Roanoke River Lighthouse History
This lighthouse on West Water Street in downtown Plymouth is a reproduction of the beacon that was at the mouth of the Roanoke River from 1866 to 1885. It was built from the original plans for the 19th century lighthouse, but modern conveniences such as electricity, air conditioning and central heating were added. The replica lighthouse opened in 2003.
At one time, the Roanoke River played a major role in North Carolina’s maritime transportation and commerce. The Roanoke has an average daily flow of six billion gallons of water. That’s the largest flow of any river in North Carolina. More than half the freshwater in the Albemarle Sound comes from the Roanoke River. The water begins its journey about 400 miles northwest of Plymouth in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. The Roanoke and its tributaries drain about 10,000 square miles of land.
This lighthouse on West Water Street in downtown Plymouth is a reproduction of the beacon that was at the mouth of the Roanoke River from 1866 to 1885. It was built from the original plans for the 19th century lighthouse, but modern conveniences such as electricity, air conditioning and central heating were added. The replica lighthouse opened in 2003.At one time, the Roanoke River played a major role in North Carolina’s maritime transportation and commerce. The Roanoke has an average daily flow of six billion gallons of water. That’s the largest flow of any river in North Carolina. More than half the freshwater in the Albemarle Sound comes from the Roanoke River. The water begins its journey about 400 miles northwest of Plymouth in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. The Roanoke and its tributaries drain about 10,000 square miles of land. North Carolina’s only deepwater harbors – and thus its only direct access to the outside world for several hundred years – are on the state’s southern coast at Morehead City and Wilmington. Despite the many waterways of northeastern North Carolina, the region’s economic development was severely hindered by the lack of a deepwater port.
The Dismal Swamp Canal gave Plymouth and other towns on the Roanoke, Cashie and Chowan rivers and the Albemarle Sound had a link to the deepwater harbor in Norfolk, Virginia. But the full potential of the Dismal Swamp Canal wasn’t realized until 1815 when William J. Lewis and other adventurers traveled the entire length of the Roanoke River in small boats.
Lewis and his group started at the Roanoke’s headwaters in the mountains of Virginia, continued past Plymouth and across the Albemarle Sound, and went up the canal to Norfolk. The daring trip demonstrated that goods could be shipped from hundreds of miles up the river.
After his trip, Lewis called for deepening the Dismal Swamp Canal to allow larger boats, and this was accomplished in 1829. That same year, the Virginia & North Carolina Transportation Company built a fleet of 11 barges to haul goods to and from Norfolk
through the canal. Each barge was named after the region it served. One of the barges was named the Roanoke.
Steamboats began appearing on the Roanoke River around 1816, and the steamers towed the barges down the river and across the Albemarle Sound to the Pasquotank River, which connected with the Dismal Swamp Canal near Elizabeth City. From there, the barges would be towed through the canal to the Elizabeth River and the harbor at Norfolk.
By 1830, maritime traffic on the Roanoke had become so heavy that an aid to navigation was needed. In 1831, the U.S. Congress appropriated $10,000 to put a light at the mouth of the Roanoke. The Roanoke River Lightship was anchored in the Albemarle Sound at the mouth of the river in 1835. Thomas Clifton Jr. of Washington County was an assistant keeper aboard the lightship. For about a century afterwards, a member of the Clifton family would be serving aboard a light station at the mouth of the Roanoke.
By the mid-19th century, barges regularly left Plymouth, Windsor, Hamilton and other river towns on the Roanoke and Cashie carrying bacon, brandy, cotton, cypress shingles, tobacco and other goods through the Dismal Swamp Canal to Norfolk
The canal helped Plymouth become a busy port town. During its peak activity, Plymouth was one of the busiest ports in North Carolina, and at various times during the 19th century, there was a federal customs house in downtown Plymouth. This meant that passengers and freight could be cleared in Plymouth for transport to foreign ports.
The customs house was located at the foot of Washington Street, which is about two blocks east of the replica lighthouse. The customs house was heavily damaged during the Civil War and later torn down. A small park is now on the site where the customs house used to be.
The Roanoke River Lightship was still in use when South Carolina withdrew from the United States in December 1860. Other southern states followed, but North Carolina repeatedly declined to leave the Union.
North Carolina finally withdrew in May 1861 after President Abraham Lincoln ordered the state to send troops to South Carolina to quell the rebellion there. All light stations in the state then came under the supervision of the Confederate States government in Richmond, Virginia.
Union commanders considered northeastern North Carolina to be very important to their plans for winning the war because it offered them a base of operations from which to conduct campaigns against Norfolk and the Confederate capital at Richmond. The area also had a vital rail link over which supplies were shipped to Richmond.
Confederate officials did not want North Carolina’s light stations to be an aide to Union naval operations in the area. So in June 1861, the Confederate government sent orders to Plymouth attorney Joseph Ramsey – who was the superintendent of the Roanoke River Lightship – telling him to remove the ship from its station at the mouth of the river.
Ramsey hired a tugboat to tow the lightship away. He paid the tugboat captain $9.82 to tow the lightship to Williamston, which is about 20 miles upriver from Plymouth. The lightship disappeared during the war, however, and we don’t know what became of it. It’s possible that Confederate or Union forces sank the lightship in the river to try to block their opponents’ warships from moving up or down the river.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, the federal government wanted to re-start maritime commerce on the Roanoke, and so the first Roanoke River Lighthouse was built in 1866.
Thomas Clifton Jr., who’d been an assistant keeper aboard the lightship, became Keeper of the Roanoke River Lighthouse.
The first lighthouse was used until March 1885, when it caught fire and burned down. The United States Light-House Service, which staffed and serviced all the nation’s lighthouses at that time, didn’t list a cause of the fire in its report. (The word “lighthouse” was hyphenated in the 19th century.) But there were many flammable materials kept aboard lighthouses, so the fire could have started from any number of sources.
The Lighthouse Service considered the Roanoke River beacon to be very important to the region’s commerce, and so they wanted to replace the burned lighthouse as quickly as they could. At that time, the Lighthouse Service had a construction yard in Baltimore Harbor. The little river lighthouses were prefabricated in the harbor, loaded aboard a barge, towed to wherever they were needed, and set up
When the Roanoke River light burned, the Lighthouse Service had a lighthouse nearly completed that was intended for Roanoke Island, North Carolina. But USLHS officials decided to send that lighthouse to the Roanoke River instead. So the second Roanoke River Lighthouse was in operation in August 1885. That light lasted only a few months, however. The winter of 1885-86 was quite cold, and ice floes formed in the Roanoke River. In January 1886, a large ice floe came out of the mouth of the river and struck the lighthouse, causing the supports to collapse. The Lighthouse Service report on the incident said one side of the lighthouse was about eight inches above water, and the other side was eight inches below water.
No one was injured, but the lighthouse was too badly damaged to be repaired. Some equipment was salvaged from the damaged building, and the lighthouse was dismantled. The Lighthouse Service couldn’t replace the second lighthouse as quickly as it had the first. The third Roanoke River Lighthouse was ready for operation in February 1887. This lighthouse had a different configuration from the 1866 lighthouse. That first lighthouse had the light in a cupola in the center of the building. But the 1887 lighthouse had the light in a tower attached to the living quarters.
Thomas Clifton remained as Keeper of the new lighthouse until he retired in 1899. His son, William Benjamin Clifton Sr., took over as Keeper. He held this position until the lighthouse was decommissioned in the early 1930s soon after the U.S. Lighthouse Service was merged with the U.S. Coast Guard. The third Roanoke River Lighthouse was empty and unused until 1955, when Edenton resident Emitt Wiggins bought it. Wiggins put the lighthouse on a barge and moved it across the Albemarle Sound to Edenton, where he used it as his residence until his death. That lighthouse is still there, although it is now dilapidated. It can be seen from Blount Street in Edenton.
Life of a lighthouse keeper
The original Roanoke River Lighthouse probably was divided into four rooms on the first deck and two rooms on the second deck. The second floor rooms were used as bedrooms for the keepers. The four rooms on the first floor probably included a small living room, a kitchen, a storage room, and an extra bedroom. Lighthouse keepers had many responsibilities besides lighting the light at night and extinguishing it at sunrise. They also were responsible for going to the aid of distressed mariners. If a ship was disabled, they had to have a place for the stranded sailors to sleep until their own ship was repaired or another ship could pick them up, and that’s what the extra bedroom on the first floor was used for.
The lighthouse keeper also had to keep up with bureaucratic responsibilities. As mentioned earlier, the Roanoke River Lighthouse was part of the United States Lighthouse Service. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were more than 800 light stations operating across the United States. The lighthouses were divided into 19 districts. The Roanoke River Lighthouse was part of the Lighthouse Service’s Fifth District, which included light stations from the Chesapeake Bay south to the New River in North Carolina. The district headquarters was in Baltimore.
The superintendent of the Fifth District sent out memos every month to all stations under his supervision. The memos alerted lighthouse keepers to new regulations that had gone into effect, or regulations that had been discontinued. The superintendent also was very conscious of the Lighthouse Service’s public image, and occasionally reminded his keepers of regulations they needed to follow more closely to maintain this image.
For example, one memo from the superintendent reminded keepers and assistant keepers that they had to wear their uniforms when they were on duty. Another memo instructed keepers to be “in an alert and snappy posture” whenever a photographer was present. The superintendent did not want photos being published in newspapers that showed keepers sitting down or slouching in any way because he thought this reflected badly on the public’s perception of the Lighthouse Service.
The keepers also were responsible for writing and sending many reports to the superintendent’s office. Besides an extensive annual report on the lighthouse’s activities, keepers had to file monthly reports, quarterly reports, and periodic inventories of their tools, equipment, furnishings and supplies. They also had to fill out a monthly report on foggy weather – even if there had been no fog that month. All lighthouses had some way to warn approaching ships of their position when fog set in. The larger lighthouses, such as those on the Outer Banks, usually had foghorns. But the smaller lighthouses on the inland waters usually had a fog bell.
The fog bell for the Roanoke River Lighthouse sat on a small platform outside the small window of the dormer on the second floor. The mechanism to ring the bell was in a small alcove in the bedrooms.A horizontal, piston-like rod rang the fog bell. One of the frames in the small window had a block of wood with a hole through which the piston passed. The piston was powered by a large, clock-like mechanism. When the striking mechanism was wound up, it would power the piston back and forth through the window, and the bell would be struck every 15 seconds.
Lighthouse lenses were ranked in order of brightness from one to six. The brightest was a first order lens, which was used in the biggest lighthouses, such as the Outer Banks lighthouses at Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island, Currituck, and Cape Lookout. The light produced by these lenses could be seen from 20 or more miles at sea.
But first order lenses were quite expensive, and such a bright, costly beacon wasn’t needed on the smaller river and sound lighthouses. So smaller, less expensive beacons were used on the inland lights.The Roanoke River Lighthouse had a fourth-order lens, which could be seen from about 12 miles away when it was lit. The light in the replica lighthouse also is a fourth order lens, but it is an electric light. The light aboard the Roanoke River Lighthouse was fired by whale oil at first. By the late 19th century, the light was fired by kerosene.
The Roanoke River Lighthouse probably was not converted to an electric beacon. A report of a USLHS inspection of the lighthouse conducted in 1927 – shortly before the light was decommissioned – describes a kerosene-fired beacon. Each morning after he turned off the light, the keeper had to remove the lens, take it down to the first floor, clean it, then take it back up to the cupola and put it back in place. And he had to refuel the light.
The keeper also had to make sure his beacon could be seen clearly. That meant that he had to keep the cupola windows very clean. In the summer, he might have to scrub the windows to remove the remains of insects that had been attracted by the light. In the winter, he might have to go out in sleet and freezing rain to scrape ice off the windows.
