Thomas Yocum
Towering above the low-slung barrier islands of the North Carolina coast, four massive lighthouses -- Cape Lookout, Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island and Currituck Beach -- rise above their sandy domains. Ranging in height from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet, they can be seen for up to twenty miles. Their powerful beacons, bouncing off the ink-black night sky of the Atlantic, cast ghostly flashes even farther.
The four represent the pinnacle of nineteenth century technology. Built within a twenty year time span -- three of them were constructed within five years of each other -- they are the culmination of a two hundred year struggle to make the Tar Heel coast safer for the thousands of passing ships that dared travel the treacherous Graveyard of the Atlantic.
The nature of the North Carolina coast presented problems to the area's early sailors and settlers. The mysterious coast, stretching for more than three hundred miles, was a maze of inlets, shoals and channels that had to be negotiated to reach Colonial ports. The earliest captains relied on local pilots to guide them through tricky passages, but as the level of commerce grew, so did the calls for a more standardized system of navigational aids.
By the early 1700s, buoys and channel markers were placed along the state's busier waterways, but rudimentary navigational aids left much to be desired, often driven out of position by strong currents and tides. Merchants and mariners clamored for more substantial and reliable markers to guide their ships to safety.
Following the American Revolution, North Carolina officials finally moved to construct lighthouses at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and at Ocracoke Inlet, the state's two principal ports. Duties based on tonnage were collected from merchant ships to raise money for the project, land was secured at both locations, and work was begun on a lighthouse at the mouth of the Cape Fear on Smith Island.
As state officials worked to improve the safety of the coast, federal authorities were also turning their attention to coastal safety. In 1789, in one of its first pieces of business, Congress passed an act shifting the responsibility for coastline safety away from the thirteen states and into federal hands. Freed from having to allocate scarce resources to fund expensive capital projects such as lighthouses, the move met little opposition from state legislators.
A little more than two years later, in 1792, Congress appropriated the funding necessary to complete the lighthouse at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. A set of small, sandy dunes located on the west side of the island near the new lighthouse resembled the head of a bald man. The nickname for the location -- Bald Head -- was tagged to the lighthouse when it was completed in 1795 and it has endured, passed on to the first light's successors, for more than two hundred years.
With construction underway on Bald Head light, attention focused on Ocracoke Inlet. Although state officials had secured property on Ocracoke Island, federal planners opted for a lighthouse in the middle of the inlet's maze of shifting channels and sandbars on a substantial pile of oyster shells known locally as Shell Castle Island. Completed in 1798, the Shell Castle light joined Bald Head as the state's first lighthouses.
With the principal passages of the time marked, federal officials next turned their attention to the state's treacherous capes and shoals. Cape Hatteras was their top priority, but delays and setbacks thwarted the early stages of the project, with workers battling malaria, soft sand and funding shortfalls. It would be more than eight years until the Hatteras light was completed in 1803. Three years later, construction of a fourth lighthouse, this one marking Cape Lookout, was added to the list.
But the early lighthouses were beset by problems. Their beacons were too weak to cut through the dense coastal fog, and their locations, especially Bald Head Lighthouse, were deemed too far away from shipping lanes to be effective. In 1814, less than twenty years after it was completed, the first Bald Head light was obsolete. Its replacement, a sturdy brick octagon covered by whitewashed cement, was completed in 1818. The second light assumed the duties as well as the name of its predecessor. Today, the 1818 structure, the oldest North Carolina lighthouse still standing, is affectionately known as "Old Baldy."
At about the same time, it was becoming obvious that the other first-generation lighthouses were also in need of repair or replacement. Shell Castle light stood for twenty years before it was destroyed by lightning in 1818. By then, with the inlet's deepest channels slowly moving away from Shell Castle Island, officials elected not to rebuild the light, but instead to place a lightship in the inlet. A series of storms that wracked Ocracoke and damaged the lightship forced planners to reconsider, and they soon turned their attention to the one-acre tract in Ocracoke Village state officials had secured years before. In 1822, a contract was awarded for construction of the Ocracoke light. Completed the following year, the whitewashed tower is the oldest operating lighthouse in the state.
With second-generation lighthouses in place at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and Ocracoke Inlet, and the lights at Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout in place, the major ports and promontories of the Carolina coast were marked. Planners next turned their attention to the sounds and outlying shoals of the Tar Heel coast. For the next three decades, nearly two dozen smaller lights were placed throughout North Carolina waters.
One of those lights was Price's Creek Lighthouse, located on the west bank of the Cape Fear above Southport, and along the twenty-five mile stretch of river from Wilmington to the sea. The twenty-foot Price's Creek tower, completed in 1848, is the surviving member of a pair of lighthouses, and one of the few remaining traces of a series of lights once marking the river. Paired lights were common, acting as range finders for captains navigating narrow channels.
Another lighthouse built during this period was placed along a remote section of coast on what is now Hatteras Island. In 1837, a Navy survey report recommended the placement of a coastal light to help fill the gap in navigational aids that existed between Cape Hatteras and Cape Henry, Virginia, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It took ten years to initiate the project, but in 1847 work began on the first of three lighthouses in the vicinity of Bodie Island.
Construction on the Bodie Island light was completed the following year, but it was clear from the start that the lighthouse left much to be desired. Built without an adequate foundation and more than a foot out of plumb, the tower had a noticeable list. Furthermore, the leaning tower affected the mechanical winch system that turned the beacon, often leaving it stuck in a single position.
Revelations of the shoddy construction on the light couldn't have come at a worse time. Lighthouse planning officials were coming under increased scrutiny from congressional critics, and the Bodie Island project did little to help their cause. In 1852, following a scathing review, a new agency, the Light House Board, was created. Its mission was to revamp the earlier system, creating first-rate navigational aids that would rival any in the world.
Faced with a hodge-podge of largely inferior lights along the Carolina coast, the newly constructed board implemented sweeping changes. In 1854, they boosted the height of the Cape Hatteras light from ninety to one hundred and fifty feet. They placed smaller lights along the Bogue Banks, near Cape Fear, and near Roanoke Island, and replaced the ailing Bodie Island light with a new, ninety-foot tower in 1858.
The same year, they turned their attention to the aging, fifty-year-old Cape Lookout Lighthouse. Armed with the technology of the day and an edict that stressed quality over economy, the board commissioned construction of a tower design that would become the model for subsequent Tar Heel lights. Strong and graceful, the one hundred and sixty foot Cape Lookout light, the first in a series of four nearly identical lighthouses placed along the Outer Banks, was completed in 1859.
As the country moved toward the Civil War, navigational aids along the Carolina coast were the best they'd ever been. But the ravages of war took a a heavy toll on the state's system of lights. By the end of the conflict, virtually every lighthouse along the coast had been damaged or destroyed.
The 1858 Bodie Island light had been blown up during the war and one of the Light House Board's first tasks was to replace navigational aids along the one hundred and twenty mile stretch from Cape Hatteras to Cape Henry. The board decided to place three new lighthouses -- at Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island, and Currituck Beach -- each forty miles apart. The placement of the lights would enable passing ships to spot one light ahead before the last one fell away off the stern.
In 1867, after more than six decades of wind, weather and war, the 1803 Hatteras light needed to be replaced. Congress approved funding for the new lighthouse, and work began on a new tower based on the 1859 Cape Lookout design. Completed in 1870, the one hundred and ninety-eight foot Cape Hatteras Lighthouse -- the country's tallest brick lighthouse, was the masterpiece of Outer Banks lighthouse construction.
Following the completion of the Hatteras light, construction began almost at once on the Bodie Island light -- the third to mark the same section of the coast in twenty-four years. Situated on the north side of Oregon Inlet, the one hundred fifty-six foot Bodie Island Lighthouse was completed in 1872.
Three years later, with the completion of the one hundred fifty-eight foot Currituck Beach light, the Light House Board had coordinated the construction of three first-rate lighthouses along the Outer Banks in five years.
Once the 1870s-era lights were completed, the board implemented a standardized marking system for each. Because each of the lights was based on the 1859 Cape Lookout design, they were difficult to distinguish in silhouette. In 1873, each light was painted with the distinctive markings it still bears. Cape Lookout received a checkered pattern, Cape Hatteras was given its distinctive stripes, and Bodie Island its broad bands. Currituck Beach was left unpainted, its red brick exterior making it as distinctive as its cousins to the south.
The four Outer Banks giants still stand as a tribute to nineteenth century lighthouse technology. They are joined by the older and more diminutive lights at Ocracoke, Bald Head and Price's Creek. Although the towering brick lights are unmatched in their elegant beauty, a new generation of lighthouse has begun to mark the state's coastline. The Oak Island Lighthouse, a stark cylinder rising one hundred and sixty-nine feet above the mouth of the Cape Fear, boasts one of the brightest beacons in the world. Completed in 1958, it was the first lighthouse built along the Carolina coast in more than half a century.
Across the river from the Oak Island light sits the stout, octagonal tower of Old Baldy -- the light it replaced forty years ago. And so it goes. New replaces old. Time, technology, and the relentless nature of the North Carolina coast continue to influence the course of events. The legacy of the Tar Heel lights, a history spanning more than two centuries, continues to turn, like the rotating beacons of the towering lights flashing across the dark ocean sky.
