Pirates of Fenwick Island: How buried coins, ghostly sounds keep the legend alive

“Today’s Fenwick Island, a thriving resort,” the Smyrna Times reported on Sept.3, 1959, “bears little resemblance to the earlier Fenwick Island, which had few inhabitants and was, at times barely accessible. In these earlier days, pirates ravaged the coast.”

As usual, there was not a human to be seen, when the small sloop eased through the narrow, shallow inlet into Little Assawoman Bay. Aboard the small sailing craft, hardened group of pirates surveyed the coastal bay behind Fenwick Island, and they dropped anchor a short distance from a glorified sandbar now known as Point of Cedars Island.

At the end of the 17th century, the remote corner of southern Delaware was the ideal place for a scurvy lot of cutthroats to spend a few days ashore, repair their ship, and divide their loot.

How Fenwick became a favorite haven for pirates

When the first European settlers arrived in southern Delaware, they avoided Fenwick Island, where the sandy soil and salty air was incompatible with raising tobacco and other crops. Coastal buccaneers had little to fear from the Delaware colonial authorities, who concentrated their efforts on guarding the settlements on Delaware Bay, and they showed little interest in policing waters around Fenwick Island.

With little to fear from the authorities, pirates and other lawless vandals would use the shallow inlet that was once a short distance north of the Maryland border to reach the calm waters of the coastal bays where they could repair their ships, replenish their supplies, and perhaps, bury their treasure.

David James Long, affectionately known as “Uncle Jim,” was a longtime resident of Selbyville. Born before the Civil War, he was familiar with the history of Fenwick Island and its traditions.

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In 1938, he described the custom of hunting for pirate treasure in the Fenwick Island area in an article for the Milford Chronicle.

Long wrote, “There used to be an inlet to Little Assawoman Bay near Fenwick lighthouse … Tradition has it that the pirates used to trade in and out the Little Assawoman Bay to a little island called Cedar Island [Point of Cedars Island] about a mile northeast of where the bridge [over the Ditch, the waterway that connects Assawoman Bay to Little Assawoman Bay] now is. It was said that there were lots of holes in which the pirates used to bury their money.”

According to Long, “Folks used to dig for money there [Point of Cedars Island]. I have also heard that when they were digging for this money, they could hear ghostly sounds, as of boats coming in with sails snapping and crackling in the wind, so folks said that the place was haunted.”

Is there really buried pirate treasure in Fenwick Island?

Historians have scoffed at the idea that pirates buried their treasure, but over the years, Fenwick Island beachcombers have found a number of silver and copper coins scattered on the sand.

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The discovery of these coins usually sparked speculation about pirate booty, but as Long pointed out, the coins on the beach were probably not the remnants of pirate treasure. More likely, the coins were cast ashore by some of the ships that have been known to founder along the Delaware coast.

During the first half of the 20th century, vacationers began to discover the joys of vacationing at Fenwick Island’s quiet at beach. The stories of the pirates who once sailed southern Delaware’s coastal waters lived on in the minds of area residents, and in 1959, the Smyrna Times reminded its readers that there was once a time that “pirates ravaged the coast” at Fenwick Island.

Principal sources

Smyrna Times, Sept. 3, 1959.

Milford Chronicle, Oct. 7, 1938.

Mary Pat Kyle, Fenwick Island, Delaware, A Brief History, Charleston: The History Press, 2008, pp. 35-37, 49-51.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: How buried coins keep alive stories of pirates at Fenwick Island