THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170284
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 89 lines
Salt water, birds and age have taken their toll on the 82-year-old Thimble Shoal Lighthouse that marks the mariners' entrance to Hampton Roads.
A cast-iron island four miles off Ocean View, it marks a treacherous shallow that has vexed many vessels over the years, including snagging the battleship Missouri for an embarrassing stretch of 1950.
The four-story, rust-colored knob seems a throwback, its spotlight and fog horn quaint reminders of seagoing in the days before satellite navigation and computerized shipping.
But there are limits to automation, and plenty of vessels without it.
So, every three to five years, a Coast Guard crew must climb aboard the unmanned sentinel and do its best to preserve the facility from the ravages of time and weather.
This week, a 40-person crew is on hand to finish the light's first overhaul since 1992.
The Portsmouth-based cutter Red Cedar, outfitted with a flat bottom and special cranes, tends to more than 300 buoys and a handful of lighthouses in a district that extends south into North Carolina and north to Baltimore.
On Monday, the 157-foot cutter tied up to the lighthouse with a barge for equipment wedged alongside, and put a dozen men to work restoring the tower's distinctive paint scheme, its base brown and its top red.
It's been 32 years since the Thimble Shoal Lighthouse wasautomated. These days, solar panels, not oil, power the light, which can be seen for 18 miles. A sensor atop the 55-foot beacon automatically triggers the horn when the surrounding Chesapeake Bay becomes foggy.
``I'd like to see it become a nice hotel,'' said Ensign Woodrow ``Buddy'' Turner, a spokesman for the Red Cedar. ``You could put a jacuzzi right over there.''
But lacking the care of a live-in keeper, the light's deterioration sometimes seems to outpace the Coast Guard's efforts to maintain it.
``It's a do-what-you-can job,'' said Lt. Ty Rinoski, the cutter's captain.
Money is one limitation. The crew scraped paint off the lighthouse's interior walls, but had to leave the crumbling concrete floors unrepaired. The Coast Guardsmen put a coat of protective paint over the tower's exterior, but didn't have the time or money to chip down to the metal to provide a smooth finish.
They didn't fix the cracking edges of a walkway that circles the lighthouse's waist, or restore the landmark's former amenities, including a gutter that collected and sent rainwater inside for showers, and a coal storage area that supplied heat to the light's small, round rooms.
Rain and swells hamper the crew, as well. With every roll of the cutter and barge, Chief Petty Officer James Cox, a boatswain's mate, fought to steady a 50-foot lift being used as scaffolding by the painters.
On the lift, Petty Officer 2nd Class Otis Metje, another boatswain's mate, struggled to keep his paint roller on the lighthouse without leaning too far over the safety bars and risking a plunge into the water below.
``Every time a ship goes by a little too fast, the wake causes us to go like that,'' he said, moving his hand up and down. ``If I go, it's one bounce off the awning and into the drink.''
That would not be the light's first bit of bad luck.
The original Thimble Shoal Lighthouse was built in 1872 and was a wooden screwpile design that mysteriously burned eight years later, according to Robert de Gast in his 1985 book ``The Lighthouses of the Chesapeake.''
De Gast wrote that the lantern and the lens were recovered by divers and the lighthouse was rebuilt in 55 days, ``partially because of its important location and partially because the iron foundation pilings were intact.''
The new lighthouse proved to be a magnet for errant ships. In 1891, a steamer rammed the structure, and in 1898 a coal barge grazed it. Finally, in 1909 a four-masted schooner under tow crashed into it, toppling a stove which set the lighthouse ablaze, burning it to the water line.
Five years later, the current lighthouse was built on a 260-ton cement caisson foundation. The cast-iron tower cost $100,000 in 1914. Remnants of the first lighthouse still poke out of the water nearby as a reminder of the danger lurking beneath the water.
Which might be worrisome, except that the present light hasn't run into trouble - or seen any ships run into it - since its completion.
The lighthouse, the Red Cedar's captain noted, ``isn't going anywhere.''
There are a lot of other tools for mariners these days, but no waterways into Hampton Roads that don't take a sailor past this shoal.
``It's back to stay,'' he said. ``And we'll be back, too.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT photos
The Virginian-Pilot
Since 1872, a lighthouse has warned mariners of the shallow in the
Chesapeake Bay at Thimble Shoal, four miles off Ocean View. The
current lighthouse, built in 1914, was painted Monday, right, by
Coast Guard crew members, including Seaman Apprentice Jason Hodges,
above, from the Portsmouth-based cutter Red Cedar, below. by CNB