Dead Reckoning
Lighthouses
along North Carolina's shores have kept watermen from harm's way for the
better part of two centuries. Weathering strong winds, high seas and
near-annual hurricanes for generations, these stony giants may very well
have faced and overcome their greatest challenge within our lifetimes.
That challenge—obsolescence to the marine community.
"Yes,
at one time I used the lighthouses for navigation, in the earlier
years," says Hubert Potter, a venerable, lifetime fisherman
residing in Hobucken, NC. "Most times the lighthouses have a
revolving light on them. You can know if you're running right toward one
if you see the flash ever so many seconds. In the early days, we'd see
one and count the seconds between flashes; the timing was different for
every lighthouse. So from that we'd know which lighthouse we were
running toward."
Capt.
Jim Popp of Pamlico County remembers using lighthouses to set a compass
as a young man in the Navy. Now, Popp says, few fishermen share his
experience. "To tell you the truth I don't think a lot of the young
guys out here fishing even know how to use them at all. They've never
had to," Popp says. "Besides, there's a lot of light pollution
now that was never here before. When you get around Hatteras and some of
the other developed areas, then it's almost impossible to tell what's
the lighthouse and what's a street light or a headlight."
During the North Carolina Commercial Fishing Show in February a group of
fishermen tossed around the question, "Are people using the
lighthouses anymore?"
"You
mean for their intended purpose?" asks Capt. Robert Southerland of
Wilmington, NC. "I don't hardly think so."
"Some of 'em do," interjects Mrs. Gray Popp, Capt. Popp's
wife. "Some of them little boats ain't got nothing else to go
by."
"Well, yeah, Gray's right," says Capt. Danny Hooks, also of
Wilmington. "But not out of sight of land."
Why
aren't fishermen using the lighthouses any more? The short answer is
navigational technology.
As
early as the 1950s fishing vessels began installing navigation systems.
Capt. Moon Tillett of Wanchese, NC was one of the first in his area to
install such a unit on a charter boat. Now navigation systems are
standard equipment even on many small recreational vessels.
"I
used to use a LORAN-A working on a trawl boat in '59," says Tillett.
"Then when I got my party boat I put one on there. I think I was
the first one around here to have one. I got mine Army surplus, I reckon
they come out of airplanes and the like. They weren't like they are
today, now they do everything for you. With that LORAN-A, my God, you
had to add and subtract and line up the bubbles and all this other mess.
But it would tell you pretty much right where you were."
But
even before the LORAN, Tillett says, fishermen in his area had never
depended heavily on the lighthouses for navigation. "We had always
just used 'em as reference points," says Tillett. "I don't
know a whole lot about 'em. I reckon they built 'em back yonder for the
old sailing ships. A lot of times we would be coming in from offshore
and we'd see Currituck was brown, Cape Lookout had the diamonds and
Hatteras had the stripes. Soon as we saw one we knew where we were
at."
But
for fishermen like Hubert Potter the adoption of navigation systems
marked a huge shift. "Oh man, with the LORANs we just forgot all
about the lighthouses," Potter says. "We just went by the
charts and new exactly where we were. With the lights it had always been
guess work and sometimes we weren't so good at that."
Although
methods varied, most fishermen had navigated by tracking their running
time with a watch and estimating (or guessing) the speed and direction
of the current. "When you aimed for something and hit it right on
the button we called that dead reckoning," says Potter. "In
other words, if you even got close that was pretty much considered right
on the button."
The
phrase dead reckoning has different meanings to different communities.
Moon Tillett's son, Billy Carl Tillett, says he's always known dead
reckoning as the practice of measuring running time against the current
rather than the successful completion of the practice. And just like
maritime terminology the lighthouses have come to hold different meaning
and importance for North Carolina's coastal watermen.
Asking
a fisherman about a lighthouse will nearly always draw the same
response. "I don't know much about 'em but I'll tell you what I
know," he'll say. From there, a normally quite and private waterman
will spill into countless tails. Nearly every member of a fishing
community can trace his or her ancestry back to a lighthouse keeper and,
likewise, nearly everyone has a brick, a door or some other piece of
memorabilia from a dilapidated lighthouse either in their home or stored
away in a barn.
Regardless
of whether North Carolina's lighthouses are keeping mariners safe from
rocky shoals, welcoming fishermen home from long trips at sea or
standing in antiquity, North Carolina's fishing families hold these
structures dear to their hearts.
"The
value of North Carolina's lighthouses isn't measured in their
necessity," points out NC Maritime Museum Collections Manager
Connie Mason. "Today our fishermen and watermen of all types have
sophisticated technologies that are far superior to the navigational
techniques that have historically been used along our coasts. In the
fishing communities, as in all the coastal communities of North
Carolina, people gain a since of identity from their light houses-and I
do very much mean their lighthouses. Hatteras is by far the most famous,
the one the tourists come to see, but each coastal region identifies
with a specific lighthouse."
These
structures are profoundly important, not only to us North Carolinians,
but as links to our maritime past for all Americans. They are historical
maritime markers, if you will, to be cherished and cared for. Symbols of
who we are and where we come from."
All
pictures for this article were provided by the the North Carolina
Divisionof Tourism, Film and Sports Development, a division of the NC
Dept. of Commerce.
A
photo of "Old Baldy" Lighthouse was not available by press
time.
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