Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

An artist’s rendering of the destruction of C.S.S. Virginia . Courtesy of DHR.Virginia.gov

break the Union blockade, which had cut off Virginia’s largest cities, Norfolk and Richmond, from international trade. The battle was a standoff and the blockade remained unbroken. The fleet of Union ironclad vessels would grow and ply the James River, and the lighthouses so vital to navigation would become targets of southern sabotage. The Confederates ran the Merrimac aground slightly south of the Craney Island Lighthouse. Early in the morning on May 11, 1862, Portsmouth resident Lt. Charles Hasker, boatswain of the Merrimac , took the order to fire the ship to prevent its capture by the Union forces. Hasker did his job well. The explosion was enormous, scattering red hot iron plates and other debris reportedly for miles.

Less than a month later, in June, G. Caster Smith, Fifth District engineer, found Craney Island Lighthouse destroyed except for nine pilings. This was the only screwpile lighthouse totally destroyed during the war. Confederate raiding parties extinguished all the other screwpile lighthouses in the area by removing the lamps, lenses, and oil, leaving the structures largely intact. Although we’ve yet to uncover a corroborating account, the authors believe it highly likely that the explosion of the Merrimac could have triggered the destruction of the lighthouse. The proximity and timing of the two events were close enough that just a few flying pieces of burning metal could have easily ignited the screwpile cottage.

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