The Lighthouses Of The Chesapeake

This text features a sequence of 32 photographic essays, documenting in 170 haunting images each of the lighthouses still standing along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay. For each lighthouse there is a photograph of the structure in its setting, a view looking out from the lighthouse, and a close-up of some singular detail of the building. The text discusses how and why the lighthouses were built, important events in their history, and in some cases the lives of their keepers. The sequence of lighthouses follows an imaginary journey around the Bay, starting at Cape Henry, site of the oldest existing light.

First and foremost, Bay Beacons is a book for lovers of the Chesapeake Bay - for those who sail its waters and for those who delight in its shores. For these bay explorers, the lighthouses of the Chesapeake Bay symbolize continuity with the past, with both its natural and human history. Book jacket.

In Colonial times, as the Chesapeake Bay and larger rivers became vital shipping channels, the need arose to mark Maryland's dangerous shoals and waterways. Lighthouses sprang up throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, including wood-framed cottages placed upon screw pile foundations that stood offshore in the unforgiving waters. Most of these unique structures did not survive, lost tragically to ice that also occasionally claimed the lives of the keepers who faithfully tended them and rescued mariners in trouble. With the advent of electricity and GPS, many beacons succumbed to vandalism and neglect, leaving a fraction remaining.

From the beginning, it was a struggle to light the Chesapeake. Its soft, undulating bottom presented different problems from those faced along the rocky coasts of New England. The bays shores shifted before the winds, tides, and hurricanes that plagued the 200-mile-long estuary, and so did the towers of the Chesapeake. On land, erosion was the silent menace; on the water, it was ice. More than a dozen Chesapeake lighthouses bowed and broke before the pressure of thousands of tons of ice bearing down on them. In many cases, the keepers barely escaped with their lives. Lighting the Bay: Tales of Chesapeake Lighthouses documents the dramatic events that surrounded the difficult job of lighting the bay and manning the lighthouses. With more than 100 attractive color photographs and an informative historical narrative, Pat Vojtech communicates both facts and the human saga of life as it was on the bays lighthouses. From heroic rescues to untimely deaths, from the routine of daily tasks to battles with ice, cold, injury, and loneliness; Vojtech provides an intimate portrait of life on the guiding lights of the Chesapeake.

Lighthouses of the Southern States is the classic guide to the most significant lighthouses in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Through stirring historic accounts and stunning color and archival photographs, the stories of more than thirty-five lighthouses come alive in vivid detail. Each light––from Bodie Island Light on the Outer Banks to the Cape Florida Light outside Miami––tells its own engrossing tale of survival. Discover the rich history behind these majestic sentinels, and learn more about visiting them.