Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

Lightships to the Rescue Mariners needed over-the-water, lighted navigational aids, and lightships seemed to be the answer. In 1819, Congress made appropriations for the first lightships, which were wooden schooners anchored to mark dangerous shoals from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to major river ports. Between 1820 and 1965, 16 lightships marked hazards in the bay, most in Virginia’s waters. Records for the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation list the steamboat Chesapeak e, built in Baltimore in 1813, as the first lightship, or “light vessel.” The Chesapeake , a small wooden schooner, moored off Willoughby Spit in 1820 and later moved to Craney Island. Lightships also anchored near Wolf Trap, York River Spit, Stingray Point, Smith Point on the Potomac, and Thimble Shoal near the mouth of the James. 19 The high cost of building and maintaining lightships, however, prompted a search for a more economical but equally effective navigational aid. That search ended in England, where a new type of light—the over-the-water screwpile lighthouse—was under development.

National Archives RG 26

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