Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

I ntroduction For travelers of the mid-1800s to the earlier 1900s, steamboats were the way to go. Hundreds of ships plied the Chesapeake Bay as well as the rivers and sounds leading to it. Not only did the boats offer convenient and pleasurably scenic trips, but their fares were reasonable and the schedules, reliable. You could board the Virginia , the Alabama , or any of the other steamers of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company in Baltimore in the afternoon, travel overnight, and arrive in Norfolk the next day, refreshed and well fed. Known as the Old Bay Line, the packet company was renowned for its service. Walter Lord, who recounted the last hours of the ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic in his bestseller A Night to Remember , claimed that the Old Bay Line’s unique blend of Northern mechanical proficiency and punctuality with Southern gentility and grace earned the line its enviable reputation. Lord may have had an insider’s view since he was also the grandson of R. C. Hoffman, the line’s president in the 1890s. Once in Norfolk, passengers could continue on to any of the North Carolina coastal towns or connect to ships destined anywhere in the world, all with an ease and comfort possible only with safe navigation. Without reliable navigation, the steamship era of travel could never have flourished. Steamers could have traveled only during daylight. Their schedules would have been unreliable and more ships would have suffered accidents, groundings, or even loss. Screwpile lighthouses, the sometime stepchildren of pop lighthouse culture, were the saviors of steamboat travel. The cottage lighthouses were largely responsible for the navigational safety of the steamships and other vessels traveling the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Imagine a late June afternoon in 1879. We leave the dock in Norfolk, bound up the James River for Richmond aboard the steamer Mystic. We make our way to the weather deck to enjoy the balmy afternoon. As the light dims, we clear Craney Island Light and peer through the dusk to where the Nansemond River flows into the James River. Finally, we spot the Nansemond River Lighthouse standing high on its pilings just off Pig Point. The new, hexagonal screwpile lighthouse, commissioned only the year before, includes parts recycled from the old North Carolina Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse replaced just two years earlier. As the Mystic steams west, we watch the keeper in the lighthouse tower. As he works on the lamp, the beacon flares alive, radiating its distinctive red color.

The mouth of the James River at Hampton Roads spans a wide expanse of water, creating a beautiful deepwater harbor. The river, just past Newport News Point, is about five miles wide and holds that width upstream to Burwells Bay. The river breadth, however, is misleading. Pilots know that you have to mind the channel or you will run aground on one of the many shoals. From Burwells Bay, the James winds its way to Richmond, narrowing to a channel barely wide enough for ship traffic. We will pass three other screwpile lighthouses that mark vital points of navigation on the trip to Richmond, each with its own story and each vital to the steamer’s safe navigation. We keep White Shoal Lighthouse on our right as we near the mouth of the Pagan River and then head for the next light upriver. We pass close by the Point of Shoals Lighthouse in Burwells Bay. The cottage doors and windows stand open, seemingly inviting us to stop in for a visit, and we can see the potbelly stove, comfortable chairs, and shelves stacked with books. The lighthouse’s lantern shoves its light out into the dark night, illuminating the shoreline and much of the river as we steam by. Then our captain makes a hard-right turn, heading for his next point, the light at Deep Water Shoals. Without these radiant points of light, the captain would have to anchor at dusk. The screwpile lighthouses, an innovation in lighthouse design, were built to safeguard the nineteenth century’s increasing commercial traffic on rivers and bays. Who decided where the lighthouses should be located? How did they decide on a location? Secure the land? Obtain the funding? Who issued the specifications and contracts and placed the light stations into service? Who were the lightkeepers and how were they selected? What was their life like aboard a screwpile lighthouse? Finally, why did the all screwpile lighthouses disappear? To find answers, we dug into archives and collected documents, letters, news stories, and official records. We talked with a former lightkeeper and the descendants of other lightkeepers. The research materials mounted and we realized we had more information than we could fit into this book. From that realization, our project evolved to include,

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