History of lighthouses

Tower of Hercules, a Roman lighthouse at La Coruna modelled on the Pharos

Ancient Roman lighthouses are among the best preserved, and best known examples of lighthouses from Ancient History. A famous example is the Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Spain, and there is another at Dover, England which still stands to about half its original height. It must be remarked that lighthouses existed since the Hellenistic period, but it is mainly the Roman ones which have survived. One of the oldest lighthouses in North America must be El Castillo in Tulum in Mexico. This aid to navigation guided ancient Mayan mariners from the Caribbean Sea through a dangerous reef passage and probably dates from the 13th century. Other ancient Mayan lighthouse sites have been identified on Cozumel and Isla Mujeres.

Lighthouses in ancient times

Graphic reconstruction of the Pharos according to a 2006 study

Before the development of clearly defined ports mariners were guided by fires built on hilltops. Since raising the fire would improve the visibility, placing the fire on a platform became a practice that led to the development of the lighthouse. In antiquity, the lighthouse functioned more as an entrance marker to ports than as a warning signal for reefs and promontories, unlike many modern lighthouses.

Roman period

Ancient evidence exists in many forms. Written descriptions and drawings of the Pharos of Alexandria provide information about lighthouses, but the tower itself collapsed during an earthquake many centuries after its construction in the 3rd century BC by the Greeks. The intact Tower of Hercules at A Coruña and the ruins of the Dover lighthouse give insight into construction; other evidence about lighthouses exists in of depictions on coins and mosaics, of which many represent the lighthouse at Ostia. Coins from Alexandria, Ostia, and Laodicea in Syria exist.

The Roman lighthouse at Dover Castle

Working

While the evidence that exists provides insight into the exterior structure of these buildings, there are many gaps in evidence concerning less visible aspects. The remains at A Coruña and Dover help determine how each lighthouse functioned, though one must make some assumptions to determine how beacons were illuminated. Presumably locally available fuels will have included wood and probably coal to keep a fire going continuously during the night, and there is a large chimney leading to the top room at the Temple of Hercules. The example from Dover has been converted at some stage into a simple watchtower. Lighthouse keepers may have added combustible liquids to reduce the expenditure on fuel and keep the light steady during gales, but little information exists in the literature from the time. It may also be possible that the light was protected from the wind by glass windows, and large mirrors may have assisted in projecting the light beam as far as possible. It is likely that lighthouses would have required considerable labour for transporting the fuel and maintaining the flame. At Cape Hatteras in the 1870s, one keeper and two assistants kept themselves busy by tending more sophisticated flames from powerful oil lamps.

Images on coins

While artistic representations assist us in re-creating a visual image of lighthouses, they present many problems. Depictions of lighthouses on Roman coins, inscriptions, carvings, and mosaics present an inconsistent view of the actual appearances of the structures. Most show a building with two or three stories that decreases in width as it ascends. The limited size of coins could cause the producer of the coin to alter the image to fit on the surface. The similarity in depictions of lighthouses is symbolic rather than accurate representations of specific beacons.

Later lighthouses

Illustration of the Bell Rock Lighthouse by "Miss Stevenson", in the Biographical Sketch of the Late Robert Stevenson: Civil Engineer by his son Alan Stevenson, 1851

The modern era of lighthouses is marked by the building of the first Eddystone lighthouse by Henry Winstanley in 1695 and the Bell Rock Lighthouse in Scotland by Robert Stevenson in 1810.

American Lighthouses

Many of the earliest lighthouses predate the birth of the nation. The first lighthouse in America arrived in 1716 in Boston Harbor. Following the introduction in Boston, other North Atlantic cities built them as well. The lighthouses were built to foster the growing maritime economy of the colonies. The North Atlantic waters were a “superhighway” for ships, and lighthouses served as the signs, signals and direction for the crowded open waters. They were essential for navigation as the marshy coast lines from Delaware to North Carolina often made navigation difficult while the New England coast remained treacherous due to its rocky shores. Navigation on the North Atlantic coast was essential to the growth and continued survival of the British colonies in America, and the development of the lighthouse system with their sounds and signals from the shore allowed the shipping industry to evolve smoothly with the colonies reaping the benefits. Today there are lighthouses all along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as the Great Lakes region.

In 1716, the colony of Massachusetts built the first lighthouse in America in Boston Harbor on Little Brewster Island. It was known as Boston Light. The lighthouse was kept by George Worthylake, the nation’s first lightkeeper. Boston Light was the site where the first foghorn was used in a lighthouse. The third keeper John Hayes asked that “a great gun be placed on the Said Island to answer ships in a Fogg.” They used a cannon as the fog horn and installed it in 1719. In the 1770s, the lighthouse suffered damage when the British took over the island during the American Revolution. They burned the wooden parts of the lighthouse and later set charges to blow it up when the Americans regained control of the island in 1776. This was an attempt to make navigation more difficult for enemy troops because the light was essential to navigating the waters. The tower was rebuilt in 1783. Today the lighthouse is preserved by a special act of Congress to serve as a monument to the Lighthouse Service, ensuring that the lighthouse will always be manned and cared for by human hands to uphold the traditions of lightkeeping.

Onshore lights, or lighthouses built on land, made up the majority of the earliest lighthouses in America. These were made from a variety of materials and exhibited various architectural styles. Wood, stone masonry, brick, cast-iron plates, skeletal and reinforced concrete make up some of the most common types of lighthouse construction materials. Wood lighthouses were common before the nineteenth century because wood was readily available. It was phased out as a primary material due to the susceptibility to fire. Masonry towers were made from rubblestone, cut stone, brick and concrete. The oldest standing masonry tower in the U.S. is Sandy Hook Lighthouse (1764) in New Jersey. The stone towers were typically built in the form of a cone.

The screw-pile lighthouse marked an important architectural development for lighthouses in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Carolina coasts. It was a type of offshore construction invented by Irish engineer Alexander Mitchell in the 1830s and first used on the Thames. It made its way to the Chesapeake Bay because of the estuarial soft bottom which allowed wrought-iron piles to be inserted for the lighthouse structure. Inexpensive to build, easy to construct, and quick to build, it marked a significant improvement over the standard straightpile construction type. The screwpile was normally a complex hexagonal structure that sat on six to eight outer piles and one central pile, all of which were screwed in place. The first screw pile light in the United States was Brandywine Shoal in the Delaware Bay. They became especially popular after the Civil War when the Lighthouse Board approved a policy to replace lighthouses in the interior. Around 100 of these complex structures were built on the Atlantic coast line from the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays down to the Florida Keys and Gulf of Mexico. Other common types of offshore lighthouses included caisson, crib, pier/breakwater, and Texas towers.

One of the most famous screw pile was Thomas Point Shoal Light. Built in the Chesapeake Bay, it has been called “the finest example of a screw pile cottage anywhere in the world.” Its main purpose was to warn vessels that would require deeper water about the shallow sandbars. Screw pile lights were especially vulnerable to storms and ice. Ice and violent winds could cause the lantern dismount or break. Thomas Point is currently the last remaining screw pile light in the Chesapeake Bay that stands in its original location for this reason. It was also equipped with a foghorn, something first used in Boston Light. It remained manned into the late 20th century at which point it was automated by the United States Coast Guard, something that happened to most lighthouses in the United States over the course of the 20th century as technology made it less essential for lighthouses to be maintained by human keepers.

The waters of the Pacific Northwest offer great amounts of coastal diversity. The Pacific Ocean and the estuaries of the coastal rivers mark an area of huge waves, high winds, towering cliff faces, rolling sand dunes and pounding surf. The ocean is busy with fisherman while the rivers are important to the region’s lumber industry. The coast of California is very rugged and often blanketed in thick fog, making it especially deadly. Lighthouses started being built on the Pacific coast as settlers moved west in search of gold in California. Life for lighthouse keepers on the Pacific coast could often be a treacherous experience. On St. George Reef off of California, five keepers were kept at all times because it was so difficult to operate. No families were allowed to live there. Weather conditions could be so bad that contact with the shore might be cut off for an entire month or more.

A fine example of the lighthouses on the western coast is Tillamook Rock Light. The architecture of Tillamook has been called a tremendous engineering feat and one of the most daring of the nineteenth century. Located 1.1 miles off the coast of Cannon Beach, Oregon, it is isolated and located in an area where turbulent and stormy seas are common. It took 575 days to build and cost one worker his life. Built on a rock, the plans initially face skepticism for being wasteful and foolish. Crewman had to blast away tons of rock in conditions that included fog, rain and wind. To keep passing ships away during the blasting, the head of construction had to toss cartridges of exploding powder over the water to warn the ships. The light was a first-order Fresnel lens which stood 134 feet above the water. The lighthouse itself was used solely for lightkeeping; the fog signal and other sirens were kept in a separate area. No women or children were ever allowed on Tillamook due to its dangerous conditions. The lighthouse was often “barraged by storms and the iron roof and lantern panes were often cracked or shattered from flying rock debris.” Men sometimes had to work overnight in water up to their necks to replace or repair the Fresnel lens.

See also

• Architecture of ancient Rome
• Roman engineering
• Roman technology