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The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse has guided ships around some of the
most treacherous waters in the Atlantic Ocean for more than two
centuries.
The legendary black and white spiral striped brick
structure towers over the scenic, windswept shores of North
Carolina's Outer Banks, north of where Blackbeard made his last
stand and south of where the Wright Brothers first took to the sky.
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2016 - An afternoon sun sets Cape Hatteras Light aglow. U.S. Coast Guard aids to navigation teams maintain the optics of the lighthouse. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service Outer Banks group)
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The 90-foot-tall Cape Hatteras Light was first lit with a
whale oil lamp in 1803. Later deemed too short, it was
replaced by a new taller structure in 1870. Due to beach
erosion, the lighthouse was moved 1,500 feet back from the
ocean to its current location in 1999.
The lighthouse
is owned by the National Park Service, but the lamps are
maintained by a Coast Guard aids to navigation team that
operates under the Coast Guard's 5th District, which ensures
the safety, security and stewardship of waterways around
North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania
and New Jersey.
With its distinctive stripes and storied history, the
207-foot-tall Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is one of the best
known Aids to Navigation in the world and the tallest
lighthouse in the United States.
Cyndy Holda from the
National Park Service Outer Banks Group said the lighthouse
hosts an average of 85,000 tourists from all over the world
during hiking season between mid-April and mid-October.
The Cape Hatteras Light is one of 24 lighthouses owned
by the NPS, including the Bodie Island and Ocracoke Island
Lighthouses, which are also in the North Carolina Outer
Banks.
“These three iconic beacons are loved by
people who just like to sit and stare at their grandeur or
those lighthouse aficionados who climb each and every step,”
said Holda.
Among the intrepid lighthouse climbers
are U.S. Coast Guardsmen from the Wanchese, North Carolina,
Aids to Navigation (ATON) team, led by Chief Petty Officer
Jason O. Burke.
The ATON team members hike up the
257-step spiral staircase to the top of the Cape Hatteras
Lighthouse to maintain the lamps.
“You don't want to
forget a piece of equipment at the bottom,” said Burke.
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse lamps are changed at least
once a year, said Burke, a native of Tampa, Florida. The
ATON team and a specially trained Coast Guard electrician's
mate from the North Carolina Sector Field Office at Nags
Head maintain the two 1,000 watt lamps that can be seen from
24 miles away.
Together with the Bodie Island
Lighthouse, the light covers an area called the “Graveyard
of the Atlantic,” where the warm Gulf Stream and cold
Labrador Current meet. Hundreds of ships have met their
demise in the shifting sandbars there, also known as the
Diamond Shoals.
The Diamond Shoals Lightship, the
only U.S. lightship sunk by enemy action, also once guarded
these dangerous waters. Torpedoed by a German submarine in
1918, the ship's remains were listed on the National
Register of Historic Places in 2015.
In addition to
keeping the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse shining, the Roanoke
Island, North Carolina-based Wanchese ATON team uses a
55-foot ATON boat, a 26-foot ATON boat and an 18-foot skiff
to maintain 570 floating and fixed Aids to Navigation from
the Ocracoke Inlet to the Intracoastal Waterway at the
Virginia-North Carolina border.
Burke said his team
covers 1,600 square miles of waterways, including two large
sounds, seven rivers and three very dynamic inlets.
With heavy winds, nor'easters, and hurricanes, the chief
said the weather around the North Carolina Outer Banks is
often “unpredictable and unforgiving” in every season.
“While these weather patterns as well as the influences
of both the Gulf Stream and Labrador Currents make the Outer
Banks a very popular destination for surfing and fishing
enthusiasts, they also create numerous problems for
navigation to and from the sea,” said Burke.
“As we
are essentially one large shifting sandbar, inlets along the
Outer Banks are subject to constant and relentless shifting
bottom contours due to shoaling and sand migration,” said
Burke. “In less than 10 years, Hatteras Inlet alone has
changed from being less than a half mile wide to more than
two miles wide.”
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is one
of nine lighthouses honored in Coast Guard Headquarters in
Washington, D.C. Lighthouses from all of the Coast Guard's
nine districts have elevators named after them. The Cape
Hatteras Light is among the early American Aids to
Navigation that were originally operated by the Lighthouse
Service, which was established by the ninth law passed by
Congress in 1789. The U.S. Coast Guard absorbed the
Lighthouse Service in 1939.
Today, the Coast Guard
Aids to Navigation system includes more than 48,000 buoys,
beacons, ranges, sound signals and electronic aids that mark
the more than 25,000 miles of U.S. waterways.
By U.S. Coast Guard Walter T. Ham IV
Provided
through
Coast
Guard
Copyright 2016
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