Cape Hatteras Lens Mystery Solved

Cape Hatteras Lens and Pedestal Reunited

Parts of this story are based on articles by Catherine Kozak in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot of October 15, 2006, and September 15, 2002. I am indebted to Kevin Duffus for correcting a number of errors and misconceptions in the original version.

The original pedestal and what's left of the original first order Fresnel lens of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse have been reunited for the first time in more than half a century in a new display at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, North Carolina. The tower exhibit should be recognized as "one of the greatest of all American lighthouse artifacts," according to lighthouse author, researcher, and filmmaker Kevin Duffus.

The reunion of lens and pedestal was made possible when the National Park Service agreed to remove the giant cast iron pedestal from the lantern room of the lighthouse, where it has stood since the tower was completed in 1870. The working light, a DCB-224 aerobeacon with two 1000-watt lamps, has been remounted on two steel I-beams.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Mike Murray likened the lens to "an exquisite Tiffany lamp. The pedestal is like the base of the lamp. Both were designed to go together."

The $35,000 project including removing the pedestal from the 200 ft (61 m) tower, sandblasting and repainting it, transporting it 12 miles (19 km) to the museum, and reuniting with the lens. The chief contractor was The Lighthouse Consultant LLC, a Cleveland-based company founded by master lampist Jim Woodward.

It was Duffus who solved the long-running mystery of the original first-order Fresnel lens of Cape Hatteras Light. The historic lens, built in Paris by Henry-Lepaute, came to the Cape light in 1854, when the newly-formed Lighthouse Board made upgrading Cape Hatteras Light one of its first priorities. The tower, built in 1803, was raised from 100 to 150 feet to carry the powerful new lens.

Seven years later, when the Civil war broke out, Confederate officials shut down the lighthouse and removed the lens for safekeeping. Its wanderings after that were the subject of much speculation. The conclusion of the earlier researchers was that the 1854 lens had been lost and might still be found, buried in the ground or stored in a cave.

In fact, the lens was first shipped by boat across Pamlico Sound to the town of Washington, North Carolina, on the Pamlico River, where it came under the care of a local doctor named Tayloe. In 1861 Union troops captured the Outer Banks and began looking for the missing lens. In April 1862 a detachment of federal troops captured Washington but failed to locate the lens. To keep it safe from capture, Dr. Tayloe shipped the lens inland to Townsville in Granville County, north of Raleigh, to be hidden.

The Lighthouse Board then supplied a new first-order lens, which was placed in service at Cape Hatteras in 1863, replacing a second-order lens installed in 1862.

The lens remained well hidden at the end of the war in April 1865. What happened next isn't entirely clear, but in September 1865 a patrol of Union troops discovered the lens, disassembled and packed in 44 pine cartons, at Henderson, a few miles south of Townsville. (Townsville is now in Vance County and Henderson is now the Vance county seat.)

The Army shipped the valuable lens to Norfolk, and from there it went to the Lighthouse Depot at Staten Island, New York. In 1868, the Lighthouse Board sent the Hatteras lens and several others recaptured from the Confederacy back to the manufacturer in Paris for cleaning and repair. After returning from France, the lens was stored at Staten Island.

In 1870, the original Cape Hatteras Light was replaced by the famous 200-foot candy-striped tower that still stands. The lens installed in the older tower in 1863 was removed and sent to the new lighthouse at Pigeon Point, California, where it can still be seen.

After many hours of research at the National Archives and the Library of Congress, Duffus found the crucial document proving that the lens installed in the new tower in 1870 was the refurbished 1854 lens, the original lens. The document is a letter from the chairman of the Lighthouse Board, dated May 27, 1870. The letter is an order to Staten Island: "Sir, you will please send without unpacking to Gen. J.H. Simpson Light House Engineer, by inland water transportation to Baltimore, Md., the whole of the 1st order apparatus and fixtures from Henry Lepaute marked `Hatteras' 1 to 37, numbers and marks of cases, which was received Oct. 14, 1868, and inform Gen. Simpson when sent,''

The travels and travails of the lens were not at an end, however. In 1936, when beach erosion first threatened to topple the tower at Cape Hatteras, the light was moved to a skeletal tower and the lens was left, abandoned, in the lantern of the lighthouse. After World War II, and before the National Park Service took control of the tower in 1949, the lens was vandalized, with many of its prisms stolen as souvenirs. The lighthouse was reactivated in 1950 with a rotating aerobeacon. The great but badly damaged lens was then stored at the Little Kinnakeet Lifesaving Station north of Avon, a few miles up the beach from the Cape. A few of its prisms were on display at the park visitor centers at Cape Hatteras and at Bodie Island.

In 1987, thieves broke into the unoccupied lifesaving station and stole several sections of the lens holding 88 prisms. Some of these prisms were recovered the following year in a nearby marsh.

Following this disaster, the park service removed the damaged lens to a climate-controlled storage facility in Manteo. Most of the bronze frame of the lens remains, but only about half of the prisms, many of them chipped or scarred. Additional prisms still turn up from time to time. In the 1950's one was returned by an Illinois couple who had found it in the sand near the tower.

In 2002, the Park Service agreed to loan all the remaining prisms and the entire bronze framework of the lens for exhibit at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, then under construction in Hatteras village.

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