FACTS
ЛУП
LEGEMDS
Btj KILL SIIAItl’L
The Light That Failed and
Came Back; Dunes of Dare
Miraculously saved from ihc en¬
croaching Allantic by a Ihin line of
l wigs and slicks, old Cape Hailcras
Light, guardian of the most dreaded
shoals of the Atlantic, is back in serv¬
ice.
Resur reel ion of the old liglu was
received with hearty approval. No one
liked the sterile steel-girder tower
which replaced it in Trent woods more
than two miles inland. I he new lower
never looked like a lighthouse should
look, anyway.
Old Cape Hattcras was different.
It was built in IS70. and replaced a
lighthouse built by Alexander Hamil¬
ton in 1798. At that time, it was a
full mile from the surf, but beach
erosion gnawed away the land. At
strong high tiiles. water would sweep
around the base, and by the early
30‘s it appeared doomed. The spider¬
like metal monstrosity was located 12,-
000 feel to the west, and everyone
waited to see the old brick tower tum¬
ble into the sea.
Then the scientific miracle hap¬
pened. CCC and WPA projects to
stabilize the shifting Ranks were un¬
dertaken in 1936 and thereafter. Grad¬
ual drift of the Ranks toward the
mainland was due not only to under¬
cutting of the beach by currents, but
chiefly because wind picked up dried
beach sand and moved it westward,
shoaling tip the sound. To halt the
process, miles of “sand fences" were
built along the beach, from Currituck
to Ocracoke. 1 he fences, often of brush
and twigs, caught the hurtling sand par¬
ticles, dropped them back on the
ground, starting a dune. On top of
this artificially created dune, a new
fence was built, and so on. In front of
this dune a new sand fence was built,
a new dune created; and in front of
that, still another, until the advancing
sea faced a wall 25 feet high and
many feet thick. This was planted
with sea grass and hardy shrubs as
an anchorage. Today, the advancing
Atlantic has been driven back a good
600 yards from the light, and it is con¬
sidered as secure now as it was when
lirsl built.
In the meantime, however, vandals
wrecked the intricate and expensive
beacon which was constructed in
France by Henry Le Paute. At first
it was lighted with whale oil. then
kerosene, then there was a mantle lamp
and finally one using electricity, pro¬
vided by a generating plant and emer¬
gency storage batteries.
A large 24-sided bronze frame
housed the individually ground bull’s-
eyes and prisms and revolved around
the stationary light through operation
of gears energized by weights that
traveled vertically down the center of
the tower. Each day the weights were
cranked to the top by hand, and their
slow descent at night provided the
power to do the flashing.
Visitors climbing to the top during
the light’s inactivity smashed the fine
lens and other parts of the lamp and
took much of it away. Now a modern
beacon, with flashes by an electric
motor, is used.
Diamond Shoals, southeast of the
light, are composed of the largest quick¬
sand area in the world. Actually,
they are a continuation, under water,
of the point of Cape Hattcras — gigan¬
tic sand dunes 200 feet high which
reach almost to the surface of the wa¬
ter as dry land — but not quite. Like
the finger of death, they reach out 12
miles into the Atlantic, a barrier which
all coastwise vessels must circle to
avoid disaster. Hundreds of ships have
been unable to do so— either because
of bad navigation or because of storms
which drove the ships onto the shoals.
Only one vessel which went ashore
on the Diamonds is known to have
come off intact.
The Hattcras light is only one of
many devices the government has to
circumvent the Diamond Shoals. At
the edge of the area of quicksand is
anchored Diamond Lightship, placed
there as a first warning to traffic. Rut
a lightship cannot provide the steady
elevation and dependability of a fixed
structure, so in 1889 Congress appro¬
priated from $200,000 to $500.000 for
construction of a lighthouse on the
23
THE STATE. July tB. 1953
