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The rescue of Hooper Strait Lighthouse by the Chesapeake Maritime Museum is one of the happiest lighthouse preservation stories of recent decades. The historic structure stands onshore today not only as a prime tourist attraction, but also as a monument to its keepers and those who saved it from the scrap heap.
In its first life Hooper Strait Light stood 39 miles to the south, at the mouth of Tangier Sound. Hooper Strait runs between Bloodworth Island to the south and Bishops Head to the north. The strait is the most direct passage into Tangier Sound from the northern Chesapeake Bay.
The waterway was deemed so important that a lightship was stationed in Hooper Strait beginning in 1827. It was the only lightship ever in Maryland waters, except for the Potomac River. The vessel was replaced in 1845 and again in 1858. The 1858 90-ton lightship, with “HOOPER STRAIT” in huge letters across its sides, served until 1867 when the first lighthouse was established on the spot.
The first Hooper Strait Lighthouse was a simple wooden dwelling and light on a platform. It was secured using the “sleeve-pole” method. Wooden pilings were driven into the mud and covered with cast iron sleeves to protect them. This was the best the technology of the time could offer, but it would soon prove inadequate.
The lighthouse wasn’t quite a decade old when, on January 8, 1877, strong northwest winds began to pile ice against the structure. After three days of relentless pressure, the lighthouse was torn from its pilings and began to move out into the bay. Keeper John S. Cornwell and Assistant Keeper Alexander S. Conway survived the disaster by escaping in a dory. Keeper Cornwell later wrote:
“We escaped from our perilous condition by the aid of one of the boats belonging to the house which we pulled on the ice. We remained on the ice for twenty four hours with the boat, exposed to the elements without anything to shelter us, in consequence of which both of us became frost bitten the effects of which we are now suffering...
“Should there be another house erected, or a boat placed on the site of the old one, Capt. Conway and myself will be ready to take charge of it...”
The two keepers were rescued the morning after the disaster and were taken to a nearby island. Weak and without access to any means of communication, they had no way of letting the authorities know that they were alive.
Meanwhile, the Lighthouse Tenders Heliotrope and Tulip found the lighthouse five miles south of Hooper Strait. It was still upright but had sunk to its roofline. The crews had hoped to find the keepers alive, and were discouraged to find no sign of them. It would be two weeks before Cornwell and Conway were able to send a telegram to authorities.
The salvage operation was cut short because ice floes endangered the vessels, but the crew of the Heliotrope did salvage the lens, lamp, fog bell and striking machinery, a boat and a number of other articles from the sunken lighthouse.
It wasn’t long before urgent requests from vessel owners and ship captains led to the appropriation of $20,000 for a new Hooper Strait Lighthouse. Work on the structure began in early 1879. By this time a better method of securing pilings in the soft ocean bottom had been developed. Using the new screw-pile method, seven wrought iron piles, ten inches in diameter, were literally screwed into the bottom as deep as 10 feet. The wood frame superstructure and the rest of the ironwork were delivered to the site by schooner, and the lighthouse’s fifth order Fresnel lens was first illuminated on October 15, 1879.
True to his word, Keeper John S. Cornwell returned to his post and became the first keeper of the second Hooper Strait Lighthouse. His assistant was Zebedee Harper. Harper eventually became keeper, and he made an intriguing entry in the station’s logbook on June 8, 1918:
“On the 1st of the present month a very curious sea monster was captured near the Light Station by Capt. Zeb Pritchett the like of which has never been seen by anyone who has examined it. Evidently of the turtle family but in nearly every respect unlike anything of that kind usually seen — no under shell or joints in flippers and top shell in squares running longitudinally — was 7 ft. and 6 inches from tip to tip and estimated to weigh from 800 to 1000 pounds.”
Hooper Strait Lighthouse’s first floor had four rooms: an office, kitchen and two bedrooms. Wooden 200-gallon water tanks in each of the first floor rooms collected rainwater from gutters on the roof, providing the keepers with their water supply. One of the two rooms on the second floor was a guest bedroom, used mainly when the Lighthouse Board Inspector would visit every few months. The other second floor room contained the mechanism for the fog bell, which hung outside a window. The keepers had to wind the mechanism to start the bell, which struck a single blow every 10 seconds, when visibility fell to five miles or less. An air whistle eventually replaced the bell in the 1930s.
The keepers’ families were permitted one two-week visit per year, and the keepers were allotted a leave of five days each month. Hooper Strait Lighthouse’s days as a staffed station ended in 1954 when the light was automated. Vandalism and the elements soon took their toll, and the lighthouse was completely abandoned after it was decommissioned in November of 1966.
The Coast Guard declared the structure surplus property and sold it to a demolition contractor, Stephen M. Pratt of Scotland, Maryland. Before destruction of the lighthouse could commence, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum stepped in and purchased it from Pratt for $1,000.
Museum officials decided that the best way to preserve the lighthouse was to move it onshore to the museum grounds. In preparation for the move, the 42-ton structure was sawed in half under the eaves. The halves were loaded onto two barges and hauled by tug into the Miles River. The $26,000 cost of the move was more than the original cost of the lighthouse.
A new foundation was constructed at Navy Point in St. Michaels, close to the museum’s main exhibit area. The lighthouse was reassembled in about two and one-half days. It was repainted to look like it did when it was built. A fourth order Fresnel lens was installed in the lantern room, completing the restoration.
Visitors to the museum can climb into the lighthouse tower for a spectacular view of St. Michaels Harbor. The 18-acre, 14-building museum’s exhibits also include two historic vessels, the log-bottom bugeye Edna E. Lockwood and the Rosie Parks, one of the few skipjacks remaining on the Chesapeake. Skipjacks were wooden sailing vessels used for hauling oysters.
The town of St. Michaels has become a popular tourist destination, with its restored historic waterfront and a multitude of shops and restaurants lining Talbot Street. There’s much to attract lovers of seafood (especially Maryland blue crab) here as well as maritime history buffs.
Hooper Strait Lighthouse, now secure and safe from harm, is one of three cottage-style screw-pile lighthouses left in the Chesapeake area. The 1883 Drum Point Lighthouse is now at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, MD. Only Thomas Point Light (1875) remains in its original location in the Chesapeake Bay.
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Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
P.O. Box 636
St. Michaels, Maryland 21663
Ph # 410-745-2916
www.cbmm.org
The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is located on Mill Street in St. Michaels, Maryland and is open daily all year. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Days.
This story appeared in the
January 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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