Just a Few of My Feathered Friends

     When you are bored I would suggest getting out your camera and playing.  Today I snappen just a few shots of birds by my deck.  I didn't even have to go outdoors.  Try it, you'll like it!

       

      Thank you for sharing my passion!

The Cape Henry Lighthouses

      The old masonry light at Cape Henry was a long time in coming. For seventy years the Colonial Assembly of Virginia heed and hawed, passing resolutions and attempting to convince reluctant authorities in Maryland and Great Britain to assist in the construction of a beacon at this vital Cape. Standing at the juncture of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Henry is the entry point to the ports of Norfolk, Newport News, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. For many years preceding the birth of our nation, pirates were far more appreciative of the importance of Cape Henry than was the Virginia House of Burgesses. Lacking a proper light, beacon fires were used as a makeshift navigational aid. Unscrupulous men would capture those in charge of the beacon and move the light southward to bring the ships aground. As the wreckage continued to mount, men like Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood petitioned the Assembly to take action. In 1720 this body resolved to construct the light, "Provided the Province of Maryland will contribute..."

     Receiving little but passive cooperation from their neighbors, the Virginia Assembly was further hampered by the reluctance of the British Board of Trade to grants its permission to proceed. Since the lighthouse was to be financed in part by shipping duties, the consent of this August body was required. Governor Spotswood argued a strong case, describing the plight of merchants too frightened to venture into the Chesapeake during foul weather. He reasoned: "If such a lighthouse were built ships might then boldly venture, there being water enough and a good channell within little more than a musquett shote of the place where this lighthouse may be placed." Yet it was only in 1758, and at the behest of concerned tobacco merchants, that the Board threw their weight behind the project.

     In 1772 the Maryland assembly got on board as well, and the project was underway. Workers’ quarters and stables were built and over 4,000 tons of stone were delivered to Cape Henry. In the summer of 1775, however, the initial allotment of funds was nearly depleted and an additional 5,000 pounds was requested. At this point The American Revolutionary War intervened, and the valuable stones lay forgotten and buried in drifts of sand while more pressing matters were attended to.

      In many respects the Old Cape Henry lighthouse is inextricably linked with the birth of our nation. The Aquia sandstone for its base was gathered from the same Virginia quarries that provided material for Mount Vernon, the U.S. Capitol Building and the White House. The lighthouse was commissioned at the first session of the first Congress in 1789, when an act was passed which placed the lighthouse service under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Treasury. Included in this act was the provision for the construction at Cape Henry, giving it the distinction of the first lighthouse ordered and financed by the federal government. The Virginia Assembly, mindful of its own difficulties in building the lighthouse, moved rapidly and ceded two acres in the County of Princess Anne to the United States. President Washington himself took an interest in the construction, noting in a 1790 diary entry that he had spoken with Alexander Hamilton (the Secretary of the Treasury), "respecting the appointment of Superintendents of the Light House, Buoys, etc, and for building one at Cape Henry."

     Secretary Hamilton contracted with a New York bricklayer named John McComb, Jr. to undertake the project at a cost of $15,200. The contract called for McComb, with "all convenient speed, (to) build and finish in a good workman like manner a Light House of Stone, Faced with hewn or hammer dressed Stone...from the bottom of the Water Table up to the top of the Stone Work." The contract also specified a two-story frame house of 20 feet square, for the keeper, as well as a buried vault for the storage of lamp oil. The construction proved to be a difficult task, though Hamilton’s representative on the scene describes a highly motivated and uncomplaining John McComb: "He is persevering and merits much for his industry, the drifting of the sand is truly vexatious, for in an instant there came down fifty cart loads at least, in the foundation after it was cleaned for laying the stone, which he bore with great patience and immediately set to work and removed it without a murmur as to the payment for the additional work..." The builder did have to be compensated an additional $2,500, however, as the foundation had to be laid at twenty feet rather than the planned thirteen, owing to the sandy condition of the ground. McComb estimated that he would finish the lighthouse by October of 1792, and this is indeed when it was first lighted.

      Engineer Benjamin Latrobe visited Cape Henry in 1798 and provided us with detailed descriptions and sketches of the light in operation. One of his drawings shows Old Cape Henry complete with the weather vane, ventilator and lightning rods called for in the contract with McComb. Latrobe described the lighthouse as "an octangular truncated pyramid of eight sides, rising 90 feet to the light...and six or seven hundred yards from the beach..." This design is basically the same as that of the Cape Henlopen, Delaware tower constructed in 1767. The tower is twenty-six feet in diameter at its base, and the walls there are six feet thick. At its summit it shrinks to a diameter of sixteen feet. The tower is composed of an attractive rosy Rappahannock sandstone which caught Latrobe’s fancy, although he did find fault with the structure on two key points. First he decried "the unpardonable fault of a wooden staircase, which being necessarily soaked with oil exposes the light to the perpetual risk of destruction of fire." He also sympathized with the plight of the keeper, noticing that the lighthouse, which sits at the summit of a 56- foot-high sandy dune, creates a whirlwind about it which "licks up the sand...and heaps it around in the form of a basin. The sandy rim, while it protects the keeper from the storms, renders his habitation one of the dreariest abodes imaginable."

 
     Like most of its comrades, the light at Cape Henry underwent numerous repairs and technological upgrades in the ensuing years. In 1835 a new house was built for the use of the keeper. In 1841 the lantern was completely redone by Winslow Lewis with eighteen new lamps with brass burners and eighteen reflectors. This work was performed at a cost of $4,000 and included replacement of the wooden deck near the summit with a soapstone deck laid over a brick arch. In 1844 a 15-foot-high wall was built around the tower’s base and that area was paved over. In 1855 a fog bell tower was added and in 1857 the reflectors were replaced with a second-order Fresnel lens. In this same year the tower also received a new brick lining. Other innovations included the types of oil used in the lantern; these varied from sperm whale oil to cabbage, lard and kerosene oil, which was adopted near the turn of the century.

     The American Civil War temporarily put Cape Henry out of commission. In April of 1861 men from Princes Anne County seized the tower and destroyed the lamps and lens. It is likely that the Confederate states (including Virginia), feared the formidable sea power of the Union and sought to make it difficult for them to enter the vital Chesapeake. the tower was placed under military guard in 1863 and was back in operation once again.

     In 1864 an inspector finally corroborated Latrobe’s observation, remarking that Cape Henry was endangered by its oil soaked wooden staircase, which was at this point "greatly decayed and insecure." The inspector recommended a cast-iron spiral staircase, and this was subsequently installed. The tower remained strong for eight more years, but in 1872 the Light House Board noticed large cracks from the "base upward" on six of the eight masonry walls comprising the octagonal structure. The inspector concluded that some of these cracks were inconsequential, but those on the north and south faces were compounded by the presence of windows. The inspector concluded that the tower was unsafe and in danger of being thrown into the sea. It took six additional years for the funds of $75,000 to be appropriated for a new lighthouse, and in 1881 keeper Jay Edwards transferred his attentions to the new cast-iron structure. Standing 350 feet southeast from the old tower, it was lighted on December 15, 1881.

       "Somewhat to the surprise of everyone, the Old Cape Henry lighthouse has neither crumbled nor been swept away in a storm." Today it stands in silent idleness, next to and somewhat higher than its replacement, owing to its location on the summit of the dune. It remains an indelible landmark, and in 1896 was graced with the presence of the members of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA). They placed upon the old light a plaque commemorating it as the site of the first landing in 1607 of the English colonists on Virginia soil. It thereby became the predecessor of the Cape Henry Memorial, "to which its shadow will reach on a late summer afternoon." On June 18, 1930, the U.S. Congress ceded the light and land to the APVA, to be preserved in perpetuity as an historic landmark.

     In 1939, the Old Cape Henry Lighthouse was selected as the site to celebrate 150 years of the Lighthouse Service, and it was this same year that lighthouse maintenance was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Coast Guard. Today the lighthouse grounds are encompassed by Fort Story Military Reservation, and are a noteworthy destination for visitors to the nearby Colonial National Historic Park. Old Cape Henry is the third oldest lighthouse still standing in the United States.

     Cape Henry Lighthouse was closed after the August 23rd earthquake that rattled much of the eastern seaboard, but after inspections, structural engineers determined the cracked tower posed now safety danger to the public, and it was reopened on October 8th.

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More Spring Blossoms

     I challenged myself to see what I could find in just ten minutes.  Below please enjoy what I waas able to find.

 

A Few More Spring Blossoms

The St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida

     St. Augustine, the oldest permanent European settlement on the North American continent, is affectionately called the Old City. Don Juan Ponce de Leon discovered La Florida, the “Land of Flowers," in 1513 for Spain. Roughly fifty years later, Spain made a serious attempt at colonizing Florida, when Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles was dispatched to the area. Menendez arrived off the Florida coast on August 28, 1565, the Feast Day of St. Augustine, and soon the fledgling colony of St. Augustine was established.

     Near St. Augustine the Matanzas River empties into the Atlantic, flowing past barrier islands named Anastasia and Conch. On the northern end of Anastasia Island, several towers have been built through the years overlooking the inlet that leads to St. Augustine. Early on, the Spanish constructed a wooden lookout tower. Later, a more permanent tower was built using blocks of coquina that was formed as large deposits of shells were cemented together over time by calcium carbonate. Spain ceded control of Florida to the English in 1763 to regain control of Cuba. However, under the 1783 Treaty of Paris, control of Florida was returned to the Spanish, who controlled Florida until they relinquished it to the United States in 1821.

     As St. Augustine was the leading port in the newly acquired Territory of Florida, the U.S. Government worked quickly to establish a light to mark the inlet. John Rodman, the customs collector at St. Augustine, proposed that the old Spanish tower be converted into a lighthouse. However, after a thorough inspection, the tower was deemed unsound, and a new tower was built nearby. The old tower might have served as a lighthouse temporarily, but in 1824, the new brick tower, rising to a height of seventy-three feet, was placed in service.

    The lighthouse was outfitted with a fourth-order Fresnel lens in 1855, increasing the light’s range. In 1859, Keeper Joseph Andreu fell 60 feet to his death while whitewashing the tower. Joseph's wife, Maria de los Dolores Mestre Andreu, took over as keeper and served until the light was extinguished shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War.

     The tower remained dark until after the conflict ended, and by that time, it was clearly evident that erosion was endangering the tower. A coquina breakwater was hastily built to retard the encroaching sea. Still, it was determined that a new lighthouse was needed and a five-acre tract, located a half-mile inland, was acquired.

     Plans for the new lighthouse were drawn up by Paul Pelz, Chief Draftsman of the Lighthouse Board and who would later be one of two architects responsible for designing the Library of Congress. Construction on the lighthouse began in 1871, but the walls had grown to a height of just a few feet when funds were exhausted. Work resumed after additional funding was obtained, and the lighthouse commenced operation on October 15, 1874. The tower was built using brick from Alabama, granite from Georgia, iron work forged in Philadelphia, and a first-order Fresnel lens crafted in France. The small building attached to the base of the tower originally housed a keeper’s office on one side and an area for storing the large drums of lard oil, used in the lighthouse’s lamp, on the other. When the light was converted to kerosene in 1855, a new oil house was built a safe distance away from the tower to contain the more volatile fuel.

      While work was underway on the new tower, the Lighthouse Board submitted the following report: "A keeper's dwelling will be required, as there are not sufficient or proper accommodations at the old lighthouse for three keepers and the distance is too great from the new tower to insure proper attendance, even if the present dwelling were suitable." The keepers continued to live at the old lighthouse until a duplex, built just east of the new lighthouse, was finished in 1876.

     Constructing the new lighthouse proved to be a prudent move as the old tower toppled into the sea on August 22, 1880.

     With three keepers stationed at the lighthouse, the day was divided into three eight-hour watches. The primary responsibility of the keepers was to care for the light, which required lugging a 30-pound can of lard oil up the tower’s 214 stairs and periodically winding up the 275-pound weight that revolved the lens. In addition, the keepers maintained all the station’s buildings, provided tours to visitors, and when necessary even served as lifesavers. This later function is demonstrated by the following two entries from the station’s logbook:

    Schooner Dream went on sand bar near old lighthouse at 3 AM. Nine passengers rescued by keepers. Lost anchor, sails, and small boat. Vessel floated off in damaged condition.
November 13, 1890

    At 5 PM, the steamer Star Spangled Banner foundered on the bar. A total wreck. Crew were rescued by keeper.

     Life at the station was full of varied activities for the keeper’s children as well. One noted story involves Cardell "Cracker" Daniels, son of keeper C.D. Daniels. Cracker would regularly use the tall tower in his backyard as a launching pad for his model airplanes and parachutes. After safely parachuting several inanimate objects off the tower, Cracker decided it was time for a live experiment. Cracker’s sister, Wilma, had a cat named Smokey, who was selected as the paratrooper. After a couple of practice descents from lesser heights, the reluctant cat was tossed from the top of the tower with the parachute strapped to its back. When the frightened feline reached the ground, it quickly fled from the area. Unaware of Cracker’s antics, Wilma searched far and near for her cat over the next several days. It was about a month before Smokey finally returned home, but it wasn’t until several years later that the family learned the real reason for the cat’s disappearance.

     The keeper’s dwelling was electrified in 1925, but the tower was not wired up until 1936. Electricity lessened the keeper’s responsibilities, eventually leading to the de-staffing of the lighthouse in 1955. Local lamplighters were employed to keep an eye on the light, and the dwelling was rented out for several years. Full automation of the light occurred around 1971, when a sun relay was installed atop the tower to activate and deactivate the light.

     In the late 1960’s the dwelling was boarded up, declared surplus and put on the auction block. St. Johns County was negotiating the purchase of the dwelling when it was completely gutted by an arson’s fire on July 28, 1970. The fire did reduce the purchase price, but made restoring the structure a daunting task. The county considered tearing down the dwelling, but the Junior Service League of St. Augustine, founded in 1935 by a group of women interested in improving social, educational, and cultural conditions of St. Johns County, offered to take on the restoration project in 1980. Eight years later, the dwelling was opened as a maritime museum. The Junior Service League next signed a lease with the Coast Guard for the lighthouse, and by 1994 the tower was fully restored and opened to the public for climbing.

     In 1986, bullets shot from a 30-06 rifle shattered nineteen prisms in the historic Fresnel lens. Hank Mears, then caretaker of the light, called the FBI. During the ensuing investigation, powder burns were discovered on a nearby palm tree. The FBI did find the person responsible, but the senseless act put the lens out of commission. An airport beacon was placed atop the tower, while the options of removing the lens or repairing it were debated. Fortunately, a grant was obtained, replacement prisms and bulls-eye panels were recreated, and the lens resumed operation.

     *The St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum was incorporated as a separate entity from the Junior Service League in January 1998. A new visitors’ center was added to the site in 2000 to help accommodate the large crowds who come to learn about the lighthouse and to climb to the top of the tower for the expansive view. The lighthouse was awarded to St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum in 2002 under the provisions of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000.

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The Ponce De Leon Lighthouse Near Daytona Beach in Florida

     Author Stephen Crane published his Civil War masterpiece The Red Badge of Courage in 1895, three decades after the conclusion of this divisive conflict. In 1896, an editor provided Crane an opportunity to experience battle firsthand by covering the budding rebellion in Cuba. While en route to the island aboard the 123-foot S. S. Commodore, which was carrying a load of firearms, Crane was shipwrecked off the Floridian Coast near Daytona Beach during a gale. Abandoning the sinking vessel, Crane, the captain, and two sailors, set out in a small lifeboat. Providently, the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet marked the distant coast for the hapless quartet. Still, the group had to endure twenty-seven hours of frantic rowing and frequent bailing before they were able to bring their craft safely to shore. Crane’s story on the Cuban conflict would have to wait, but the harrowing hours spent in the lifeboat provided an alternate firsthand experience that would develop into his most successful short story “The Open Boat.”

     Stephen Crane and his companions were certainly not the first to be served by the Mosquito Inlet Lighthouse, and the tower whose beacon they saw was not the first to stand over the area. Mosquito Inlet served as the exit point for two rivers: the Halifax River to the north and the Hillsborough River, later named the Indian River, to the south, and several plantations in the area relied on the inlet to carry their cotton, rice, and oranges to distant ports. In 1830, William DePeyster authored a petition to Congress signed by thirty-eight other plantation and ship owners from Mosquito County relating that they “were suffering in considerable privations, and difficulties, in the trade to this quarter in consequence of there being no Light House at Mosquito Inlet.” Congress responded with funding for a lighthouse on the southern side of the inlet, and on October 31, 1834 Winslow Lewis was awarded the contract for its construction. A 45-foot, conical, brick tower and a dwelling were hastily completed by the end of February 1835 at a cost of $7,494.     

    The first keeper, William H. Williams didn’t have much work to do, for the government had failed to provide oil for the eleven lamps in his lantern room. During a violent storm in October 1835, the dwelling was washed into the inlet and the foundation of the tower was undercut. Soon thereafter, the station also suffered the effects of the Second Seminole Indian War when a raiding party visited New Smyrna and ravaged the lighthouse. It is reported that Chief Coacoochee procured one of the reflectors from the lantern and used it in his headdress during the Battle of Dunn Lawton fought near the lighthouse. This is unlikely, as the reflectors were swept out to sea in the October storm, but the Seminole leader might have found a reflector that had washed up on a nearby shore. Repair work on the crippled tower was not possible during this time due to the troubled relations with the Native Americans, and the lighthouse eventually collapsed in April of 1836.

     The Florida legislation sent a resolution to Congress on February 8, 1847 requesting a new lighthouse for Mosquito Inlet. This request, however, was not acted upon, and the matter would not be revisited until after the Civil War. The Lighthouse Board’s annual report of 1870 stated that the level of commerce passing through Mosquito Inlet did not by itself justify a major light, but since the inlet was positioned roughly at the center of the 110-mile stretch of unlit coastline between the St. Augustine and Cape Canaveral Lighthouses, a lighthouse at the inlet that would serve as both a coastal and a harbor light was merited. The board’s request that same year for $60,000 to construct the lighthouse was not funded.

      The Lighthouse Board repeated its request for a lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet each of the next four years, but to no avail. In 1882, the request was renewed, but now the estimated construction cost had risen to $200,000. Congress finally relented, but it did not supply the funding in one lump sum. Rather, payments were painfully strung out over the next five years, hampering work on the light station.

     A site for the lighthouse was selected on the north side of the inlet to prevent the southward moving inlet from claiming a second tower. Orville E. Babcock, chief engineer of the sixth lighthouse district, was to oversee construction of the lighthouse. Tragically, on June 2, 1884, the vessel transporting Babcock to shore overturned, and he drowned in the inlet.
 
     Jared Smith assumed responsibility in Babcock’s stead, and work on the project soon commenced. Over a million bricks would be used to construct the lighthouse, which slowly grew to its preordained height of 175 feet, six-and-a-half inches from the ground to the tip of the lightning rod. The only taller brick lighthouse in the country is Cape Hatteras. A brick foundation, extending twelve feet below ground, supports the massive tower which consists of an inner and outer wall connected by spoke-like interstitial walls. The outer wall tapers as it rises, while the inner wall maintains a constant twelve-foot diameter, leaving room for the 194-step, circular stairway. 

       Originally, a multi-family residence was considered for the station, but instead, separate dwellings were built for the head keeper and the two assistants to afford them more privacy. The station is beautifully laid out in the shape of a cross, with the head keeper’s dwelling built at the end of a brick walkway directly east of the lighthouse, while the first and second assistant keeper dwellings are symmetrically positioned north and south of the walkway. The largest dwelling is a square structure with a chimney rising from the center of a double-hipped roof, and, of course, it belonged to the principal keeper. The identical assistant keeper’s dwellings are rectangular with chimneys at each end of the pitched roofs. A brick woodshed with attached privy was built behind each of the dwellings, and a large oil storage building was later added just north of the tower.
 
     When the tower was completed, a first-order Fresnel lens, constructed in 1867 by the Parisian firm of Barbier and Fenestre, was assembled in the lantern room. The lens was somewhat unique in that the landward side of the lens was composed of three concave reflecting panels. The light was exhibited for the first time on November 1, 1887, by head keeper William Rowlinski, who had most recently served as first assistant keeper at the Cape Romain Lighthouse.

     Rowlinski served at the Mosquito Inlet Lighthouse for just over six years, but even with the separation provided by the detached residences, he still did not get along with some of his assistant keepers. The disputes escalated to the point that the Lighthouse Board swapped Rowlinski with the head keeper at Georgetown, South Carolina. Thomas Patrick O'Hagan thus became the second head keeper at Mosquito Inlet. O’Hagan arrived at the station with his wife and four kids. When he was transferred to Amelia Island twelve years later, his posterity numbered eleven.
 
     Though accurate, the name Mosquito Inlet proved a deterrent to increased settlement in the area. To correct this problem, the name was officially changed to Ponce de Leon Inlet in honor of the famed explorer, and the lighthouse became the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse.

      The lighthouse was electrified in 1933, and the first-order Fresnel lens was replaced by a third-order lens relocated from the discontinued Sapelo Lighthouse in Georgia. This new lens rotated producing six flashes in a fifteen second period followed by a fifteen-second eclipse. The Coast Guard assumed responsibility for the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse in 1939 and kept a crew at the station until the lighthouse was fully automated in 1953.
 
    After automation, the station dwellings sat unoccupied until the Town of Ponce Inlet was incorporated in 1963 and began using one of the assistant keeper’s dwellings as a town hall. The Coast Guard abandoned the lighthouse in 1970 in favor a steel skeletal light tower located at their station on the south side of the inlet. At the urging of concerned residents, the Town took over the deed to the property, and the citizens formed the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association to manage the facility.
 
     The third-order lens was removed from the tower in 1971 and shipped to the Coast Guard Academy Museum in New London, Connecticut. After a museum was established at the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse, the third-order lens was returned for display. When in 1982 a newly constructed high-rise condominium obscured the light at the Coast Guard station, the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse was outfitted with a modern optic and reactivated.
 
     The Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse is one of the finest light stations in the United States and merits an extended visit. The dwellings now house exhibits on the lighthouse keepers and families. Even the modern redbrick gift shop is historically significant as it was constructed using the plans for the multi-family dwelling that was never built. A lens exhibit building was constructed on-site in 1995 and now houses the revolving first-order lens from the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse. In 2003, the fixed first-order lens originally used in the Ponce de Leon Lighthouse was also placed on display, after it was returned by Mystic Seaport. Two smaller replica lenses are also on display.
 
     The station’s historical value continues to grow thanks to the tireless efforts of the preservation association. The third-order Fresnel lens was placed back in the lantern room in 2004, providing the public a rare chance to see an active, revolving, Fresnel lens. The lighthouse’s connection to the past was further strengthened when the wreck of the S.S. Commodore, which had carried Stephen Crane, was located and artifacts retrieved from the wreckage placed on display at the station. The lighthouse continues today as a Private Aid to Navigation, maintained by the museum's staff.

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A Few Spring Blossoms

     My new macro ring light came today so I had to play with it before the rains hit.  Since it is such a bleak day with worse to come, I thought I would share a little color with you.  I hope it brightens your day just a little bit.  Enjoy!