Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

not intend it for navigation. His later, 1612 map of the Chesapeake Bay charted the bay and rivers as approached from the sea, with the north shown to the right.

During the first two centuries of colonial settlement and growth, major seaports along the Atlantic coasts were fairly close to the open ocean with primitive beacons marking harbor and port entrances. Ship captains and pilots recorded depths and shallows as well as bottom sediments as they traveled into the rivers and harbors. Walter Hoxton’s map of the Chesapeake Bay, drawn in 1735, was one of the first to include soundings and shoals of the bay. Hoxton was a British tobacco ship captain who made 23 voyages into Maryland. His map and written sailing instructions were vital navigation tools. Part of the sailing directions from Love Point into the Patapsco River were, “When abreast of the rocks then edge southward.” 6 Anthony Smith, a ship’s pilot out of St. Mary’s on the Potomac, contributed to A New and Accurate Chart of the Bay of the Chesapeake (published in 1776), which included shoals, channels, islands, entrances, soundings, and sailing-mark details and augmented Hoxton’s soundings and bottom conditions. 7 These early maps and charts fell under the auspices of Trinity House, the English authority of maritime law, navigation, and shipping that King Henry VIII had chartered in 1514. Trinity House’s prime concerns were the safety of shipping and the well-being of seafarers. It created Admiralty Charts (maps) with written directions to ports in all of its colonies, established lighthouses, and maintained aids to navigation. 8 Not quite three centuries later, in 1796, Edmund M. Blunt published The American Coast Pilot , which included sailing directions and tide tables, as well as tables of latitude and longitudes of principal harbors and navigational landmarks. The guide also included information on maritime law, tariff regulations, and customhouse procedures. Almost immediately, The American Coast Pilot was one of the most popular pilot guides with both American and foreign seamen and preferred over the Admiralty Charts of the Trinity House. The Blunt family would later work with the U.S. Coast Survey, who provided hydrographic survey information for incorporation into the charts and The American Coast Pilot . 9 Publishers in London in 1882 were still printing sailing directions, however, for principal ports on the East Coast of the United States of America. Details included directions for Chesapeake Bay and all of its tributaries. 10

Dutch William Blaeu version of the John Smith map, 1618/1662. The Library of Virginia

Aids to Navigation Import taxes collected by customhouse officials in each colony provided funds for the local contractors who maintained the scarce aids to navigation that existed. Records from the customhouse along the Pagan River detail one example: “Up the hill, a custom house built in the 1780s still stands overlooking the James River. Two shillings per hog head was the duty paid in Colonial times on the two- and three-masted schooners that docked and stocked here.” Local customs officials hired private contractors to build and maintain early buoys that were merely wooden casks and barrels. Later, small, riveted, rectangular topped cans and cone-topped nuns replaced the wooden buoys. Spar buoys were primarily cedar or juniper logs anchored by lengths of chain secured to stones. Private contractors in small schooners struggled to manage buoys close to shoals. The schooners were not easily maneuverable and could not hold a triangulated position as easily as later steam-powered vessels.

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