Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

Captain Beverly Kennon – James River In April 1837, when the Board of Navy Commissioners ordered Captain Beverly Kennon, U.S. Navy, to ascertain whether “the safety of navigation…requires any additional facilities,” Kennon wisely solicited recommendations from James River steamboat captains and river pilots. 21

lighthouse at Day’s Point would allow vessels to pass safely at night. He recommended a light at the end of the spit at Day’s Point, rather than on the shore. Traveling up river, the river widens but the channel narrows, creating difficulty for mariners to confidently navigate without a reference point. The recommendations to Captain Kennon differed on the need for a lighthouse, a lightboat, or a floating beacon, particularly at Day’s Point. James Hicks, Board of Pilots at Hampton, Virginia, suggested: “On the rock lump off Berkeley below Harrison’s bar and from Harrison’s bar to City Point the channel is very narrow and crooked and the soundings very bad and in order that vessels may run up with safety the pilots themselves have to stake the channel regularly every spring as during the winter they are carried away by ice when it breaks up- there should therefore be buoys placed from Harrison’s bar up to city point.” Captain Kennon, referencing the recommendations given to him, summarized his thoughts in his May 9, 1837, letter to the president of the Board of U.S. Navy Commissioners: “From the mouth of the James River to the head of navigation, there is a not a light of any sort, or a buoy laid down…its channel is particularly intricate and the shoals and bars numerous. All vessels of any draught are therefore obliged to anchor at night.” He recommended “the erection of three lights, one at Days Point, one at the Point of Shoals, and the other at Deepwater & Lyons Creek Shoals. With a light at each of these points, the heaviest ships could run at night up to Hog Island, about forty miles and ships of lighter draft might go as high as Harrison’s Bar, about eighty or ninety miles from Hampton Roads.” He went on to say, “But if it be intended to erect one light, and only one, there I would, in that case, recommend its being placed on the Point of Shoals as it is the most dangerous situation on James River.” Why was—and is—that point so dangerous? The river channel follows the shoreline at Burwells Bay. Captain Chapman states in his April 1837 letter, “After passing Days Point, the navigation is difficult and dangerous at night by reason of shoals on both hands, the increased width of the river and the contraction of the channel.” The river channel goes “to an acute point terminating abruptly at the channel which turns suddenly almost at right angles, this point is a hard oyster bed and nearly up and down and dry at low water.” Captain Geo. C. Gary, who had sailed out of the James River from 1815 to 1833 in ships from 300 to 500 tons, agreed with Kennon’s assessment of the need for lighthouses.

William Chapman, captain of the steamboat Patrick Henry, responded in a letter dated April 29, 1837, saying that a

Captain Beverly Kennon

Despite the specific recommendations about putting aids to navigation in place, it would be 18 years before lighthouses were established in the James River.

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