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For many miles off the coast two opposing currents flow; close to shore the cold-water Virginia Coastal Drift flows south, and farther offshore the warm-water Gulf Stream flows north. At Cape Hatteras, the Gulf Stream veers into the Coastal Drift, forcing vessels into the dangerous waters around Diamond Shoals, where shifting sands extend more than ten miles from the Cape. Over two thousand ships have foundered and sunk in that treacherous stretch of water, known as “The Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Even when violent storms or hurricanes are not driving ships into the shallow waters, the flat coastline provides no visible landmarks, forcing navigators to sail close to the dangerous shore to get their bearings.

Although hundreds of vessels had followed the same fate as the first shipwreck recorded in 1526, no lighthouse was completed along those shores until October of 1803, nearly ten years after Congress had authorized its construction. Even then, the result was inadequate. The original Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, a 90-foot high sandstone tower, housed a collection of eighteen whale oil lamps set in 14-inch reflectors, but still it wasn’t visible beyond the shoals. To make matters worse, violent storms frequently broke through the windows and extinguished the light. Fortunately, the Lighthouse Board, formed in 1852, had the tower raised to more than 150 feet and installed a first-order Fresnel lens, but the new usefulness of Cape Hatteras Light wasn’t fated to last.

The Civil War saw Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the center of conflict. The Confederate army wanted to destroy the lighthouse to prevent Union ships benefiting from it, and naturally the Union forces wanted to protect the lighthouse. After several battles in 1861, defeated Confederate troops retreated with the lighthouse’s Fresnel lens. In 1862, the tower was relit with a second-order Fresnel lens, and then upgraded the following year with a first-order lens. The tower was severely damaged in the war, and after peace was restored to the country, the Lighthouse Board determined it would be less costly to build a new lighthouse, 600 feet to the north, rather than repair and refit the existing one. The original Cape Hatteras Light was destroyed in a blast of dynamite, and the Fresnel lens it had most recently housed was shipped to California for use in the Pigeon Point Lighthouse.

Aerial view of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

The present lighthouse was constructed in 1869-70 at a cost exceeding $150,000. The Lighthouse Board appointed Dexter Stetson as Superintendent of Construction, who then hired and trained nearly 100 local laborers for a daily wage of $1.50. Well over one million bricks were used to construct the 208-foot tower, which is the tallest in the United States. The lighthouse was set on a “floating foundation” (two layers of pine beams placed crossways below the water table), which remained perfectly preserved for well over a century. On December 1, 1870, the tower’s first-order Fresnel lens and oil lamp were lit.

In 2002, it was discovered that this “new” lens was actually the same lens used in the original tower before the Confederates absconded with it. The lens remained hidden throughout the Civil War, and when it was finally located, it was shipped to Paris for cleaning. Upon its return, it was placed in storage at the Lighthouse Depot on Staten Island until the new tower was ready to receive it. In 1873, the Lighthouse Board had the tower painted with striking black and white stripes. At last that treacherous stretch of coastline had a distinctive landmark.

Unaka Jennette started his service in 1919 as principal keeper at Cape Hatteras, but his family had a much earlier connection with the lighthouse. Unaka’s sixth-generation ancestor, Christian Jennett(e), sold the government the four-acre tract on which the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was constructed. Before being assigned to Cape Hatteras, Unaka had twice served aboard the Diamond Shoals Lightship, established off Cape Hatteras in 1824 to help mark this dangerous section of the coast, once as quarter master and the second time as Captain. Unaka and his wife, Jennie, moved into the head keeper’s dwelling with two children, and over the years five more children would be born in the residence.

On August 22, 1933, a powerful hurricane struck Cape Hatteras. Unaka sent a report to his superiors a few days later saying:

I beg leave to submit herewith-detailed report of the damage done by the recent storm of the 22nd inst. I wired you hastily on the morning of the 23rd, but have heard nothing from the office since that time. This was by far the highest sea tide recorded since I have been at Cape Hatteras. Two store houses and garages were washed down. Three toilets washed down. Floor bursted up in one room of 2nd asst. quarters…. The entire reservation is completely submerged, and I have been forced to move my family away from the station. Respectfully, (signed) U.B. Jennette, Keeper”

Another storm, just three weeks later, caused further erosion and damage at the station. By 1935, the coast had eroded so much that the sea lapped the base of the tower, once a safe 1500 feet from the water. The noble lighthouse was abandoned. Keeper Jennette moved his family into his father’s house in Buxton. A make-shift skeleton was erected a mile northwest of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton Woods, on land provided by Unaka. Keeper Jennette minded this new beacon until 1939, when the Coast Guard assumed control of the nation’s lighthouses. Unaka chose to remain a civilian employee and was transferred to the offshore Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse, from which he retired in 1943. Keeper Jennette’s twenty years of service at Cape Hatteras was the longest tenure of the tower’s eighty-three keepers.

The National Park Service bought the defunct Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and through the efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corps and a helping hand from Mother Nature, the shoreline around the lighthouse built up. During these years, souvenir hunters and vandals repeatedly entered the lighthouse and removed several pieces of the Fresnel lens. With the tower now apparently safe, the Coast Guard removed the pillaged lens and reactivated the lighthouse in 1950 using a modern beacon. But by 1987, the lighthouse was only 120 feet from the shore, and the National Park Service determined it would not survive the onslaught of the sea another decade.

In what would be named the “2000 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement” by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Cape Hatteras Light, along with two keeper’s quarters, was moved a half-mile inland. Under the direction of a team of twenty-two experts, on June 17, 1999, the lighthouse was raised six feet off its base and carefully moved, in five-foot increments, along a roadway constructed for that purpose. It arrived safely at its new location on July 9, 1999, and was relit a couple months later on November 13.

A ring of foundation stones was left to mark the former site of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and in 2001 the names of the eighty-three keepers who served at the lighthouse were engraved into the granite blocks. A "Hatteras Keepers Descendants Homecoming," organized by the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society and attended by over 1,000 descendants, was held at the site in May of 2001, shortly after the memorial was completed. Though the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse itself receives most of a visitor's attention, a stop by the ring of foundation stones to remember the lives of the keepers and their families, the real soul of the lighthouse, is an often neglected but satisfying part of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse experience.

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References

1. Lighthouses, Arthur Smith, 1971.
2. Cape Hatteras National Seashore website.

The frame and a few remaining prisms from the Fresnel lens formerly used in the lighthouse can be seen at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, located next to the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry landing. Lens photograph courtesy of Rick Canter. The top portion of the lens is on display at the visitor center near the lighthouse.