Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

CHAPTER ONE HISTORY OF THE SCREWPILE LIGHTHOUSES

Seamarks – A seamark is an aid to navigation and can be buoys and beacons in the water or on land.

On moonless or overcast nights, with no guidance from the stars or moon, a ship’s captain might hear waves crashing on shore but be in the dark, literally, as to how far he was from landfall or from dangerous shoals. Locating and safely entering a harbor without lighted beacons was a challenging and often treacherous maneuver. Fires on raised platforms were probably the earliest signals marking the entrances to ancient trading ports. As trade expanded, increasing numbers of ships and mariners required help navigating through dangerous reefs and avoiding submerged hazards. Their need for more visible warnings prompted the development of taller structures and lighthouses. 1

Maritime navigation evolved over thousands of years as ancient seafarers from Europe, Asia, and the Polynesian Islands of the Pacific ventured out onto the seas and oceans. Skilled pilots and captains honed their knowledge and passed it down along with their tools of navigation from generation to generation.

Pharos, the Egyptian lighthouse of Alexandria built by the Greeks in the third century B.C., was one of the earliest documented beacons on the Mediterranean Sea. After three damaging earthquakes beginning in 956 A.D., Pharos finally collapsed in 1323. From the first century A.D., when the Romans controlled Europe’s coasts, they built and maintained a system of lights to guide mariners safely into ports. One of Rome’s oldest working lighthouses, La Coruña, built in the second century A.D., still shines on the coast of Spain. 2

Maplin Sands Lighthouse, the first English screwpile lighthouse. It was built by Alexander Mitchell in 1838.

Pharos, the Egyptian lighthouse at Alexandria, third century B.C.

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