Ship Shoal

In the late 1840s, the Louisiana Legislature began to petition Congress for a lighthouse at Isle Dernier, a vacation spot for wealthy New Orleanians located approximately four miles off of Raccoon Point on the Louisiana coast. Congress responded not with a lighthouse but with a lightship, stationing it at Ship Shoal, approximately twelve miles southeastward. However, in 1851, the Provisional Lighthouse Board felt that a real lighthouse would best serve the needs of local commerce. The Ship Shoal station was at the top of the Board's prioritized list of needs in Louisiana. In 1852, the Board asked Congress for $20,000 for a state of the art iron skeleton tower to replace the inadequate and inefficient lightship. The Coast Survey was asked to select a site, and the project was put on hold until a site had been selected.

Eventually, the location of the lightship anchorage was confirmed as the best spot for the new tower. The Coast Survey pointed out that a light on Raccoon Point would only serve small vessels hugging close to the shoreline, and a light on the rich and classy Isle Dernier would only serve the resort itself. A permanent light at Ship Shoal would be of maximum service to local mariners and shippers, and help to support the growing commerce along the Mississippi River delta.

In 1856, Congress finally appropriated about $39,000 for the Ship Shoal Light. An iron skeleton structure similar to the successful Florida Reef lighthouses was recommended, to be placed on 30-foot screwpiles sunk 15 feet into the seabed. The original appropriation turned out to be insufficient, and even after an additional $30,000 was supplemented, the sum was still too small to complete the work. Eventually, a total of $103,179.16 was spent on constructing and erecting the lighthouse. In fact, the tower was constructed twice. In January of 1858, the Philadelphia contractor erected the entire structure at the foundry before loading it onto a ship for transport to Louisiana. Once the tower arrived in Louisiana, it took nearly two years to erect it at Ship Shoal. Once erected, the second-order Fresnel lens was elevated 110 feet above sea level.

Under normal operating conditions for just over a year, the new Ship Shoal Light Station was extinguished for the first time in October 1861, when Confederate authorities attempting to keep Union ships away removed the lens, apparatus, and plate and lantern glass. This operation was a delicate and a difficult one. Not only was it a lengthy task to transport the materials down nearly 8 stories to the rigging for the boats, but it was also difficult for the Confederate expeditions to even get close to the station, as Union blockaders arrived and turned them back four times.

As the Civil War went on, the Ship Shoal Light Station became of vital strategic importance to Union operations in Texas. In 1864, the U.S. Commander asked that the light be restored to support the Union's advance on Galveston. As the original lens was not to be recovered until 1865, the Lighthouse Board was forced to order a new lens. In late 1864, a new second-order revolving Fresnel lens arrived from France, and Keeper Charles J. Lottman relit the lamp on November 1st of that year. Having provided aid to the Union's reconquest of the southern coast, the lighthouse was left largely untouched for the rest of the war. 

In 1866, the lighthouse inspector at New Orleans became aware of health problems being experienced by keepers at Ship Shoal. Several keepers at the light had become paralyzed, and because news of these events was spreading quickly ashore, replacement keepers were impossible to hire. It was eventually discovered that rain, the only drinking water available to the keepers so far offshore, was washing lead from the red-lead paint used on the tower into the cisterns. The toxic coating was removed from all iron lighthouses by the end of 1866, but the resulting scare likely marred the reputation of Ship Shoal for several years.

Yet another set of rather unexpected and harrowing events occurred in February of 1882, when the principal keeper and third assistant keeper of Ship Shoal Light Station were brutally attacked by a man they had admitted as a guest to the lighthouse. The fully story can be found in the newspaper articles attached under "Related Documents".

In 1929, the station was automated. In the 1940s, it served briefly as a Coast Guard lookout during World War II, but was then permanently discontinued in 1965.