Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

“There were never many stories written about screwpile lights nor the adventures of the keepers and their helpers,” he said. “I had hoped to solve that by writing about my adventures and those of my house mates.”

“Most of the time only two of the crew remained on the light. At that time, however, Tom Jones (yes, that was his name), the officer-in-charge, was enjoying his comp time at his home in Norfolk, Va. Buzz France, a seaman first class who was from Baltimore Md., remained on the light. Bill was from San Antonio and was a long way from home. And me? I was from Brooklyn, N. Y., about seven hours away. We were all nineteen and unmarried. Jones was in his middle thirties and was also single.”

A few excerpts from his stories follow.

“It was in the spring of 1950 when I arrived at the Crisfield, Maryland dock at the foot of West Main Street. The day was overcast while I waited for the 25-foot, 4500-pound motor launch to pick me up. Also, it was Sunday, and the town was just recovering from a wild Eastern Shore Saturday night. Earlier that morning I attended a local Baptist church, there to meet some decent folks and make my presence felt as a new Coastie on the block, or, if you will, on the bay. Actually, I attended church that day to pray for this new assignment to disappear and allow me to return to Norfolk, Virginia, from whence I came. Any ship or unit for that matter would have been better. No! Far better. “As I sat at the dock, the boat arrived and I began to get a little apprehensive. ‘Woe is me,’ I said to myself, as Bill Smelser, a third class engineman, introduced himself. Being kind of awkward, I asked how the duty was aboard the lighthouse. He told me that I would have to remain out there for at least 30 days before I’d get to come ashore for my monthly six-day compensatory liberty. ‘Geez!’ I said to myself. ‘Thirty days?’ Comp time was time off without being charged annual leave and gave us 72 days away from the station each year. You didn’t have to be a mathematician to realize that those six days coupled with our monthly two and a half days of authorized leave came to eight and a half days a month. Wow! Off 112 days a year. Now if I could only figure out how to get off those remaining 253 days. “The boat, which we called ‘Henrietta,’ couldn’t get out of her own way. She was powered by a four-cylinder, 54 horsepower Gray Marine engine, which barely pushed us along at eight knots, if that. Her screw (prop) was large enough to move a dreadnaught. The trip, nearly 15 miles, would take us at least two hours, weather permitting. “Land seemed so far away and hidden in the haze of a still, mirror-like body of water. It was then that I spotted the stilted, spidery-legged lighthouse, which turned out to be a nine-room house, complete with dormer. The house was mounted atop seven screwpiles all bolted together to form a foundation for this fortress. ‘This place is akin to Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana,’ I thought. ‘From here there’s no escape.’ “We slowly approached the davits and Bill flawlessly hooked up to the boat falls while Buzz operated the four-stroke-cycle gasoline engine which lifted us out of the water. My lighthouse adventure was about to begin. But first the three of us pigged out on thickly sliced Velveeta cheese sandwiches.

The assistant lightkeepers’ base pay, according to Serres, then was a mere $120 a month plus an additional $70 for food and expenses.

“After surviving the first couple of weeks and learning much of the routine of ‘keeping’ a lighthouse, I began to settle down. I wasn’t alone at this Godforsaken place. Bill and Buzz were close to my age and they weren’t complaining. At least to me they weren’t. Bill was more or less in charge of the machinery, e.g., generators, compressors, boat engine and the devices used to lift the boat from the bay. He was also the second ranking man next to Tom. Tom was a second class boatswain’s mate who was a World War II veteran and it showed. He was in the thick of battle in the Pacific and went through hell. We—Bill, Buzz and I—were much younger, but we understood what he had gone through. The three of us grew up in America during the war and witnessed the years of rationing, blackouts and air raid drills. Tom was okay, and he allowed us to run things most of the time. “We mostly utilized the rooms downstairs. The most important being the engine room and we kept it spotlessly clean. It was here that the heart of the lighthouse was located. The engine room housed the bell mechanism and a couple of Kohler generators which provided power for the entire house. The generators were operated daily and were hooked up in series to a group of Edison wet cell batteries. The batteries were easily maintained simply by adding distilled water periodically. Each morning we were required to ascend the spiral staircase to the Fresnel tower to pull down the opaque shades. They protected the lenses and prevented the magnifying properties of the lenses from causing a fire and burning the wooden structure. The shades were raised at dusk before the low-wattage incandescent bulb was lit. “The fog signal was used as necessary, and was powered by a couple of gasoline fired Hercules compressors. When the fog rolled in and the light couldn’t be seen by Chesapeake Bay shipping, then we would activate the fog signal. At times the horn would bellow for days on end, and for as much as five straight days. When the fog lifted (fog never, ever rolls out) and we turned off the horn, complete silence ensued. Needless to say it was impossible to sleep because of the complete quiet and stillness. We hardly ever utilized the bell, which was our third mode and final aid to navigation. The bell was wound, much like a clock, and we only heard it ring during a test period.

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