For most of its recorded history Ship Island was one island — a long barrier island twelve miles off the Mississippi shore, the deep-water anchorage that gave it its name, the place the French landed in 1699 and the Union held through the Civil War. Fort Massachusetts still stands on its west end.
On August 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille came ashore here with a thirty-foot surge and cut the island in two. About two hundred fifty acres washed away; the gap between the halves became known as the Camille Cut. East Ship Island and West Ship Island were two islands now. The cut had nearly closed on its own by 2005, when Katrina opened it again. From 1969 to 2020 there was no single Ship Island — the thing on the maps and in the name did not exist. In 2020 the Army Corps finished a four-hundred-million-dollar restoration and the island was whole again, the first time in fifty-one years. What you stand on now is younger than most of the people standing on it.
What stood here
4 surviving images.
The steamship Constitution off Ship Island, Mississippi — the single island in its steamship-era prime, 1861
West Ship Island — Library of Congress view of the island before the storms remade it
Ship Island in September 2004 — the Camille Cut had almost healed; eleven months later Katrina reopened it
Ship Island after Hurricane Katrina, 2005 — the cut torn open again, the island in two