swept the American Colonies just before the Revolution. His
sermons and the passion they inspired came to be known as "The Great
Awakening," and those who were generally concerned with just getting on
and enjoying life instead of worrying so much about hellfire and
damnation were a particular target of his.

Like many of these preachers to this day, Whitefield was also a
showman. One of Whitefield's pieces of evangelical stagecraft was to
always travel in a wagon in which he carried his own coffin. Whitefield
used the coffin to illustrate that he was prepared for death and
confident in his own salvation. To drive the point even further home,
Whitefield always slept in that coffin.

When he heard about the fun going on in Bath, of course it made his
list. Needless to say, a strange, cross-eyed preacher who slept in a
coffin and shouted about eternal damnation was not a welcome presence in
 a town that had come to accept the idea that doing what you wanted,
when you wanted, was actually a pretty good way to go through life.

When Whitefield visited Bath, he was met by a delegation of locals
who suggested that he might just want to turn around and head back the
way he came. They may even have suggested that should he choose to stick
 around, he'd have an opportunity to put that coffin he was so fond of
dragging around with him to its proper use.

Whitefield took the hint. But he couldn't leave without at least
making some kind of show. Whitefield climbed back on his wagon, took off
 his shoe and waved it at the assembled crowd, and proceeded to place a
curse on the town.

"If a place won't listen to The Word," Whitefield said, "You shake
the dust of the town off your feet, and the town shall be cursed. I have
 put a curse on this town for a hundred years."

Shortly thereafter, the nearby town of Washington and its larger and
more easily accessible port began to suck away Bath's prosperity. The
money stopped rolling in and the good times came to an end with them. By
 the middle of the Nineteenth Century, Bath had dwindled to a small,
sleepy backwater, the same quiet little hamlet that's there today.
Whitefield took this as evidence that his curse had had an effect, and
smugly spread the story of how he had brought down the town.

## How to Get There

Historic Bath Town
 is located in Beaufort County, not far off of route 264. It's a lovely
place to spend the day walking around in a historic town by coast. The
town has a fascinating series of exhibits to see and historic buildings
to tour.