Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

George Washington had surveyed and planned for a canal running from Richmond to the west in 1785. By 1790, seven miles of the James River Company canal paralleled the James from Richmond to Westham, Virginia. By 1840, it was complete from Lynchburg, Virginia, to Richmond, and commerce at the port of Richmond expanded just as steam power was replacing sail. 16 At the same time, trade grew and flourished between ports on the Chesapeake Bay and the West Indies. The Chesapeake Bay, Hampton Roads, and the James River became even busier thoroughfares for travel, trade, and commerce as steamships connected Norfolk to Baltimore and Richmond. The first steamboats to run on the Chesapeake Bay were out of Baltimore in 1813. The Baltimore Steam Packet Company— nicknamed the Old Bay Line—operated from Baltimore to Philadelphia and, by 1817, was making runs to Norfolk. Steamboats Patrick Henry , Hampton , and Old Dominion were just a few of the dozens of passenger and freight steamboats making their way up and down the James River between Richmond and Norfolk by the 1830s. 17 Steam power doubled and even tripled the speed that sailing vessels could make on inland bays and rivers. Steamboats and even ocean-going steamships could travel between 15 and 22 knots. Between 1813 and 1963, some 300 steamboats ran out of Baltimore, as many as 140 out of Washington and up to 150 out of Norfolk. Early on, groundings were an issue on the bay and its many rivers and creeks. As steamboat traffic increased, so did the need for accurate aids to navigation. 18

Courtesy of The Mariners’ Museum

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