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Cape Hatteras Lighthouse:
America’s Lighthouse
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The Lighthouse’s Early Days
After 68 years of service, the useful life of the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse had finally come to an end, so it was dynamited in February 1871. Its foundation and three to six courses of stone from the tower remained in place for a little over a century, until finally a storm washed away the remaining rubble in 1980.
The lighthouse’s distinctive black and white barber pole day markings were added on April 17, 1873. There are four spiral bands on the tower, two white and two black, and each spiral makes exactly one and a half revolutions around the tower. All of the Outer Banks light towers had distinctive light signal patterns to guide ships through the Outer Banks at night, but because the towers were all built of red brick, they were difficult to tell apart by day. The Lighthouse Board remedied this with the following order: “Cape Hatteras tower will be painted in spiral bands, alternately black and white. Cape Lookout tower will be checkered, the checkers being painted alternately black and white. Body's Island tower is now painted black and white horizontal bands.” Currituck Beach was left its natural brick color after it was built in 1875.
The first assaults on the new Cape Hatteras Lighthouse came via two natural disasters. The first natural disaster was in 1879 when lightning struck the lighthouse. The lighthouse was not grounded properly, and the lightning strike cracked the brickwork. The lighthouse was ground to a large metal plate buried in the ground, which adequately protected the tower thereafter. The second natural disaster was in 1886, when an earthquake shook the lighthouse. The lighthouse shook and swayed under the earthquake’s powerful tremors, but the high quality engineering of the lighthouse prevailed. The earthquake did not even put out the light, let alone damage the lighthouse.
The new lighthouse continued to receive supplemental light from the Hatteras Beacon Light, which stood about a mile south of the lighthouse and had assisted the first Cape Hatteras lighthouse before it. Then in 1897, the Lighthouse Service launched Cape Hatteras Lightship No. 71 at the end of Diamond Shoals. The new lightship was launched with the help of improved anchoring technology that was not available when the Lighthouse Service launched the failed Diamond Shoals Lightship of seventy years prior. The Lighthouse Service kept the supplemental Hatteras Beacon Light running in the meantime, presumably to make sure the new Diamond Shoals Lightship would stay in place and do its job properly. It did, so the Hatteras Beacon Light was deactivated in 1898.
In the 1800’s, whale oil was the primary fuel used by all lighthouses, but as whales became scarcer and whale oil consequently became more expensive, the Lighthouse Service moved to using kerosene as a replacement for whale oil. Another technology improvement, the incandescent oil vapor (IOV) lamp, was installed in the lighthouse in 1912. This large version of the modern-day kerosene camping lantern improved the brightness of the light from 27,000 candlepower to 80,000 candlepower, making it visible far beyond the Diamond Shoals. The greater visibility of the IOV lamp combined with new seafaring technology such as steam-powered ships worked together to reduced the number of shipwrecks that occurred at Cape Hatteras, and thus made the Diamond Shoals less of a threat to ships.
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and World War I
The United States entered World War I in 1917, three years after the war had begun in Europe. The following year, Germany launched several German U-boats that prowled Atlantic shipping routes, sinking and pillaging ships and laying mines as they went.
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Diamond Shoals Lightship No. 71 torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1918. |
One of the most notorious of Germany’s World War I U-Boat attacks was undertaken by the U-boat Kapitdnleutnant Weddigen, better known as UB-140. One of Germany’s newest, largest, and best U-Boats, UB-140 launched a naval pillaging campaign that would culminate in the sinking of the Cape Hatteras Lightship. UB-140 was dispatched in June of 1918, and reached the coastal waters of Newfoundland on July 29. There she began working her way southward, successfully destroying two ships as she went. The third ship she destroyed was the Stanley M. Merman, an American schooner loaded with a cargo of coal. This ship went down on August 5, approximately 110 miles from Cape Hatteras. The next day, UB-140 began chasing and firing at the Merak, another ship with a load of cargo. The Merak was able to dodge the torpedo fire by steering in a zigzag trail but in dong so, the ship ran into the Diamond Shoals, where it met its doom. This happened within sight of the Cape Hatteras Lightship No. 71, which radioed a warning to other ships in the area stating, “Enemy submarine shelling unknown ship E.N.E. ¼ mile off lightship.” A total of thirty-one ships received the message and were able to avoid being torpedoed because of it. However, UB-140 also received the message, gave the crew enough time to clear the lightship, and then torpedoed the lightship. Thus ended Cape Hatteras Lightship No. 71’s service at the end of the Diamond Shoals.
Two days later, an American destroyer happened upon UB-140 as it was attacking a Brazilian steamer. The destroyer started firing on UB-140, forcing the U-boat to make an emergency dive. The impact from the pressure change and a resulting loss of fuel forced the vessel to return home to Germany, although she was able to sink one more ship along the way. The Outer Banks lighthouses were “browned out” for the remainder of the war, and Cape Hatteras Lightship No. 72 replaced the sunken Lightship No. 71 in February of 1919.
The Encroaching of the Sea
The Outer Banks is an area that is constantly shifting and changing at the whim of the ocean. Hurricanes close up inlets between the barrier islands and carve new ones, turning former islands like Pea Island and Bodie Island into portions of another island. The ocean has slowly pushed the islands westward over the centuries, and the gradually rising level of the ocean has reduced the size of the barrier islands over time as well.
When the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was built, it sat a safe distance inland from the sea, but the sea had come quite close to it by the time the current Cape Hatteras was being planned. With this in mind, the new Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was set 1600 feet inland when it was built in 1870. The builders assumed that setting the lighthouse this far inland would keep the sea at bay for a long time, but unfortunately the sea began to rise quicker than they anticipated. A slope in the seashore caused the encroachment of the ocean to decrease to 25 feet a year from the 1870’s to the 1910’s. Then in 1919, the sea took an astonishing leap forward, leaving the lighthouse about a football field’s length from the ocean.
Rightly concerned that the sea was about to destroy the lighthouse, private citizens began to plant trees and shrubs in the area in an attempt to hold the sands in place and stop the erosion. The Civilian Conservation Corps, a 1930’s New Deal-period make-work program, continued the conservation efforts on a gargantuan scale, planting thousands of trees, shrubs, and grasses, and rolling out three miles worth of windbreaker fences. The hope was that this would create dunes that would help to hold back the tides. And although it did create dunes, it also pushed back the sands even further because the waves would come crashing into these walls of sand with harder force.
The lighthouse was electrified in 1934, being run by an on-site system of generators and batteries. The oil vapor lamp was replaced by an electric bulb, with the Fresnel lens remaining intact. However, this arrangement would initially only last for two years. By 1936, despite all the efforts to hold back the tides, the sea had prevailed and had come dangerously close to the base of the lighthouse. The painful decision was made to decommission the lighthouse, and the lighthouse was dimmed on May 15, 1936.
Buxton Woods Light Tower
Cape Hatteras continued to be lit, but not by the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The Buxton Woods Light Tower, a tall, spindly, skeleton-frame lighthouse with an airport beacon on top of it, took the place of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and served Cape Hatteras from 1936 to 1950. It stood two miles from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and further inland. The light tower had none of the charm and appeal of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and locals complained that it was an eyesore. In the meantime, the inactive Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which had been under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Lighthouse Service and then the U.S. Coast Guard, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1937.
World War II: Cape Hatteras Becomes “Torpedo Junction”
It was in 1942, during the Buxton Woods tower’s period of activity, that Cape Hatteras experienced its greatest wartime catastrophe. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II. Because Japan and Germany were allies and agreed to support each other, Germany responded by declaring war on the United States.
Just as in World War I, Germany’s U-Boat fleet was the best in the world. The commander-in-chief of the German U-boat fleet, Admiral Karl Dönitz, was convinced that Germany’s U-boats might be able to single-handedly win the war by disrupting trade routes that were the lifeblood of the Allied powers. He immediately went to work on a plan to disrupt the shipping routes on America’s Atlantic coast, especially the important shipping routes that ran to Britain. Germany’s goal was to cripple American trade and American-British trade to the point that it would bring both countries to their knees. Germany knew that America would remember the U-boat attacks of World War I, but planned to strike early and suddenly while they were ill-prepared to fight back. Thus began a eight-month series of attacks that Americans would call “The Battle for Torpedo Junction,” and which Germany would alternately call “The Second Happy Time” and “The Great Atlantic Turkey Shoot”. The greatest losses would be in Cape Hatteras, which earned the nickname of “Torpedo Junction” in this period.
Dönitz’s initial U-boat campaign against the U.S., “Paukenschlag” (or “drum roll”), was a very successful initial surprise attack on the eastern U.S. seaboard. In late December of 1941, Dönitz dispatched five U-Boats to American shores. The U-boats reached American waters in early January of 1942, and started their prowl. In three weeks, the U-boats sank or damaged 40 ships on American and Canadian shores, with the concentration of the plundering taking place near Cape Hatteras. This was accomplished without detailed maps of the area, and with no resistance from American Naval forces, who knew about the potential of attacks thanks to British, but ignored the information.
The surprise attack caught the American defensive with its pants down. The German U-boats arrived to the American 
shoreline to find the lights on the seashore from cars, buildings, and lighthouses silhouetting their ship targets perfectly. Years after the incident, a crew member of the U-123, the most successful of the Paukenschlag boats, was asked if he remembered Cape Hatteras. His response was, “Remember Hatteras? Of course I remember Hatteras. It was remarkable. We would surface at night, we would see the lights on the beach, the targets would be silhouetted perfectly. The tankers would go by, we'd look at [them]. We'd say that one's too small. We really want a bigger target.” The American navy had destroyers at port that could have launched a defensive, but because the military did not act on the information given to them by the British, not one ship went out to defend the merchant ships. The military shifted the blame to merchant mariners and the American people instead. It was at this time that the War Department began the “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships” campaign to convince the American public that German spies were everywhere listening to what they might say. The truth was that there were no German spies listening in for information on when ships were being dispatched. The Germans did not have to look for undercover information about ships; all they had to do was pick a target and fire.
As the Paukenschlag operation came to a close, Dönitz had more U-boats in place to continue the carnage as the Paukenschlag U-boats returned to base. Ship after ship went down over the next six months. Government censorship kept the extent of the losses from the American people, whilst claiming that they were sinking U-boats that in fact returned safely to port.
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The Dixie Arrow, torpedoed off of Cape Hatteras on March 26, 1942. |
While the American public was kept in the dark about the losses on their shores, the ships kept sinking. German U-boats had previously terrorized British shipping routes in 1940 in what they called the “First Happy Time,” and the British learned through that experience that the best way to combat German U-boat fire was for ships to travel together in convoys, and that even convoys without military escorts tended to successfully repel German U-boats. They also recommended a blackout of all coastal lights, including those of the lighthouses. The American military was slow to heed the advice, and in fact initially dismissed the concept of traveling in convoys, claiming that it would only provide the U-boats with more targets.
After a total of 122 ships were lost or damaged by the end of March, the American military finally began planning counter measures against the heavy losses on their shores. First, they adopted the advice of the British and put out the lights on the shores. All of the Outer Banks lighthouses, including the Buxton Woods tower, were blacked out at this time, as were all coastal lights, including those from houses and automobiles. Diamond Shoals Lightship No. 72 was relieved of its duties and replaced with a lighted buoy for the remainder of World War II. Next, they tried a relay system where ships would stop at harbors and mined anchorages at night, and then continue on the next day. Navy ships would guide the ships into and out of the anchorages in order to keep the ships from setting off explosives accidentally. One of these mined anchorages was at Cape Hatteras. However, lone ships were still easy prey for U-boats in the daytime, so the carnage continued. The Navy next enlisted the “Hooligan Navy”, an assortment of boats including pleasure craft and sailing ships that were purchased by the Navy and fitted with depth charges, and then opened a radio detection facility to track the movements and locations of U-boats. The American navy finally sank its first U-boat, the U-85, in this period (April 14 to be exact).
In mid-April of 1942, the Navy finally gave in, took the advice of the British, and started a convoy system. At first, the system began as a limited, daytime-only system that worked in conjunction with the existing relay system, but by mid-May it had developed into a full-fledged convoy system. Just as the British predicted, the German U-boats began looking elsewhere for easier targets. With the help of British anti-submarine craft and trawlers sent over to aid the American Navy, more U-boats were ending up on the ocean floor with their prey, and less were reporting back to home base. The largest portion of the U-boat attacks had ended by June, and the “Battle for Torpedo Junction” finally came to a close in August of 1942. German U-boats sunk 609 ships, or a quarter of all the Allied shipping destroyed in the entire war, during the Battle for Torpedo Junction, having only lost 22 U-boats.
Light Returns to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
The Buxton Woods light tower remained extinguished until the end of World War II, after which it was relit. One year later, in 1946, two incidents occurred that caused the Coast Guard to consider relighting the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and to abandon the Buxton Woods tower. First, the shoreline moved about 1000 feet away from the lighthouse, thanks to some of the previous conservation efforts, combined with a natural receding of the ocean. Second, a maritime accident occurred because of confusion between the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the Buxton Woods tower. A private yacht named the Nautilus used Cape Hatteras Lighthouse as a daymark, unaware that the lighthouse was no longer active as an aid to navigation. When dawn set, the captain assumed that the blinking light that he saw was coming from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, when it was actually coming from the Buxton Woods tower two miles away. This mistake caused the yacht to run aground, where the surf destroyed it. The two factors led the Coast Guard to the conclusion that the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse should again be put to work as an aid to navigation.
On December of 1948, the Coast Guard entered into an agreement with the National Park Service, who had assumed ownership of the lighthouse, to lease the lighthouse from them for twenty years, with an option to renew the at the end of that time. The Coast Guard then worked on restoring the old tower. During the years that the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse had stood idle, it had fallen prey to vandalism, to the point that the Fresnel lens could not be used. The lens was removed and replaced with a forty-inch single beacon fitted with a 1400-watt bulb. The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was successfully restored, and then relit on January 23, 1950. The Buxton Woods tower was decommissioned at the same time. Cape Hatteras’ new airport beacon measured 25,000 candlepower in brightness, and could be seen for 20 miles out to sea in clear weather.
Postwar Evolution of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
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The Diamond Shoals Light. |
The next phase of Cape Hatteras’ life was relatively uneventful, and the lighthouse continued to evolve as technology progressed. The lighted buoy that had lit the end of Diamond Shoals during World War II was replaced with a new Diamond Shoals lightship, the WLV 189. This lightship was built especially for the demands of the Diamond Shoals, and had the distinction of being the first all-welded lightship, hence the “W” in its title. In 1953, the lighthouse and over 3,000 acres of Outer Banks property, including the Cape Hatteras and Bodie Island Lighthouses, became part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which is the first and oldest of all of America’s national seashores.
In 1966, the lightship WLV 189 was replaced with a Texas Tower called the Diamond Shoals Light. The Diamond Shoals Light was stationed 12 miles out to sea, in the midst of the Diamond Shoals. It flashed a warning that could be seen for 17 miles, along with a radio signal that emitted the letters “DS DS DS” repeatedly. In 1977, the Diamond Shoals Light was automated.
In 1972, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse’s single beacon was replaced with a double beacon; each of the beacons measured 36 inches and contained a 1,000-watt bulb. This improvement increased the lighthouse’s brightness from 25,000 candlepower to 80,000 candlepower.
Save the Lighthouse!
But as technology progressed, so did the ocean. The ocean’s slight retreat during World War II reversed, and conservation projects began again, with sand being pumped onto the beach, concrete groins constructed, and sand bags placed in front of the lighthouse.
Although the sea initially only took a few feet a year thanks in part to these conservation efforts, it suddenly took 80 feet of shoreline in 1980, leaping from 150 feet to 70 feet away from the lighthouse. During this same year, a storm also washed away the last remaining rubble from the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
In May 1981, a retired engineer who had invented artificial seaweed called Seascape was granted permission to try using his invention to help stop the erosion. Due in part to the artificial seaweed, the sea retreated 30 feet that year. Then in October, North Carolina governor James Hunt, Jr., and U.S. Representative Jesse Helms founded the Save Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Committee, which sought to raise money privately to preserve the lighthouse. This organization raised $500,000 through private donations and the sale of lighthouse memorabilia, and sponsored the continued work to slow down the erosion, including the planting of more artificial seaweed.
In the meantime, the National Park Service, who owned the tower, sponsored two studies to see what could be feasibly done to protect the lighthouse. The studies presented six different options, which ranged from doing nothing to dismantling the lighthouse in sections and moving it to a safer location. Two options were deemed to be the best. The first was building a concrete revetment around the lighthouse, which would eventually make the plot of ground surrounding it into a small island. The second was a less extreme version of moving the lighthouse, which opted to lift the lighthouse off its foundation and move it via a track system to a safer location.
The revetment solution was chosen initially, and the Army Corps of Engineers began preparing to build the revetment around the lighthouse. But just as funding was secured to begin building, a group of engineers, architects, and scientists called the Move the Lighthouse Committee presented previously unavailable information that showed that moving the lighthouse would be more feasible than originally estimated. The Move the Lighthouse Committee successfully halted the building of the revetment and convinced the National Park Service to change its mind and support moving the lighthouse instead. The NPS officially made the decision to opt for moving the lighthouse in December of 1989.
A hot debate then ensued as to which was the better alternative. Those for the move argued that the revetment would be just as susceptible to storms as the lighthouse, and that it would therefore eventually become as vulnerable as the lighthouse it was protecting. Atop this, if the sea were to surround the revetment, saltwater would seep around the lighthouse and cause its oak plank foundation to degenerate. With the lighthouse surrounded by the revetment, it would be difficult if not impossible to move it out of harm’s way, which would still lead to the eventual destruction of the lighthouse. Those for the revetment argued that the lighthouse’s location was as important as the building itself. One opponent of the move even claimed that moving it would be the equivalent of moving the London Bridge to Arizona. Others against the move were concerned that the lighthouse would not be able to take the stress of the move and would be damaged or destroyed in the process. Most of the locals were against moving the lighthouse, and “Save Not Move” bumper stickers became popular items on Hatteras Island.
As the embittered feud raged on, the ocean’s threat became more and more imminent. Efforts to stop the erosion had kept the sea 120 feet away by 1997, but scientists warned that one good storm would be all it would take to topple the lighthouse. A 1998 report by the North Carolina State University stated, “Move it soon—by spring 1999—or see it destroyed.”
The Move of the Century
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Preparing to move the lighthouse, 1999. |
One year of research went into the move of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Preparations were begun in December of 1998, and the lighthouse was dimmed in February 1999. Congress had already approved $2 million to move the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, but total costs were estimated at $11.8 million. President Bill Clinton convinced Congress to approve the remaining $9.8 million required to move the lighthouse in early 1999. Officials from Dare County (the county that Cape Hatteras resides in), who were against the move, tried to sue the National Park Service to halt the move, but the case was dismissed. The move was now rolling forward regardless of what its opponents thought.
The 4,400-ton lighthouse was to be moved to a location 2,900 feet to the southwest. This location was 1,600 feet inland from the ocean, which was the exact same distance the lighthouse stood from the ocean when it was originally built in 1870. From February to April 1999, the keepers’ quarters and assistant keepers’ quarters were moved to the new location, where they awaited the move of the lighthouse.
For the lighthouse’s move, a track between the two locations was constructed, being graded, covered with gravel, compacted, and then covered with oak planks. The lighthouse was then cut from its old foundation, and raised eight feet by one hundred 100-ton capacity jacks. A carriage system and a platform made of steel beams were then placed underneath it. The lighthouse was to be moved along its “runway” on a series of steel tracks, which would be dismantled behind the lighthouse and put in place in front of the lighthouse as it moved along its path. Push jacks clamped to the tracks would push the lighthouse forward.
10,000 people came out on June 17, 1999 to see the beginning of what would become known as “The Move of the Century.” At 3:05 pm, the lighthouse was given its first push, and by the end of the working day, the lighthouse had moved forward ten feet. As the move continued, the lighthouse gained more and more speed, to the point that its slow forward movement was visible to the naked eye. Many days, the total movement forward was 125 feet, and the best day was 300 feet. Crowds of up to 20,000 would come out every day to watch the work take place. As the lighthouse reached the end of its journey, the crew slowed the lighthouse’s movement until it stood suspended overtop a new concrete foundation that had been built for it. It was carefully lowered onto the new foundation. The lighthouse’s journey was completed on July 9, and had taken 23 days. The lighthouse was then secured to its foundation and relit on November 12, 1999.
Back at the beach were the lighthouse once stood, a circle of foundation stones still stands where the lighthouse used to be. Each of the 83 stones is inscribed with the names of the lighthouse keepers who had kept the lighthouse. The lighthouse can be seen in the distance at its new location over half a mile away. The foundation itself has been removed from the ground.
Visiting the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is open to the public for climbing. From the third Friday of April to Columbus Day in mid-October, aspiring climbers can purchase tickets onsite starting at 8:00 am. Climbing begins at 9:00 am. The lighthouse closes at 5:30 pm in the summer, and at 4:30 pm in the spring and fall. The keepers’ quarters and assistant keepers’ quarters have been renovated into a gift shop and museum. Click here for more detailed information.
Experience Cape Hatteras Lighthouse:
Close-up photos from throughout the lighthouse:
http://www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com/outer_banks_lighthouses.htm
Lighthouses and the early growth of the federal government:
http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol16/tnm_16_3_01-14.pdf
Interesting article on Alexander Hamilton:
http://www.wheelmeon.org/lighthouses.html
