Tybee Knoll Cut Range, GA 
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At the mouth of the Savannah River, where Atlantic swells meet tidal currents flowing from Georgia’s interior, navigation has always been treacherous. Shoals shift with every storm, channels migrate, and sandbars rise almost overnight. Among the most dangerous of these hazards was Tybee Knoll, a submerged shoal lying north of Tybee Island and directly in the path of vessels approaching Savannah from Tybee Roads. Though never rising above the surface, the knoll formed a hard crest surrounded by unstable sand and mud. It was precisely the kind of invisible obstacle that could tear open a hull or strand a deep-draft ship within sight of safety.
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Because Savannah was one of the South’s most important ports—exporting cotton, rice, lumber, naval stores, and later manufactured goods—the need to guide ships safely past Tybee Knoll became urgent in the early nineteenth century. Mariners approaching from the sea first crossed the outer bar off Tybee Island, then followed a maze of buoyed channels between shoals and oyster beds before reaching the deeper waters of the river. The route changed constantly, forcing pilots to rely not only on charts, but on visual ranges, beacons, and eventually lightships and range lights.
Congress addressed the danger in 1848, appropriating $10,000 on August 14 “for a lightboat to be placed off the knoll, north of Tybee Island, Savannah River, Georgia.” That same year, a lightship was anchored near the shoal, becoming the Tybee Knoll Light Vessel. Unlike a lighthouse fixed on land or piles, a lightship could be moved as channels shifted, making it ideal for unstable shoal waters.
The lightship’s purpose was twofold: to warn vessels of the knoll itself and to act as a reference point for steering into the proper channel. By day, mariners aligned the vessel with shore beacons; by night, its lantern served as a floating lighthouse. The station quickly proved essential. In 1853, Lighthouse Inspector Captain D. P. Woodbury observed that the lightship might someday be replaced by a small lighthouse on a neighboring shoal, but he offered no estimate, recognizing the difficulty of building on such unstable ground.
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, federal aids to navigation along the Southern coast were extinguished or abandoned to prevent their use by enemy vessels. The Tybee Knoll Light Vessel was discontinued that year, leaving the entrance to Savannah once again unguarded.
After the war, the federal government moved to restore coastal navigation. In 1867, Congress appropriated $15,000 to build a lighthouse to mark Tybee Knoll in place of the lightship. By 1868, the knoll remained unmarked, though “necessary preliminary steps” had been taken.
The danger posed by the knoll could not wait for the construction of a lighthouse. In June 1869, Light Vessel No. 33 was placed at Tybee Knoll after being removed from Fishing Rip. In 1872, Light Vessel No. 21 replaced it. Meanwhile, engineers continued to study whether a permanent structure could be built.
In 1870, a detailed examination revealed the true difficulty of Tybee Knoll. Though the surface sand appeared firm, borings showed soft mud beneath to depths of thirteen to nineteen feet, possibly deeper. Engineers concluded that any lighthouse would require deep foundations and that the original plan was “impracticable…except at an unwarrantable expense.”
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Despite these concerns, the Lighthouse Board persisted. In 1871 and 1872, new proposals described a screw-pile lighthouse standing in two to five feet of water on hollow cast-iron piles. Congress responded in 1873 with an $18,000 appropriation. Plans were drawn for a square structure on five piles with a fifth-order light and a fog bell.
Yet even as fabrication began, nature and engineering once again intervened.
By 1874, the War Department had begun dredging a new channel through Tybee Knoll Shoal. The lighthouse project was suspended, as the proposed site would no longer serve the altered route. In 1875, the Lighthouse Board concluded that a fixed structure would be useless and recommended that the funds be redirected to range lights to guide vessels through the dredged cut.
Congress agreed. On July 31, 1876, $12,000 was appropriated for Tybee Knoll Cut Range Lights. Two five-acre sites were secured on Long Island, and by 1878 the front and rear beacons were completed, connected by an earthen causeway.
On November 1, 1878, the range was officially lighted. The front light—a sixth-order fixed white—shone from the keeper’s dwelling, twenty-four feet above sea level. The rear light, also sixth order, stood forty-seven feet above the water in a frame tower 2,150 feet behind. When aligned, the two lights formed a luminous path through the dredged channel from Tybee Roads into the Savannah River. Mariners were instructed to cross the bar on Tybee’s range, then steer northwest until the Tybee Island Knoll lightship bore W by N ¼ N, and finally follow the new range beacons.
With the new system in place, the Tybee Island Knoll Lightship was discontinued on January 1, 1880, ending more than three decades of floating guardianship.
The range lights were not spared by nature. A hurricane in 1882 destroyed the rear tower and damaged the keeper’s dwelling. Over the next decades, storms, cyclones, collisions, and shifting currents repeatedly battered the station. Wharf extensions, elevated plank walks, oil houses, boathouses, and landings were built, destroyed, and rebuilt.
By the 1890s, shoaling caused by new jetties forced wharf extensions into deeper water. In 1894, two dredges collided with the station during a storm, and a drifting bark smashed through the wharf. Yet each time, the range lights were restored—testimony to their essential role in Savannah’s commerce.
In 1917, the station was changed dramatically. The tower atop the dwelling was raised sixteen feet, and this structure became the rear light of the range working in conjunction with a front light exhibited from a new white, square, pyramidal, skeleton tower supported by piles in five feet of water at a distance of 970 yards from the dwelling. A new boathouse and landing were also built at this time.
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The human story of Tybee Knoll culminated with Lemuel Grier Owens, the last civilian keeper. A veteran of the Lighthouse Service since 1924, Owens became keeper of Tybee Knoll Cut Light Station in 1942. Despite losing an eye while serving at Cape Romain and later his right arm to illness while at Tybee Knoll, he refused to retire. He maintained twelve lights across the river system and traveled fifty-eight miles per week to keep them operational.
In 1945, the government concluded that Owens could no longer safely perform his duties and sought to replace him with an enlisted man—marking the end of an era that began with a single lightship anchored over a hidden shoal.
Tybee Knoll was never just a shoal—it was a test of human ingenuity against shifting water and sand. From lightship to lighthouse plan, from range beacons to modern navigation, its story mirrors the struggle to tame one of the South’s most important maritime gateways.
