Links 

Bodie Island Lighthouse North Carolina Lighthouses Restoration

Reportedly, Bodie Island, originally “Body,” is named after the family who owned the land, but folklore would have it that the name resulted from the many shipwrecked bodies that washed ashore. Rising 165 feet and painted with striking black and white stripes, the picture-perfect Bodie Island Lighthouse is actually the third attempt to illuminate the perilous stretch of coast between Cape Hatteras and Currituck Beach.

Because of the mounting number of shipwrecks off this section of North Carolina’s outer banks, in 1837 the federal government sent the impressively named Lieutenant Napoleon L. Coste to determine the best location for another lighthouse. He suggested that a light 35 miles north of Cape Hatteras, on or near Bodie Island, would allow south-bound ships to fix their positions for navigating the menacing Cape.

Although Congress immediately agreed, the construction of the original lighthouse was fraught with problems, beginning with a ten-year delay because of difficulties in acquiring the land. Once the purchase finally went through, the man who approved all lighthouse expenditures (The Fifth Auditor of the Treasury), was far more interested in saving money than in building a lighthouse. Although normally we would applaud efforts to curtail government spending, in this case it was disastrous. As if having Scrooge holding the purse strings wasn’t bad enough, the overseer of the construction was a retired Customs official who knew nothing about lighthouses and ignored the engineer’s recommendations. The result was a monument to inefficiency. The 54-foot tower housed not a Fresnel lens, but an inferior reflector lighting system that frequently didn’t work. The unsupported brick foundation quickly developed cracks and leaks and began to sink on one side. Within a couple of years the lighthouse resembled the leaning Tower of Pisa, without the cultural cachet, and had to be abandoned. A mere eleven years after it was constructed, the now derelict lighthouse was razed.

The second lighthouse, although better built, fared even worse. Completed in 1859, the new Bodie Island Lighthouse was designed by the trusty Army Corps of Engineers, and boasted a graceful 80-foot tower of whitewashed brick and an iron lantern room. The third-order Fresnel lens was visible fifteen miles out to sea, but almost immediately the Civil War brought an end to its usefulness. Retreating Confederate soldiers, trying to foil the Union Navy any way they could, blew up the lighthouse in 1861. Bodie’s Fresnel lens was later discovered by Union troops in the rotunda of the North Carolina Capitol building, where “a vast pile of lighthouse apparatus: costly lamps and reflectors of Fresnel and Argand” had been cached by the Confederates.

Perhaps dispirited about their first two doomed attempts at Bodie Island, the Lighthouse Board dragged their feet commissioning another lighthouse. It took several years of vehement petitions from understandably concerned sea captains for construction to begin on a third lighthouse. In 1871 the Lighthouse Board finally purchased a new 15-acre site north of Oregon Inlet, and Dexter Stetson, the construction foreman who had just completed the Cape Hatteras tower, set to work. The same innovative foundation used at Cape Hatteras was repeated at Bodie Island, with stacked timber pilings below the ground and granite blocks above the base. The 164-foot tower’s first-order Fresnel lens, fabricated by Barbier and Fenestre of Paris, was lit on October 1, 1872.

Click to view enlarged imageExcept for an unfortunate flock of geese crashing into the lens just eighteen days after it was first lit, the lighthouse has had a relatively peaceful existence. Strategically placed screening has protected the lens from further collisions with birds. Originally, the spiral stairway, attached to a the metal lantern at the top and a copper rod that was inserted into the ground at the base, served as the lightning conductor. During a storm, a keeper on one of the stairway landings received a rather severe shock that left the lower half of his body numb for quite some time. An engineer recommended that a conducting cable, insulated from the stairway, be run inside the tower, but it took another lightning strike in 1884, before this alteration was made.

On September 19, 1932 the lighthouse was electrified through the installation of a generator at the station. This led the way to the lighthouse being fully automated in 1940. Ownership of the Bodie Island Light Station, excepting a square plot of land, 100 feet on each side, on which the lighthouse stood, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1953. This same year commercial power was extended to the lighthouse.

For several years, John Gaskill served as a volunteer at the Bodie Island Lighthouse, sharing experiences and stories with visitors who were permitted to enter the base of the tower. John was an excellent docent, as his father, Vernon, was the last principal keeper at Bodie Island, serving from 1919 to 1940. Most people would assume that the keepers had their families with them at Bodie Island, but this was not the case for most of John’s childhood. The only access to the island was by boat at that time, and the closest school was at Manteo on Roanoke Island. John and his siblings lived with their mother in Wanchese so they could attend school, but on holidays and during the summer the family would live together at the lighthouse.

The horizontally banded Bodie Island Lighthouse was officially transferred from the Coast Guard to the National Park Service on July 13, 2000. The structural preservation of the tower thus became the responsibility of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but the Coast Guard was still in charge of maintaining the Fresnel lens, which continued to serve as a navigational aid. In 2003, the Coast Guard announced its intentions to remove the Fresnel lens from the tower. This news was not well received by the public, nor by Jeffrey Crow, head of the North Carolina Historical Preservation Office, who declared that removing the lens would have “an adverse effect upon the historic property.” The Coast Guard was flexible, and a plan was worked out whereby the park service would assume responsibility for the aid to navigation, after it was converted from a federal aid to navigation to a private aid to navigation. The lens was officially transferred at a ceremony held at the lighthouse on April 25, 2005.

As full custodian of the lighthouse, the park service is planning a complete restoration of the tower, which has not received major preservation work since it was constructed. The poor condition of the lighthouse was evidenced on August 9, 2004 when two large cast-iron chunks fell from the gallery atop the tower. Fortunately no one was injured, but the park service has since closed the base of the tower to visitors and erected a fence around the lighthouse to keep people a safe distance away from the lighthouse. The keeper’s duplex now serves as a visitor center, housing a great bookstore and displays about the lighthouse.

Ridgefield and New Fairfield creations in "Festival of Lighthouses ... Danbury News Times, CT - 22 hours ago By Susan Tuz When Nick Parker's daughters heard he wasn't going to enter the "Festival of Lighthouses" contest at Maritime Aquarium this year, ...

Taking over Whaleback @Drop head:ALF gains ownership of local ... Foster's Daily Democrat, NH - Nov 19, 2008 "We think all lighthouses are historical. For Whaleback, you almost feel like you can touch it from land, but yet it's just out of reach, so people have ... Whaleback Lighthouse gets new owner York Weekly all 2 news articles

Holiday Deals Frenzy Prompts Online Art Retailer to Offer Free ... MarketWatch - Nov 18, 2008 "People come from all over the world to Maine to see our beautiful historic lighthouses -- which also represent hope, vision and strength and they want ...

Calgary Herald

Be moral in tough times, Manning challenges U of A grads Canada.com, Canada - Nov 20, 2008 "We need men and women equipped by their training with high ethical standards to serve as ethical beacons and lighthouses," Manning said as he accepted an ... Manning uses honour to push higher education Calgary Herald all 2 news articles

Tired of those gloomy winter days already? Zanesville Times Recorder, OH - Nov 16, 2008 Connected by a series of bridges, visitors can drive to most of the islands to visit lighthouses, wild horses, beaches and much, much more. ...

Holiday lights to adorn Montauk lighthouse Newsday, NY - 2 hours ago BY BILL BLEYER | bill.bleyer@newsday.com For 211 years, the Montauk Point Lighthouse has displayed just one light -- the navigation beacon atop the tower. ...

Holiday Deals Frenzy Prompts Online Art Retailer to Offer Free ... International Business Times, NY - Nov 18, 2008 "People come from all over the world to Maine to see our beautifulhistoric lighthouses -- which also represent hope, vision and strength andthey want ...

Mattituck Inlet Marina seeks expansion The Suffolk Times, NY - Nov 13, 2008 Representatives of East End Lighthouses asked the Town Board to assume ownership of Latimer Reef lighthouse, located north of Fishers Island in the Fishers ... The public water conundrum Suffolk Times all 2 news articles

The Independent Weekly

Come January The Independent Weekly, NC - Nov 19, 2008 Lone sprigs of parsley loom as lighthouses for sharp-eyed deer. Along the roadside, silhouettes of once-vibrant stalks of corn now resemble the Emperor's ...

Barents Observer

Russia removed radioactive lighthouses from Arctic coast Barents Observer, Russia - Nov 11, 2008 In the course of summer, Russia removed another 46 strontium-fuelled lighthouses from the coast of the White Sea and the Barents and Kara Seas. ...

Common Misspellings include adquiring, aquiring actualy aggreed, agred almsot, alomst allthough altho, althought, altough adn, anbd annouced, anounced anohter aroud, arround, arund asume attemp, attemt attemts awya barber becamae baceause, beacuse, becasue, beccause, becouse, becuase bedore, befoer, befor beggin beggining, beggining, begining, beginnig beng betwen, bewteen inbetween, vetween balck boaut bu cerimony, ceromony caost commerical, commericial comisioning, comissioning, commisioning conserned condidtion congreso consttruction, constuction, contruction contined coverted cooper coudl, sould desgined, dessigned developped dificulties disasterous, disatrous dicovered buring, durig, durring, duting eahc effords engeneer, engieneer engieneers erested excelent, excellant, exelent, exellent existance, existince familes, fimilies fedral, fedral feat, fet, fete fianlly, finaly firt, firts frequentily fomr, frome furuther, futher govement, govenment, govenrment, goverment, goverment, governmnet, govorment, govornment gracefull gerat, graet, grat, gret gaurd ahev, ahve, haev, hvae, hvea hvaing historial emmediately, imediately, immediatley, immediatly, immidately, immidiately inot it's jstu larg lastr, lsat lead, leaded lefted leutenant lightening lieved maked maintinaing mear moeny moreso, mroe, omre anme, naem, nmae noeth, noth nto, onot nowe offical offcially, offically, officialy lonly, onyl orginal, origional orginally, origanaly, originall, originaly, originially, originnally, origionally, orignally, orignially peopel pwoer pricipal privte pubic quicklyu qtuie, qutie reseived, resieved, recived, recieved recomended, reccomended, reccommended reccomendations, recommedations relutively, relativly, realitvely, relitavely reportadly ressembled responnsibilty, responsability, responsiblity restauration smae sevice severeal sicne, sinse sose soilders, soliders smoe, soem sourth sqaure staion storeis, storise stratagically sytem tahn, thna taht, tath, thast, thgat, thta, thyat hten, tghe, ther, thge, tjhe ther, theri, thier, thier htey, tehy, tyhe thrid htis, thsi, tihs throught, thru tiem, timne, tiome toghether transfered troups twpo uopn, apon unsed wiew visable vistors volonteer, volounteer wass, weas, ws vell wehn, whn hwihc, whcih, whic, whihc, whlch, wich withing owrk, wokr, wrok owudl, woudl eyar, yearm, yera eyars, eyasr, yeasr, yeras, yersa pitcher pic pictrue ,
 Sailing Lessons Carolina   Bald Head Island NC Lighthouse  Cape Hatteras Lighthouse  Oak Island Lighthouse  Bodie Island Lighthouse  North Carolina Lighthouses  Cape Lookout Lighthouse  Ocracoke Lighthouse  Roanoke River Lighthouse  Cape Fear Lighthouse  Currituck Beach Lighthouse  Prices Creek Lighthouse  sailing alantic 

   Links 

Bodie Island Lighthouse North Carolina Lighthouses Restoration

Reportedly, Bodie Island, originally “Body,” is named after the family who owned the land, but folklore would have it that the name resulted from the many shipwrecked bodies that washed ashore. Rising 165 feet and painted with striking black and white stripes, the picture-perfect Bodie Island Lighthouse is actually the third attempt to illuminate the perilous stretch of coast between Cape Hatteras and Currituck Beach.

Because of the mounting number of shipwrecks off this section of North Carolina’s outer banks, in 1837 the federal government sent the impressively named Lieutenant Napoleon L. Coste to determine the best location for another lighthouse. He suggested that a light 35 miles north of Cape Hatteras, on or near Bodie Island, would allow south-bound ships to fix their positions for navigating the menacing Cape.

Although Congress immediately agreed, the construction of the original lighthouse was fraught with problems, beginning with a ten-year delay because of difficulties in acquiring the land. Once the purchase finally went through, the man who approved all lighthouse expenditures (The Fifth Auditor of the Treasury), was far more interested in saving money than in building a lighthouse. Although normally we would applaud efforts to curtail government spending, in this case it was disastrous. As if having Scrooge holding the purse strings wasn’t bad enough, the overseer of the construction was a retired Customs official who knew nothing about lighthouses and ignored the engineer’s recommendations. The result was a monument to inefficiency. The 54-foot tower housed not a Fresnel lens, but an inferior reflector lighting system that frequently didn’t work. The unsupported brick foundation quickly developed cracks and leaks and began to sink on one side. Within a couple of years the lighthouse resembled the leaning Tower of Pisa, without the cultural cachet, and had to be abandoned. A mere eleven years after it was constructed, the now derelict lighthouse was razed.

The second lighthouse, although better built, fared even worse. Completed in 1859, the new Bodie Island Lighthouse was designed by the trusty Army Corps of Engineers, and boasted a graceful 80-foot tower of whitewashed brick and an iron lantern room. The third-order Fresnel lens was visible fifteen miles out to sea, but almost immediately the Civil War brought an end to its usefulness. Retreating Confederate soldiers, trying to foil the Union Navy any way they could, blew up the lighthouse in 1861. Bodie’s Fresnel lens was later discovered by Union troops in the rotunda of the North Carolina Capitol building, where “a vast pile of lighthouse apparatus: costly lamps and reflectors of Fresnel and Argand” had been cached by the Confederates.

Perhaps dispirited about their first two doomed attempts at Bodie Island, the Lighthouse Board dragged their feet commissioning another lighthouse. It took several years of vehement petitions from understandably concerned sea captains for construction to begin on a third lighthouse. In 1871 the Lighthouse Board finally purchased a new 15-acre site north of Oregon Inlet, and Dexter Stetson, the construction foreman who had just completed the Cape Hatteras tower, set to work. The same innovative foundation used at Cape Hatteras was repeated at Bodie Island, with stacked timber pilings below the ground and granite blocks above the base. The 164-foot tower’s first-order Fresnel lens, fabricated by Barbier and Fenestre of Paris, was lit on October 1, 1872.

Click to view enlarged imageExcept for an unfortunate flock of geese crashing into the lens just eighteen days after it was first lit, the lighthouse has had a relatively peaceful existence. Strategically placed screening has protected the lens from further collisions with birds. Originally, the spiral stairway, attached to a the metal lantern at the top and a copper rod that was inserted into the ground at the base, served as the lightning conductor. During a storm, a keeper on one of the stairway landings received a rather severe shock that left the lower half of his body numb for quite some time. An engineer recommended that a conducting cable, insulated from the stairway, be run inside the tower, but it took another lightning strike in 1884, before this alteration was made.

On September 19, 1932 the lighthouse was electrified through the installation of a generator at the station. This led the way to the lighthouse being fully automated in 1940. Ownership of the Bodie Island Light Station, excepting a square plot of land, 100 feet on each side, on which the lighthouse stood, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1953. This same year commercial power was extended to the lighthouse.

For several years, John Gaskill served as a volunteer at the Bodie Island Lighthouse, sharing experiences and stories with visitors who were permitted to enter the base of the tower. John was an excellent docent, as his father, Vernon, was the last principal keeper at Bodie Island, serving from 1919 to 1940. Most people would assume that the keepers had their families with them at Bodie Island, but this was not the case for most of John’s childhood. The only access to the island was by boat at that time, and the closest school was at Manteo on Roanoke Island. John and his siblings lived with their mother in Wanchese so they could attend school, but on holidays and during the summer the family would live together at the lighthouse.

The horizontally banded Bodie Island Lighthouse was officially transferred from the Coast Guard to the National Park Service on July 13, 2000. The structural preservation of the tower thus became the responsibility of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but the Coast Guard was still in charge of maintaining the Fresnel lens, which continued to serve as a navigational aid. In 2003, the Coast Guard announced its intentions to remove the Fresnel lens from the tower. This news was not well received by the public, nor by Jeffrey Crow, head of the North Carolina Historical Preservation Office, who declared that removing the lens would have “an adverse effect upon the historic property.” The Coast Guard was flexible, and a plan was worked out whereby the park service would assume responsibility for the aid to navigation, after it was converted from a federal aid to navigation to a private aid to navigation. The lens was officially transferred at a ceremony held at the lighthouse on April 25, 2005.

As full custodian of the lighthouse, the park service is planning a complete restoration of the tower, which has not received major preservation work since it was constructed. The poor condition of the lighthouse was evidenced on August 9, 2004 when two large cast-iron chunks fell from the gallery atop the tower. Fortunately no one was injured, but the park service has since closed the base of the tower to visitors and erected a fence around the lighthouse to keep people a safe distance away from the lighthouse. The keeper’s duplex now serves as a visitor center, housing a great bookstore and displays about the lighthouse.

Tired of those gloomy winter days already? Zanesville Times Recorder, OH - 2 hours ago Connected by a series of bridges, visitors can drive to most of the islands to visit lighthouses, wild horses, beaches and much, much more. ...

Mattituck Inlet Marina seeks expansion The Suffolk Times, NY - Nov 13, 2008 Representatives of East End Lighthouses asked the Town Board to assume ownership of Latimer Reef lighthouse, located north of Fishers Island in the Fishers ... The public water conundrum Suffolk Times all 2 news articles

Barents Observer

Russia removed radioactive lighthouses from Arctic coast Barents Observer, Russia - Nov 11, 2008 In the course of summer, Russia removed another 46 strontium-fuelled lighthouses from the coast of the White Sea and the Barents and Kara Seas. ...

Decorators make light work of a rough job Times Online, UK - Nov 13, 2008 Trevose Painters perch 100ft in the air to put the final touches to a new coat of paint on the Trevose Head lighthouse near Padstow, Cornwall. ...

Taking a Chance The Times, South Africa - Nov 8, 2008 There is something rather romantic about lighthouses. If you sit on the beach at night at Beira, as we did as children when we used to camp at the Club ...

Green Island lighthouses to be conserved News.gov.hk, Hong Kong - Nov 6, 2008 The Green Island lighthouse compound has been declared a monument under the Antiquities & Monuments Ordinance. The Development Bureau said the compound ... Lighthouse declared a monument South China Morning Post (subscription) all 2 news articles

HK Green Island lighthouse compound declared a monument Xinhua, China - Nov 6, 2008 7 (Xinhua) -- The Green Island lighthouse compound has been declared a monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance, a spokesman for the ...

Lighthouse climb will boost nonprofit agency Colts Neck News Transcript, NJ - Nov 11, 2008 Johnathan Holmes, 23, of Mahwah, has committed to climb New Jersey's 11 public lighthouses in an effort to raise awareness and funds for LADACIN Network. ...

Nautical inspiration The Sun Daily, Malaysia - Nov 9, 2008 The unusual decagonal watch case design is reminiscent of the 10-sided cast iron lanterns used in lighthouses in the mid to late 1800s to guide mariners ...

Mystic’s Pizza Truck: Chris Owens plays with cooking fire TheDay, CT - Nov 13, 2008 Now 41, he said he’sa grown-up version of that 6-year-old, who has restored a sailboat, currently helps to restore lighthouses, owns a pizza restaurant, ...

Common Misspellings include adquiring, aquiring actualy aggreed, agred almsot, alomst allthough altho, althought, altough adn, anbd annouced, anounced anohter aroud, arround, arund asume attemp, attemt attemts awya barber becamae baceause, beacuse, becasue, beccause, becouse, becuase bedore, befoer, befor beggin beggining, beggining, begining, beginnig beng betwen, bewteen inbetween, vetween balck boaut bu cerimony, ceromony caost commerical, commericial comisioning, comissioning, commisioning conserned condidtion congreso consttruction, constuction, contruction contined coverted cooper coudl, sould desgined, dessigned developped dificulties disasterous, disatrous dicovered buring, durig, durring, duting eahc effords engeneer, engieneer engieneers erested excelent, excellant, exelent, exellent existance, existince familes, fimilies fedral, fedral feat, fet, fete fianlly, finaly firt, firts frequentily fomr, frome furuther, futher govement, govenment, govenrment, goverment, goverment, governmnet, govorment, govornment gracefull gerat, graet, grat, gret gaurd ahev, ahve, haev, hvae, hvea hvaing historial emmediately, imediately, immediatley, immediatly, immidately, immidiately inot it's jstu larg lastr, lsat lead, leaded lefted leutenant lightening lieved maked maintinaing mear moeny moreso, mroe, omre anme, naem, nmae noeth, noth nto, onot nowe offical offcially, offically, officialy lonly, onyl orginal, origional orginally, origanaly, originall, originaly, originially, originnally, origionally, orignally, orignially peopel pwoer pricipal privte pubic quicklyu qtuie, qutie reseived, resieved, recived, recieved recomended, reccomended, reccommended reccomendations, recommedations relutively, relativly, realitvely, relitavely reportadly ressembled responnsibilty, responsability, responsiblity restauration smae sevice severeal sicne, sinse sose soilders, soliders smoe, soem sourth sqaure staion storeis, storise stratagically sytem tahn, thna taht, tath, thast, thgat, thta, thyat hten, tghe, ther, thge, tjhe ther, theri, thier, thier htey, tehy, tyhe thrid htis, thsi, tihs throught, thru tiem, timne, tiome toghether transfered troups twpo uopn, apon unsed wiew visable vistors volonteer, volounteer wass, weas, ws vell wehn, whn hwihc, whcih, whic, whihc, whlch, wich withing owrk, wokr, wrok owudl, woudl eyar, yearm, yera eyars, eyasr, yeasr, yeras, yersa pitcher pic pictrue ,
 Sailing Lessons Carolina   Bald Head Island NC Lighthouse  Cape Hatteras Lighthouse  Oak Island Lighthouse  Bodie Island Lighthouse  North Carolina Lighthouses  Cape Lookout Lighthouse  Ocracoke Lighthouse  Roanoke River Lighthouse  Cape Fear Lighthouse  Currituck Beach Lighthouse  Prices Creek Lighthouse  sailing alantic