LIGHTSHIPS

Frying Pans Shoals, North Carolina

Ambrose Channel, off Sandy Hook, New Jersey

Entrance to Boston Harbor

By Vinny Del Giudice

The U.S. Lighthouse Service, which merged with the Coast Guard in 1939, guided mariners along reefs and through channels with a fleet of rugged little floating lighthouses - the lightship fleet.

With handles like "Frying Pan," "Hen and Chicken," "Nantucket" and "Ambrose," the stout vessels were considered "essential partners with America's lighthouses," according to the National Park Service, and posted in the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico.

Their lamps atop masts burned bright and their horns blared loudly and continuously in fog. Their hulls were painted red with their names - signifying shoals etc. that they marked - emblazoned in giant white letters. Radio beacons transmitted positions.

``Moored over treacherous reefs, or marking the narrow approaches to a channel or harbor entrance where lighthouses could not be built or placed in areas too far offshore for a shore-side lighthouse's lens to reach, lightships were fewer in number than the estimated 1,500 lighthouses built in the United States," the park service said.

Records show 179 lightships were built between 1820 and the 1952. In the early 20th Century, the Lighthouse Service operated 51 lightships - 46 on the eastern seaboard and five on the Pacific Coast. Eleven guided ships plying the Great Lakes over the decades. A small force was also posted in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to Port Huron Museums in Michigan, where the retired Huron Lightship is moored: "The fog signals used over the years consisted of bells, whistles, trumpets, sirens, and horns. Early fog horns were powered by steam and later by air compressors." 

Danger was part of the job though watches were, by and large, uneventful and lonely. 

A November 1913 storm on the Great Lakes sank 19 vessels including the Buffalo Lightship with all hand. During World War I, a German U-boat attacked the Diamond Shoal Lightship off North Carolina. In 1944, a hurricane sank the Vineyard Lightship with all hands off Massachusetts. 

The great liner RMS Olympic, sister of Titanic, hit the Nantucket Lightship in heavy fog in May 1934. Seven of the lightship crew perished. There were close calls earlier in the day. "Fog warnings were sounded continuously and still blew their ominous warning even as the lightship plunged to the ocean depths," according to a dispatch published in a Canadian newspaper.

Off New Jersey, the Ambrose Lightship (LV-111, WAL-533)  was rammed by the Grace Liner Santa Barbara in September 1935, brushed in heavy fog by an unidentified vessel in January 1950 and rammed by the Grace Line's in March 1950, according to Wikipedia.

America's lightships kept the watch for another 40 years. As automation increased and navigational technology matured, the lightships were withdrawn from duty with the final lightship - Nantucket I - going dark in March 1985.