November 11, 2024 • 50 mins
You've heard of nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants, but have you ever heard of a nuclear lighthouse? Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse was a pain in the behind to build, but it's troubles didn't stop there! Listen in for the story of the first (and only) US light to be run with nuclear power!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What do I say again?
(00:03):
Say hi everyone, I'm Vince.
You're listening to, yeah, okay.
I am ready.
Okay.
Oh, it's on.
Hi everybody, I'm Vince.
And I'm Emily.
And you're listening to The Lighthouse Lowdown.
Welcome to the show.
(00:32):
It's like, it's almost like you'd last did this yesterday
and not in July.
I know.
Well, I was, yeah, thanks.
I was just gonna say, I remember my last one.
My last one was blank and now here we are.
And now that we're recording,
I can't remember what my last one was.
What do you mean your, oh, the last.
The last, the Herford Inlet, I think.
Oh yeah, Herford Inlet light.
Oh, was it New Jersey?
(00:54):
No idea.
It was the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge.
Okay yeah, that's what we talked about.
But see how agreeable I am?
I'm just like, oh yeah, false.
Thank you for saying words.
Thank you for supporting me with your English.
So.
You're welcome.
Do you know where we're going today?
No, why would I know?
I don't know, sometimes you get the scoop over my shoulder.
We're going over to.
(01:14):
That is false.
That is falsified rumors.
We're going over to, it's frozen.
Oh, well, the Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse.
This one's cool.
Yeah.
Is that a case in?
(01:38):
The history of the day.
What is a case in?
I swear I didn't see that beforehand.
I would have said case on.
So I tried to look up videos
and they're all electronic speakers, like AI.
So case in?
I'm pretty sure when I looked it up, it was case in.
(01:59):
Sounds like a Kansas, Missouri type of pronunciation.
So we'll go with case in.
But first, that's gonna be our history before we do that.
You've got all kinds of clip art and stuff going on.
I worked hard on this this last hour.
So first thing.
You have three months to get ready.
Yeah.
We're gonna talk maps, because I love maps.
(02:20):
So here's the Google map.
It's only a thousand feet.
I'm looking for my mouse.
Oh, so a thousand foot is a scale right now.
We're gonna go out.
You're gonna see that we are in the area near Baltimore.
Maryland.
This lighthouse, Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse,
(02:41):
was actually one of the last
that was built in the Chesapeake Bay.
And Baltimore, we'll talk about it, obviously.
But Baltimore was a growing, burgeoning business hub
with water transit.
So back in the 1800s, it was really taken off.
And it got kind of out of hand, of course.
Same story we've heard a couple times.
(03:03):
Lots of shipwrecks, things not going well.
So there was clearly a need for a lighthouse.
One of the reasons that Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse
is one of the last Chesapeake Bay
is because it's really hard to build in this area.
We're gonna talk about some geographical
and geological challenges
(03:27):
that made this construction very interesting.
So that's the map.
And then if you don't know,
it's over on the East Coast of the United States.
Look at that.
Very nice.
Tucked up in there.
It's not even ocean-like.
It's like a bay.
It was a bay.
So the history of buoy for the day.
(03:47):
What is a caisson?
And yeah, clip art of our buoy,
because it's a history buoy.
And then I put the waves there.
Isn't that nice?
More imagery than usual.
Yeah, so caissons are used in the construction of docks,
marine infrastructure in general,
bridges, lift stations, and lighthouses.
(04:09):
Lift stations are not marine infrastructure.
They're inland.
You have water that you need to lift to keep it going
because piping, gravity.
So most often they're concrete sections
that are prefabricated.
So overall, it's a watertight chamber
or large hollow cylinder that's used in construction
(04:30):
to create a foundation of work underwater.
So they're made of concrete, steel, wood in the old days.
They're sunk into the ground
through each bedrock or stable soil.
After they're sunk in, after they're made to the depth,
then they're filled with concrete
and they make up the foundation.
Oh, filled with concrete so it's not hollow
(04:51):
once they're done with it?
When they're done, it has to be filled with concrete.
And before that, it often has to be weighted with ballasts,
which are weights to hold it down
because the empty void would float due to the buoyancy.
So like on the left, this is a lift station,
just a snip from a video.
I'm not actually gonna show the video,
but the front piece is the bottom is put in first.
(05:16):
So that's several sections of concrete.
The first one has that beveled edge on it.
That's actually called the shoe.
And it's beveled so it can help to cut through the earth
as it's forced down.
And then as soon as it's down,
you put the second section on and then third,
and then so on, so on.
The whole time on an inland project when you're using this,
you actually have to be pumping out the groundwater,
(05:38):
which is what's shown in that blue line on the left.
So they're constantly pumping out water
as they do this construction.
And then once it's complete, once the concrete's poured
and this becomes a stable structure on the bedrock,
then at that time they can stop pumping water.
So the challenges of,
I've asked this question to myself before,
how do they build bridges
(05:59):
when there's already water there?
How do you build a dam when there's already water there?
Well, a lot of these structures are caissons.
So on the right, if you were to simplify it
and just look at it as an open basket,
that's kind of a typical old-fashioned caisson.
You could work in there, you can dig things out of it,
fill it with concrete.
We can weigh it down in the meantime.
(06:21):
This is actually an enclosed caisson,
which they need to be pressurized with air
and have ballast weights on them to hold them down.
And the reason that they're pressurized with air
is so that you can evacuate mud and rocks and debris
that's actually in the base.
So you can put this down and then work in it.
(06:42):
These actually lower men inside.
So the personnel access tube, I should say.
They'd put people down in these things
and they would have shovels and tools
and they would dig and work items towards the center here,
towards this muck tube, which would suck up and out
materials, mud, and then often they have cranes and stuff
(07:04):
to take care of boulders and whatnot.
People used to get sick from going in here
from decompression sickness.
So they would be under these pressurized conditions
working for a while and then they'd come out
and a lot of people have died through history
from working in here.
I forget there's some name,
that's the reference I didn't write down.
Is it like whenever you're scuba diving
(07:26):
and you come up too fast?
Exactly.
Like nitrogen in your brain?
Yeah, it's inert.
I think mostly inert gases
that are just within your cell structures,
that your whole body, that they don't have
the capability to get out, to permeate quickly enough
if you jump from high pressure to low pressure.
So if you're at depth as a scuba diver
(07:48):
or in a pressure chamber,
you come out of that pressure chamber too quickly
or if you ascend too quickly.
And a lot of people get sick from it,
they feel nauseous, they have days long of symptoms
or hours long of symptoms,
but there have been a lot of people that have died
and they didn't know really how to deal with it.
So now we do.
(08:08):
It's a common thing.
We handle it very well.
There's lots of occupations that have high pressures now.
So would they would, if there's not a bottom on it,
in that case would they put down concrete walls
and like pump out water or something?
Okay.
Yeah, they'd put down the concrete shell, if you will,
with an open, it's like an open cylinder
(08:29):
and they would seat it against the bottom of the floor
as much as you could,
which would also make for interesting circumstances
if that seal were to ever fail.
Yeah.
Because it, and it did, water would rush in
and mud would rush in until it would stop.
So your ballast weights are super important.
And yeah, casein.
(08:50):
So you're always looking, you're looking for bedrock.
So you want to get down to a stable structure
that you can support your material from,
otherwise it will sink and shift and it won't last.
The reason that we're talking about caseins
is because a very impressive story comes
from the construction of Baltimore Harbor Light
(09:11):
in the casein that they had to use there.
So.
Overturned.
There's a lot.
We're gonna get to it.
So Baltimore Lighthouse proved to be
one of the most difficult lighthouses to construct
in all of the United States history.
Whoa.
And very expensive.
How expensive?
Big expensive.
Like millions?
(09:32):
Lots of millions.
So it was 1890 was when the lighthouse board
first requested money to build the lighthouse.
They requested $60,000,
which they thought was a lot of money.
So that's in the new cutoff channel
near the mouth of the Magothi River.
I think it's Magothi, Magothi.
(09:52):
And the quote from them on this request was,
on the account of the impressible character of the Shoal
and the liability to damage or destruction
by means of moving ice,
no lighthouse other than an expensive one can be permanent.
So.
Yeah.
So we're gonna talk about the,
I don't think I wrote them down,
(10:13):
but one of the forces that this lighthouse
has to be designed to withstand
is a force in pounds per square foot of ice shifting.
The force designed is 30,000 pounds per square foot.
Oh my.
So 100 mile an hour winds,
three mile hour water currents, which are a lot,
(10:35):
but 30,000 pounds per square foot
is what the ice can press on the outside of the structure.
I mean, if you think about it,
I think of a body of water and a solid sheet of ice,
and it just bumps the lighthouse all at once
over and over again.
That's what icy lighthouses have to go through.
(10:57):
I mean, if you, even today,
this is over 100 years ago.
Yeah.
100 years.
What year was this?
1890.
Over 100 years before I was born, this conversation.
And today, if you had asked me,
hey, can we build this under these conditions out here?
I'd be like.
Come on.
It's gonna be.
Maybe.
I mean, we've been to the moon.
(11:18):
That's pretty cool, but this.
Can't do anything.
Right.
So the board understood
that this is gonna be a difficult task,
but they didn't understand quite how difficult.
So.
They needed one because there was a shoal in the harbor
that was like.
There's just so much traffic.
There wasn't a particular hazard,
(11:40):
but this lighthouse,
we'll go over the dimensions later on.
Okay.
It's not that tall, including its structure
all the way through the nastiness under the water.
So it's not, it's a shallow area coming to harbor,
which makes sense.
Okay.
But I think it just had a massive amount of traffic
as it was getting out of hand.
So from the time of the first request
(12:01):
to the time of completing the lighthouse was 18 years.
Whoa.
Which is a long time.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I think there's more, there's, you know,
there's longer timeframes out there that we've talked about,
but thinking it's almost 1900.
So that's kind of late in the game.
We know how lighthouses are built already.
Right.
You'd think it would get done quicker.
(12:23):
So the first request, 1890,
they spent a lot of that money by boring into the shoal
at the selected site that they had chose.
And it revealed that there was a soft layer of mud
that was 55 feet thick.
What?
Yeah.
That's before they got to soft sand
and then solid sand and then soft sand and then bedrock.
(12:48):
So a ton of muck.
Yeah.
A lot.
So-
It's like almost a six story building
and that's not including the water.
Yeah.
So they thought maybe they could use screw pile
type foundation, which is a pile.
So it's a vertical column of concrete alone
(13:09):
instead of digging through all that stuff.
And they thought maybe not.
So they looked at a different site
and we're 60 grand in at the time.
The new site said, oh, there's less depth here.
It's not as deep in this new location,
which is not too far away.
They made an attempt, this is 1898 now,
(13:29):
an attempt to plant an experimental disc pile
with two hours of boring,
the disc reached just three and a half feet in the mud.
And so the conclusion was, quote,
that the expense of the building a light station
in the 55 feet of semi-fluid mud,
which overlays the sandy bottom,
(13:50):
would cost twice as much as the original request.
So then we talked about our three design criteria.
So a hundred mile per hour winds,
30,000 pounds of ice pressure per square foot
and a three mile per hour water current,
which is not insignificant.
Yeah.
So they made an additional request to Congress
three times in a row until the additional 60,000
(14:11):
was approved, that was 1902.
So three years of requesting more finances,
we needed to double the budget before Congress said, okay.
The final design for Baltimore Lighthouse
was approved in 1902 and the bidding for the job
was opened the next spring.
Somewhat ominously, only one bid came in
for the erection of the lighthouse.
(14:32):
And that one bid was $80,000 over the entire budget.
So the sole bid was rejected.
Congress approved another $60,000
to make the project feasible,
bringing the grand total of allocated money
to $180,000 in 1902.
And the next round of bidding,
a man named William Flaherty was the only participant.
(14:55):
Oh God.
And he won the job because he was the only participant.
Oh no.
So just for reference, this is a little off script.
A lot of this comes from lighthousefriends.com.
Shout out to them.
Yeah.
If you want to kind of follow along
and a lot of these bullet points are on there.
So this is one that's not.
So in 1902, $180,000, I wanted to scale that
(15:16):
to today's finances.
There's different ways to do that projection.
I selected for a construction project today.
So it's in the relative share of GDP.
Today, $213 million, $421,783.20.
What?
$213 million lighthouse.
(15:37):
Really?
If you were to construct the same project today.
Wow.
As far as finances go.
Yeah.
So.
That's insane.
Nobody would ever do that.
They tripled their budget.
I mean, if you told me you had a big project,
it was really important.
What is it?
213 divided by 30, 70.
So 70 and change, million dollars.
(15:59):
I'd be like, wow, that's crazy.
200, it's pretty wild.
Yeah, so that's, if anyone wants to look that up,
it's economy cost, measured as the cost of the project
as a percent of the output of the economy.
So the metalwork started its construction in 1904
in Atlanta, Georgia.
(16:20):
Started sending things to the job site.
We're getting ready.
Here we go.
Two days after its arrival at site.
So they built this huge, it was actually made out of wood,
huge case in.
Enormous, one of the biggest ever made.
And that's its own side story we won't get into.
But a lot of lumber was used.
They had trouble finding trees big enough to do this.
Oh my gosh.
Two days after it arrived to the site,
(16:41):
heavy seas filled the cylinder
and knocked it off kilter by seven feet.
Hence the image on screen.
Totally knocked out of place.
Not level anymore, which means they have to fix it.
They have to figure out what to do.
So the case in had been sunk a mere eight feet
into the shoal and it was seven feet offset.
(17:02):
So the contractor left the site
to gather additional materials
and returned in October.
Two more courses of iron plates were added to the case in
and concrete was poured on the high side of the cylinder
in an attempt to level the foundation.
But all this work was for naught.
As a severe storm on October 12th
caused the cylinder to turn over on its side.
No.
(17:23):
Flaherty left the scene once more
and this time he did not come back.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I'd be like, you're done.
He gave up.
This is stupid.
He was under contract from the government.
And he just gave, they sued him.
The government had to sue a contractor
because I don't know how much money
he'd put in at this point, but he spent it all.
Had to have been significant.
(17:45):
Shoot.
So they sued him.
And the insurance company which had bonded Flaherty
was forced to step in and complete the job.
So are you familiar with construction bonds?
No.
So my first job, we would have to talk about
if we're gonna have a job that's been bonded or not.
So a bond is an insurance claim on a project
(18:06):
so that if the contractor's unable to perform,
if they say, hey, I'm gonna come put all your windows,
it's the glazer, and they don't come or they can't do it
or they are delayed so far that it's gonna ruin
your schedule, you claim bond.
So a bond is a financial backup that then is used
to have somebody else come in and finish the job.
(18:27):
Okay, so basically they give you the money
to hire somebody else to finish it.
Right.
Okay.
But it costs extra because you're purchasing a bond.
Yeah.
Agreement, so.
Luckily this was bonded.
Oh, they're probably so thankful for that.
Yeah, so that was the United States Fidelity
and Guarantee Company funded the workmen
(18:49):
so they didn't do the work themselves,
but they lit up their bond.
In 1905, they were moved over half of the 120 iron plates
attached to the structure and then the following spring,
they built a U-shaped pier around the caisson
and brought in counterbalancing equipment
which consisted of a steam engine, air compressors,
(19:09):
water tanks, a hoisting machine, A-frames,
and a temporary quarter, sleeping quarters for the workers.
This U-shape was supposed to protect it.
Just a construction site.
It's basically a construction site.
So they built a rig, if you will,
around this thing to work on it, which is crazy.
That is crazy.
It'd be kind of fun.
Yeah, so during the summer of 1906,
(19:31):
which is the image on screen,
heavy weights were suspended by wire cables
from those A-frames placed on the overturned caisson
and as shown in the diagram,
by the end of September, the caisson protruded
from the shul at an angle of 45 degrees.
Pumps were then used to remove mud
from under the high side of the cylinder.
When the work was stopped in late November,
the caisson was just 17 degrees from vertical.
(19:54):
The following spring, additional courses were set
and added to the cylinder.
80 tons of stone were placed in the compartment
on the high side and mud was pumped out from below.
Over the course of several months,
the caisson was gradually straightened
and it sunk to a depth of 82 feet below high water.
Whoa.
So well over a year, construction crews
(20:16):
were working full-time to get this thing
from on its side to on its top.
And then fell over once very quickly.
Yep.
And then start evacuating the mud from below.
So it'll keep sinking as that, you know,
we talked about before, just madness.
The crazy thing is like none of that is forward progress.
(20:38):
It's all just like redoing or like having to do something
that you wouldn't have had to do in the first place.
Yeah.
Here's some images that show the final construction.
So on the right, you have the caisson,
which eventually was filled with concrete
and had lots of reinforcements added to it.
So that whole structure is below high water is that top line.
(21:01):
And then the lighthouse is on top of that.
Okay.
So that's a massive feat.
If you notice, there's actually a void in the top,
those two empty slots.
They left those intentionally.
One of them stores clean water, it's a cistern.
And the other one, fuel?
I can't remember, it might be fuel.
And then on the left, you can see the lighthouse concept
(21:21):
on top of the caisson.
So pretty.
And then below it are also piers that were drilled.
So that center image is actually part of the left image.
It shows these, I don't know what that length is
because I can't see it that well.
40 feet.
40 feet drilled piers that extend into the bedrock below.
And there's the grid pattern of the layout.
That's crazy.
(21:42):
Wait, so if they can only drill like three feet
in whatever it was, two hours of drilling?
Over a year.
Oh.
Drill, drill.
That thing's not going anywhere now.
It's like an oil field.
So it's not going anywhere, slap the hood, right?
It looks good.
So I'm gonna just describe the light.
(22:03):
So it's in 23 feet of water,
located westward and southerly
at the entrance of Craighill Channel, Baltimore Harbor.
The structure is a brown cylindrical foundation pier
expanding in a trumpet shape to form the gallery.
Surmounted by a white octagonal two-story brick dwelling.
Has a mansard roof, I don't know what that is,
(22:24):
and a black lantern.
The lower part of the structure
consists of a square wooden caisson,
48 feet wide at the bottom, 46 at the top, 21 feet high,
provided with a working chamber
and air and dredging shafts.
So they filled those in,
but that was the shafts that were included.
On the roof of the caisson is a solidical cast iron shell
(22:46):
that has a diameter of 45 feet.
For the five lower courses,
each six feet, three inches in height.
So they made up rings of steel, cast iron,
not steel, cast iron around to build their final form
and then filled those in.
So that's what's going on with the shapes there.
Okay.
After sinking to the proper level
(23:07):
below the bottom of the bay,
the working chamber and parts of the shafts
were filled with concrete
and the entire shell of concrete and large stones,
except for the spaces for cistern and the cellar.
That was the other one, food cellar.
What do you think the volume of concrete
they had to use was?
Like, this thing is.
(23:28):
Thousands of cubic yards.
Kind of crazy.
And to do that, to be fair,
I've seen images of how concrete is poured into caissons,
even today.
There's barges.
So barges make the concrete
and pour the concrete on the water into the caisson,
which is madness.
There was one video,
I've dove into some stuff for this episode.
(23:50):
One video is this company out of Europe,
I can't remember exactly where,
but they build, effectively they're caissons
that are modular.
So they're like a large rectangle
that you put into the water
and then you can build piers out of it,
water support structures, docks, dams, whatever.
And so they, you know, you put them together
and it basically 3D prints them out of concrete
(24:13):
and rebar on the water.
And so you put a floating platform down
and then this thing goes up.
And as it goes up, more concrete is extracted
like a giant 3D printer, but on the water.
So they can do this, I think it's like 10 days
is what it takes to make one unit.
And they can make enormous sets of units.
(24:35):
And they sink them, they fill them with concrete.
So there's a modern technique out there.
I'm sure it's hundreds of millions of dollars,
but this company only has three of these ships
that build them today.
Crazy.
The illuminating apparatus on top
is a fourth order lens showing a flashing white
every 10 seconds.
(24:55):
Nice.
Shown initially for the first time in 1908.
That was long.
Oh, cool.
Is it this, the construction site?
Yep, this is nearing the end of construction.
This is a US Coast Guard image.
It's so funny looking at the lighthouse.
It's just like, we went all through that for this.
(25:16):
It's beautiful and it's so cute.
But it's the same, it's not like a skyscraper.
Yeah.
Just like a little dude.
It's that dang ocean making things hard.
Inside the first floor is a main living space for keepers.
Included a sitting room and a kitchen.
It's equipped with a hand pump to bring up water
(25:37):
from the cistern.
Nice.
Just outside the gallery,
there's a cast iron structure on the left.
See that thing?
Yeah, is that a toilet?
It is a pooper.
The way that it's hanging over the edge of the pier,
I'm like, it's gotta be where you poop.
It is quote, cantilevered over the edge of the water.
(25:57):
And I'll tell you, I know it is still there today.
Really?
You can still dump out there.
You.
Two bedrooms were located on the second floor
with a small watch room directly beneath the manzo roof,
originally covered with colorful shale tiles.
Oh, that's cute.
Okay, so they, yeah.
Pretty cool.
Yeah.
(26:18):
Oh, I bet it was cold out there in that crapper.
Yeah.
So the, and that's funny enough,
I don't remember his name, so I can't give him credit.
There's some influencer that pops up time to time.
He lives near Baltimore and he's a crabber.
He catches crabs, like for his work.
Yeah.
(26:38):
And he's probably young 20s,
influencer type personality.
Right.
He's recording all the time.
I think maybe his girlfriend is, I don't know.
But either way, he spent a night at this lighthouse.
He was invited to do so,
and we'll talk about how you could maybe do that yourself.
Excellent.
And he took a couple of videos
(26:58):
and kind of talked about what was there.
He showed what was there.
And one of the things he showed was that cast iron privy.
It's still there.
I believe that you can use it.
I don't know.
Maybe they ask you not to.
I don't know the details of that.
So it's still there.
So you sit down and it's just like, asked to air.
It's an outhouse and below the seat
is the ocean's down there.
(27:20):
Yeah.
Can you imagine the cold air shooting up that thing?
Like, imagine when it's icy, or when it's winter
and it's dark and you got there and it's just like,
you lift the lid and it's like, ooh.
You just gotta look at your butt.
In a metal box, a cold metal box.
You know there's no heater out there.
Everything's cold.
Unfortunately, the lighthouse had a short life
(27:41):
as a staffed life station.
No.
It was one of the earliest that I've seen
in the United States that was automated.
It's probably because of the toilet.
Well, it's right, yeah.
So in 1923, they spent an additional $1,280.
Oh, chump change.
They changed the lumenate to an acetylene fuel.
(28:03):
Okay.
So it kind of runs more on it.
It's less fuel oil, right?
More pressurized gas.
Not pressurized, you know, liquid gas.
And the fog bell was discontinued, unfortunately.
Even to today, there's still light.
There is no fog bell, no fog signal out there.
Makes no noise.
Is it not foggy?
(28:23):
Time to time.
Don't run into it.
Is this one of those places where they,
it's not, where when it was manned,
it wasn't manned when it was winter?
I didn't read anything like that.
Okay.
I don't remember if Standard Rock was the one that,
no, it was manned because.
(28:44):
Yeah, they froze inside.
Yeah, there are some lighthouses
where they pick you up in December.
Maybe it's White Shoals that I'm thinking of.
I can't remember, but.
I thought those were usually on the open ocean
compared to the bay or lake or river.
I don't remember.
Not a river.
There's some on rivers.
Maybe I'm thinking of light ships.
I think I'm thinking of light ships.
We talked about light ships moving, for sure.
(29:04):
Yes, when they would tow it in.
Okay, that makes more sense.
I think, speaking of light ships,
I don't know for a fact.
I think there's one in.
Baltimore?
Baltimore.
I think it's one of the Chesapeake light ships.
Interesting.
If you look up Baltimore Lighthouses,
you're gonna see a couple different things.
Which we'll have to cover in other episodes.
But one of them is a light ship.
(29:25):
Okay.
So, like I said, it was automated in 1923.
Kind of a shame.
Also kind of neat, because of how early that is.
Yeah.
We're talking 30s through 60s and 70s.
We saw a lot of them automated in the US.
But, part of the coolness,
it is technically, it was the world's
first nuclear power lighthouse.
(29:47):
Oh.
So, there are other out there.
How did they do that?
I'll tell you.
Okay.
There are other nuclear powered lighthouses out there
and the Russians had a whole series of them.
Vincent, I watched a video about this online the other day.
And I guess you're stealing it.
Well, I'm not gonna go further into it.
I'm just gonna say we're talking about the future.
(30:09):
I'm just kidding.
But it's a whole long story and it's really interesting.
For the moment, I believe this is the only one
in the United States that was ever powered by a nuclear cell.
Whoa.
There was a buoy that they had done in 1961,
unmanned, just a light source.
Yeah.
And the lighthouse was the next concept.
So they wanted to kind of test out some of their gear.
(30:31):
So, I went way off the deep end.
We're gonna talk about SNAPs, S-N-A-P-S.
But here's the little quote from the site.
So, it was the world's first nuclear powered lighthouse,
May 20th of 1964, five years before we were on the moon.
There was a 60 watt isotropic power generator
(30:51):
called a SNAP 7B.
It was installed to see if such equipment could be used
in remote locations.
So.
It was like a test site.
Mm-hmm.
According to the local newspaper,
the generator was quote,
smaller than a 55 gallon oil drum,
because lots of newspaper men had oil drums around.
And it was.
Everybody knows this unit of measurement.
(31:13):
It was reputed to be capable of supplying
an uninterrupted 10 year flow of electricity
without any maintenance or refueling.
Which.
Sounds pretty nice.
Makes sense to me now,
just because I've read these things.
The installation of this thing is 4,600 pounds
in such a small package.
It's shown in the photograph.
Thanks.
Here.
(31:34):
Yeah, there it is.
Ooh.
So this thing, radiator fins on the side,
US Coast Guard putting it in.
Very cool.
It was removed two years later,
after having been shown to be completely reliable
and quite stable.
Why?
It was an experiment.
I'll tell you why, it's interesting.
So it was later installed in an offshore oil platform
(31:56):
in the Gulf of Mexico for power.
Okay.
We talked about the buoy was in 1961.
It was the only other lighthouse,
light ship buoy that was powered.
Ironically, the vessel,
the first vessel to pass this lighthouse,
while the generator was being installed,
was the NS Savannah,
(32:16):
which is the world's first nuclear powered cargo ship.
Oh, cute.
Like cousins.
Yeah.
Two ships in the night.
So the SNAP-B.
So a SNAP is a system for nuclear,
nuclear, not nuclear,
nuclear auxiliary power, excuse me.
The United States invested heavily in the SNAP program
(32:41):
from 1951 to 1973.
So 1945, we set off the nukes, right?
Okay.
And then this world of new technology opened up
for us and everybody else.
We were ahead of everybody else at the time.
Whole long history.
So roughly 22 years, there was a program
to come up with these systems for nuclear auxiliary power,
(33:02):
mostly for space travel.
Because it was, we were trying to get to space.
We're trying to see how would you have power on a spaceship?
So you have combustible fuels,
but what are you gonna carry?
Combustible oxygen, fuel.
Yeah, there's byproducts.
Yeah, it's a whole problem.
So they thought, well, if we could use atomic power,
(33:23):
inevitably you could have a 10 year battery
that produces no waste, it produces some heat,
which you could reject to outer space.
That's kind of the dream.
And this was gonna be the answer.
It was made non-practical near the end of these experiments
and basically mothballed,
specifically for space travel because of solar technology.
(33:47):
Solar.
It came soon after this.
Panels and not so much solar panels
that we have available to us as residents,
as normal people, but the outer space capable solar panels
really took off.
And so we had battery technology and solar panels
and for the reasons listed,
these nuclear high risk things were discontinued.
(34:11):
Well, and think about the cells
without the obstruction of the Earth's atmosphere protecting
how much more UV they would get.
I mean, normal Earth ones would probably burn,
but whatever they created to withstand being up in space,
that much closer without any sort of protection
(34:32):
from the sun probably.
I think they have gold foil on them.
Oh yeah.
Gold the color, but also the material.
Yeah, whatever the satellite is
that's millions of miles away from the US right now.
The US.
The United States of Earth.
America.
Oh man, you know what I mean.
(34:54):
So good.
So.
Sorry.
No, it's really interesting.
The Russians, it's a whole side story.
They were following along trying to do their best
to keep up with the United States.
I thought it was interesting.
This image on the right is really captivating.
It's in black and white.
It shows this industrial block.
This could be from a movie, right?
On the left, you see a similar scene.
(35:16):
I think this is the same scene,
but one's in black and white and one's in color.
So either two different cameras
and the one that's in black and white is much sharper.
So maybe that was, they were still working
on color cameras when this happened.
Or left is the colorized.
You said it was the 60s?
This was installed in 64.
Okay, so that'll probably check out.
(35:37):
Two different cameras, one of them's less high quality
because it's color.
It's the same ship.
W5, I assume.
US Coast Guard signs right there.
Is this, is the lighthouse a different color now?
It's all white in this picture.
I don't know.
So you have to remember it was military
(35:58):
all the way up until recently we'll talk about.
And I think it might've gone through some changes.
Like it looks like those windows are boarded up.
So like after it was not manned anymore.
Actually, I know that to be a fact.
There was some ship captain
who thought it was really important that this be preserved.
And we're gonna get to talk about that some too.
(36:20):
But I don't remember the colors if they're changed.
Okay, we'll probably see in pictures.
Yeah, we will see some newer photos.
So Russia, that thing that we watched.
Russia saw us do this and then did it to their lighthouses.
Yeah. And then they were abandoned.
Well, one of the things with,
so what this is, is you take,
you have to forgive me
(36:40):
because I really don't understand much of this.
You take a very small amount of radioactive material
and it has a slow reaction continuously.
And that as it breaks down,
as it deteriorates that sample of whatever that material is.
And it generates heat.
And so the heat is used to power a temperature difference.
(37:03):
And the temperature difference can make electricity.
So it's using a really small amount of fuel
to go a long time to provide different amounts
of amperage voltage, electricity,
you have different transformers and whatnot
to make that work.
So this is not a bomb,
but it is in the realm of being dangerous
(37:23):
in a radioactive way.
So the reason it was used out in lighthouses,
I think is because no one's there.
And there also need to be really reliable places,
lighthouses.
So it's kind of a handshake of trusting the lighthouse
to protect people, keep them away.
And also give this piece of technology a test.
So I think the Russians were probably doing the same thing.
(37:46):
From my impression on history,
they are a little more rapid
with their development of technology.
And we are pretty slow and methodical, it seems like.
I don't know any of that.
That's just what I think.
Neat.
So it was only two years that they had it in there?
Okay.
And they moved it on.
(38:07):
Because it was successful.
So then they sent it somewhere useful.
Yep.
Like most lighthouses, Baltimore Lighthouse
has suffered since automation.
No.
Removed its live-in caretakers.
So 1983, yeah, which is before this image.
That makes sense.
The Coast Guard wrote a report
in preparation for the extensive, quote,
(38:28):
operation spruce up.
Cute.
The report. Spruce up.
The report is pretty bad.
The damage, unfortunately, people are people.
So besides the near ubiquitous water damage,
unsealed windows had led to proliferation
of pigeons and eggs.
Oh no.
This is where I was laughing out loud the other day.
(38:50):
And the accumulation of guano, quote,
several inches thick on the all decks
and even in the stairway.
Gross.
End quote.
The lantern glass panes and the lens
serving as a beautiful beacon
inevitably attracted their share of bullets.
People shoot at lighthouses apparently.
(39:10):
Rude. It's a recurring theme.
Why is that a thing?
Vandals also left their mark on the station's wooden door
and even tried to burn the interior of the lighthouse.
Oh!
What is happening?
Why do people feel the need to destroy things?
Don't know.
Go to a rage room.
They don't think they had rage rooms in the 60s.
(39:31):
Well, go to a forest and shoot at trees.
So, yeah, this is where this image comes from.
To preserve the lighthouse, the windows were bricked up,
the wooden floor was replaced with a steel one,
acrylic panes were installed in the lantern
and the access ladders were raised
beyond normal human reach.
I could have gotten them.
In 1988, Lieutenant Sam Neal,
(39:52):
commander of the Coast Guard buoy tender Red Birch,
expressed concern over the condition of the lighthouse.
While he acknowledged that the boat Davits,
the boat Davits and the iron outhouse
no longer had any utility,
he still recommended painting them
in the interest of historical significance.
Wonderful.
Between-
(40:13):
Need more people like that.
Yes, we do.
Yes, we do.
Between 89 and 90, the Red Birch's efforts,
that ship included sandblasting the caisson,
caulking and painting the masonry
and replacing the waterlogged timbers of the lantern floor
with tongue and groove boards.
What is that?
Tongue and groove, each board fits into another,
(40:33):
it's like a common flooring now.
It's tongue and groove.
Like it's a U shape?
Yeah, one is a tongue or groove rather,
where the tongue fits inside.
Okay.
So they snap into place.
Nice.
Baltimore Lighthouse was put up for public auction
and it's sold.
I'm skipping a section because we talked about
how US Coast Guard could sell public auction lighthouses
(40:56):
to preserve them, keep them alive.
Good idea.
What year?
2006.
Whoa.
The final bid was $260,000.
That's pretty good.
Not bad.
The new owner, BHL LLC of Annapolis,
is a partnership of private citizens for couples
who are committed to the preservation and restoration
(41:16):
of Baltimore Harbor Light.
The terms of sale dictate the Coast Guard
be granted access to the lighthouse
for occasional checkups on the still active light.
Kind of cool.
Oh.
The owners eventually plan on sharing their quote,
privately owned museum with the public
through evenings or overnights at the lighthouse.
Overnights.
Which I think is what they're getting into now.
(41:37):
I think this guy is, he's got like half a million followers.
This person whose video I saw.
So he's slightly bigger than our podcast.
Oh.
Just a little bit more.
But yeah, so I'm gonna go to their site that they keep now.
But one more thing I thought was interesting.
This lighthouse only had five headkeepers the whole time.
Yeah, short span.
(42:00):
Crazy.
So that's an image.
So they painted the top part black.
And I think, okay, that's what it used to,
that's what it looked like originally too.
So the Coast Guard must have painted it white.
And then whenever they,
and then they restored it to original,
its original look which had a black roof.
So the red steel below,
(42:21):
the white building itself and the black roof.
The black roof had colorful shingles it said.
First direction.
I don't know exactly how that works.
So this is their site.
I just wanted to click around for a minute.
I won't spend quite as long as we did
when we were talking about St. Augustine.
But.
Do you like this website?
They have a great website, yeah.
So their work goes sideways.
(42:44):
So this is their timeline.
We talked through a lot of these points.
Great, beautiful images.
And then 06 it talks about the partnership.
That would be us, the folks who run this site.
So.
You know, can support their mission,
visit the site to learn more.
One thing I wanted to do, they have the About Us,
how to visit.
(43:04):
It's really interesting.
Because they have different options.
So first off, they show the weather, which is great.
But then they show links to private tours
where you can actually get in the lighthouse.
Private boat is what it is.
Watermark tours, charts and charters and cruises,
those are all in the area.
(43:24):
A schooner woodwind, Annapolis sailing cruises, heck yeah.
Fish out there, cruise at Chesapeake.
Photography workshops, looks like a couple options.
So.
I've seen a lot of lighthouses do photography packages.
Really?
Interesting.
I mean, this is just, this is nice to me.
Cause it's like, ah, you know, not everybody's like us
where they've got to go and climb.
(43:45):
I got to see the inside.
Yeah, you got to have a bunch of different options.
They do all these things.
Support their mission, get a look.
So, look at that background, first off.
This is a lot of the work that they've done themselves
in restoration recently.
So I saw some of these images.
There's a bar upstairs that they built
from some of the original wood called Splinter's Bar.
(44:07):
Neat.
Pretty cool.
So I think it's going to be quite the adventure
if you're able to stay here.
It looks like a really cool place.
I think the windows look cool.
Beautiful doors.
And beautiful views.
Yep.
I just thought it was cool.
I think that's all I have.
I think we're going to take us home.
Beautiful photo.
(44:28):
There's those access.
That'd be kind of daunting to you to get up there.
The picture you have as our, the cover screen
has the toilet.
Oh yeah.
The toit.
The toit.
Can you imagine?
The wood door is cool too.
It's beautiful.
Can you imagine getting up those?
Like do you remember when we went to Cape Cod
(44:49):
and she took some photos of me getting onto,
into lantern rooms, like through the stairs.
Tiny holes.
I'm kind of a big person and it's a little tight.
But that would be daunting coming up those stairs and ladder.
The ladder especially.
There is no protective anything around that ladder.
(45:12):
If you fall, you're in the water.
It's embarrassing.
Yeah, that's bad.
Can you, if it's rough, if it's cold, you just die.
I don't think they're going to let people die out there.
Just saying.
What is the current flash pattern?
Is it the same as it used to be?
You know, I don't know that it's any different.
I can go back and read the one from earlier.
That would be on the US LHS light lists.
(45:36):
Flashing white every 10 seconds.
Yeah, I will say Lighthouse Friends was good.
The Visitation Site for Modern Information Today was good.
But there wasn't a ton of information.
There was no Fitzgerald.
There was no huge event marking the history
(45:57):
that I found of this lighthouse.
You covered the case
and that was probably the biggest thing that could happen.
Yeah, the construction was a real trick.
They had to pull off.
Very cool.
I think I've seen that lighthouse before.
You know, like when you open lighthousefriends.com
and it scrolls through different lighthouse images up top
(46:18):
before you type in what you want.
Yeah.
I think one time it went by
and I'm like trying to click on it
because what I want is for my mouse to go over it,
to hover over it and it tells me what lighthouse it is
and it doesn't have that capability.
It's just like a random scrolling of lighthouses.
That's one of these, you think?
It changes every time you open it,
(46:39):
which is actually a really cool feature.
Or at least maybe it uses every image on the website
and like cycles through them.
Yeah.
But yeah, see, like those are so cool.
Anything that's a case in out in the middle of nowhere
is super neat.
I'm glad we finally got to cover one.
And what's nice about this lighthouse
is it's not just the tower.
It's like, see, I get distracted by these lighthouses.
(47:01):
It's like, it's almost like integral
because it's like a house and a lighthouse.
Yeah.
I think the only reason they don't have
like occupied spaces in the case on
is because there's no windows.
Yeah.
So it's officially the most expensive lighthouse ever made.
(47:22):
I don't know that.
Okay.
I could remember if you said that.
It was one of the most difficult to construct.
It's gotta be close.
Can I look it up really quick?
Sure.
St. George Reef Lighthouse.
I remember this was a question on the US LHS
40th anniversary extravaganza located off the coast
of Northern California, most expensive lighthouse ever built
(47:43):
cost $704,000 equivalent to 24 million
when adjusted for inflation.
Yeah.
11 years.
But I'm telling you, I went down this rabbit hole.
If you go and explore adjusted for inflation.
Yeah.
In what terms like.
Right.
Cause this one, that influencer said six million something
(48:09):
was the cost of this one was what he had quoted.
Yeah.
That's what I was like looking it up.
It's different because it's not like,
that's what it would cost to buy a lighthouse.
It's like construction costs now are a lot different
than what money was worth back then.
So I get what you mean.
Like if you had, if you were bidding to build a lighthouse
(48:30):
like this, it would be a lot more than the cost
of what it was back then.
The guy's name that I couldn't think of.
I looked up Maryland crabber influencer.
See if you recognize this dude.
Luke McFadden, this guy.
He looks strangely familiar to me.
Just a little though.
But shout out to that dude.
(48:52):
Crabs.
Bringing this on the map for a lot of people.
Very good.
Cool.
Thank you for covering that.
You're welcome.
Good case in lighthouse.
I feel like we haven't talked about those in a long time.
Have we talked case in before?
I don't know that we have.
I did talk about case in.
No, I don't know.
I was stuck between case in and snap on this one.
Oh yeah.
For the lighthouse.
(49:12):
Both good.
I think case in is probably more applicable
to more lighthouses.
True.
It's been a fun Thursday night.
We'll see you all next time.
Ah.
What?
Check out our website, thelighthouselowdown.com
where you can leave us a review.
You can send us lighthouses to cover.
I'm about to do a few in a row
of listener lighthouses.
(49:34):
And you can check out our YouTube,
also on our website,
and our Instagram at the Lighthouse Lowdown.
And we hope you catch us next time on
The Lighthouse Lowdown.
Bye.
What do I say again?
(00:03):
Say hi everyone, I'm Vince.
You're listening to, yeah, okay.
I am ready.
Okay.
Oh, it's on.
Hi everybody, I'm Vince.
And I'm Emily.
And you're listening to The Lighthouse Lowdown.
Welcome to the show.
(00:32):
It's like, it's almost like you'd last did this yesterday
and not in July.
I know.
Well, I was, yeah, thanks.
I was just gonna say, I remember my last one.
My last one was blank and now here we are.
And now that we're recording,
I can't remember what my last one was.
What do you mean your, oh, the last.
The last, the Herford Inlet, I think.
Oh yeah, Herford Inlet light.
Oh, was it New Jersey?
(00:54):
No idea.
It was the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge.
Okay yeah, that's what we talked about.
But see how agreeable I am?
I'm just like, oh yeah, false.
Thank you for saying words.
Thank you for supporting me with your English.
So.
You're welcome.
Do you know where we're going today?
No, why would I know?
I don't know, sometimes you get the scoop over my shoulder.
We're going over to.
(01:14):
That is false.
That is falsified rumors.
We're going over to, it's frozen.
Oh, well, the Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse.
This one's cool.
Yeah.
Is that a case in?
(01:38):
The history of the day.
What is a case in?
I swear I didn't see that beforehand.
I would have said case on.
So I tried to look up videos
and they're all electronic speakers, like AI.
So case in?
I'm pretty sure when I looked it up, it was case in.
(01:59):
Sounds like a Kansas, Missouri type of pronunciation.
So we'll go with case in.
But first, that's gonna be our history before we do that.
You've got all kinds of clip art and stuff going on.
I worked hard on this this last hour.
So first thing.
You have three months to get ready.
Yeah.
We're gonna talk maps, because I love maps.
(02:20):
So here's the Google map.
It's only a thousand feet.
I'm looking for my mouse.
Oh, so a thousand foot is a scale right now.
We're gonna go out.
You're gonna see that we are in the area near Baltimore.
Maryland.
This lighthouse, Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse,
(02:41):
was actually one of the last
that was built in the Chesapeake Bay.
And Baltimore, we'll talk about it, obviously.
But Baltimore was a growing, burgeoning business hub
with water transit.
So back in the 1800s, it was really taken off.
And it got kind of out of hand, of course.
Same story we've heard a couple times.
(03:03):
Lots of shipwrecks, things not going well.
So there was clearly a need for a lighthouse.
One of the reasons that Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse
is one of the last Chesapeake Bay
is because it's really hard to build in this area.
We're gonna talk about some geographical
and geological challenges
(03:27):
that made this construction very interesting.
So that's the map.
And then if you don't know,
it's over on the East Coast of the United States.
Look at that.
Very nice.
Tucked up in there.
It's not even ocean-like.
It's like a bay.
It was a bay.
So the history of buoy for the day.
(03:47):
What is a caisson?
And yeah, clip art of our buoy,
because it's a history buoy.
And then I put the waves there.
Isn't that nice?
More imagery than usual.
Yeah, so caissons are used in the construction of docks,
marine infrastructure in general,
bridges, lift stations, and lighthouses.
(04:09):
Lift stations are not marine infrastructure.
They're inland.
You have water that you need to lift to keep it going
because piping, gravity.
So most often they're concrete sections
that are prefabricated.
So overall, it's a watertight chamber
or large hollow cylinder that's used in construction
(04:30):
to create a foundation of work underwater.
So they're made of concrete, steel, wood in the old days.
They're sunk into the ground
through each bedrock or stable soil.
After they're sunk in, after they're made to the depth,
then they're filled with concrete
and they make up the foundation.
Oh, filled with concrete so it's not hollow
(04:51):
once they're done with it?
When they're done, it has to be filled with concrete.
And before that, it often has to be weighted with ballasts,
which are weights to hold it down
because the empty void would float due to the buoyancy.
So like on the left, this is a lift station,
just a snip from a video.
I'm not actually gonna show the video,
but the front piece is the bottom is put in first.
(05:16):
So that's several sections of concrete.
The first one has that beveled edge on it.
That's actually called the shoe.
And it's beveled so it can help to cut through the earth
as it's forced down.
And then as soon as it's down,
you put the second section on and then third,
and then so on, so on.
The whole time on an inland project when you're using this,
you actually have to be pumping out the groundwater,
(05:38):
which is what's shown in that blue line on the left.
So they're constantly pumping out water
as they do this construction.
And then once it's complete, once the concrete's poured
and this becomes a stable structure on the bedrock,
then at that time they can stop pumping water.
So the challenges of,
I've asked this question to myself before,
how do they build bridges
(05:59):
when there's already water there?
How do you build a dam when there's already water there?
Well, a lot of these structures are caissons.
So on the right, if you were to simplify it
and just look at it as an open basket,
that's kind of a typical old-fashioned caisson.
You could work in there, you can dig things out of it,
fill it with concrete.
We can weigh it down in the meantime.
(06:21):
This is actually an enclosed caisson,
which they need to be pressurized with air
and have ballast weights on them to hold them down.
And the reason that they're pressurized with air
is so that you can evacuate mud and rocks and debris
that's actually in the base.
So you can put this down and then work in it.
(06:42):
These actually lower men inside.
So the personnel access tube, I should say.
They'd put people down in these things
and they would have shovels and tools
and they would dig and work items towards the center here,
towards this muck tube, which would suck up and out
materials, mud, and then often they have cranes and stuff
(07:04):
to take care of boulders and whatnot.
People used to get sick from going in here
from decompression sickness.
So they would be under these pressurized conditions
working for a while and then they'd come out
and a lot of people have died through history
from working in here.
I forget there's some name,
that's the reference I didn't write down.
Is it like whenever you're scuba diving
(07:26):
and you come up too fast?
Exactly.
Like nitrogen in your brain?
Yeah, it's inert.
I think mostly inert gases
that are just within your cell structures,
that your whole body, that they don't have
the capability to get out, to permeate quickly enough
if you jump from high pressure to low pressure.
So if you're at depth as a scuba diver
(07:48):
or in a pressure chamber,
you come out of that pressure chamber too quickly
or if you ascend too quickly.
And a lot of people get sick from it,
they feel nauseous, they have days long of symptoms
or hours long of symptoms,
but there have been a lot of people that have died
and they didn't know really how to deal with it.
So now we do.
(08:08):
It's a common thing.
We handle it very well.
There's lots of occupations that have high pressures now.
So would they would, if there's not a bottom on it,
in that case would they put down concrete walls
and like pump out water or something?
Okay.
Yeah, they'd put down the concrete shell, if you will,
with an open, it's like an open cylinder
(08:29):
and they would seat it against the bottom of the floor
as much as you could,
which would also make for interesting circumstances
if that seal were to ever fail.
Yeah.
Because it, and it did, water would rush in
and mud would rush in until it would stop.
So your ballast weights are super important.
And yeah, casein.
(08:50):
So you're always looking, you're looking for bedrock.
So you want to get down to a stable structure
that you can support your material from,
otherwise it will sink and shift and it won't last.
The reason that we're talking about caseins
is because a very impressive story comes
from the construction of Baltimore Harbor Light
(09:11):
in the casein that they had to use there.
So.
Overturned.
There's a lot.
We're gonna get to it.
So Baltimore Lighthouse proved to be
one of the most difficult lighthouses to construct
in all of the United States history.
Whoa.
And very expensive.
How expensive?
Big expensive.
Like millions?
(09:32):
Lots of millions.
So it was 1890 was when the lighthouse board
first requested money to build the lighthouse.
They requested $60,000,
which they thought was a lot of money.
So that's in the new cutoff channel
near the mouth of the Magothi River.
I think it's Magothi, Magothi.
(09:52):
And the quote from them on this request was,
on the account of the impressible character of the Shoal
and the liability to damage or destruction
by means of moving ice,
no lighthouse other than an expensive one can be permanent.
So.
Yeah.
So we're gonna talk about the,
I don't think I wrote them down,
(10:13):
but one of the forces that this lighthouse
has to be designed to withstand
is a force in pounds per square foot of ice shifting.
The force designed is 30,000 pounds per square foot.
Oh my.
So 100 mile an hour winds,
three mile hour water currents, which are a lot,
(10:35):
but 30,000 pounds per square foot
is what the ice can press on the outside of the structure.
I mean, if you think about it,
I think of a body of water and a solid sheet of ice,
and it just bumps the lighthouse all at once
over and over again.
That's what icy lighthouses have to go through.
(10:57):
I mean, if you, even today,
this is over 100 years ago.
Yeah.
100 years.
What year was this?
1890.
Over 100 years before I was born, this conversation.
And today, if you had asked me,
hey, can we build this under these conditions out here?
I'd be like.
Come on.
It's gonna be.
Maybe.
I mean, we've been to the moon.
(11:18):
That's pretty cool, but this.
Can't do anything.
Right.
So the board understood
that this is gonna be a difficult task,
but they didn't understand quite how difficult.
So.
They needed one because there was a shoal in the harbor
that was like.
There's just so much traffic.
There wasn't a particular hazard,
(11:40):
but this lighthouse,
we'll go over the dimensions later on.
Okay.
It's not that tall, including its structure
all the way through the nastiness under the water.
So it's not, it's a shallow area coming to harbor,
which makes sense.
Okay.
But I think it just had a massive amount of traffic
as it was getting out of hand.
So from the time of the first request
(12:01):
to the time of completing the lighthouse was 18 years.
Whoa.
Which is a long time.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I think there's more, there's, you know,
there's longer timeframes out there that we've talked about,
but thinking it's almost 1900.
So that's kind of late in the game.
We know how lighthouses are built already.
Right.
You'd think it would get done quicker.
(12:23):
So the first request, 1890,
they spent a lot of that money by boring into the shoal
at the selected site that they had chose.
And it revealed that there was a soft layer of mud
that was 55 feet thick.
What?
Yeah.
That's before they got to soft sand
and then solid sand and then soft sand and then bedrock.
(12:48):
So a ton of muck.
Yeah.
A lot.
So-
It's like almost a six story building
and that's not including the water.
Yeah.
So they thought maybe they could use screw pile
type foundation, which is a pile.
So it's a vertical column of concrete alone
(13:09):
instead of digging through all that stuff.
And they thought maybe not.
So they looked at a different site
and we're 60 grand in at the time.
The new site said, oh, there's less depth here.
It's not as deep in this new location,
which is not too far away.
They made an attempt, this is 1898 now,
(13:29):
an attempt to plant an experimental disc pile
with two hours of boring,
the disc reached just three and a half feet in the mud.
And so the conclusion was, quote,
that the expense of the building a light station
in the 55 feet of semi-fluid mud,
which overlays the sandy bottom,
(13:50):
would cost twice as much as the original request.
So then we talked about our three design criteria.
So a hundred mile per hour winds,
30,000 pounds of ice pressure per square foot
and a three mile per hour water current,
which is not insignificant.
Yeah.
So they made an additional request to Congress
three times in a row until the additional 60,000
(14:11):
was approved, that was 1902.
So three years of requesting more finances,
we needed to double the budget before Congress said, okay.
The final design for Baltimore Lighthouse
was approved in 1902 and the bidding for the job
was opened the next spring.
Somewhat ominously, only one bid came in
for the erection of the lighthouse.
(14:32):
And that one bid was $80,000 over the entire budget.
So the sole bid was rejected.
Congress approved another $60,000
to make the project feasible,
bringing the grand total of allocated money
to $180,000 in 1902.
And the next round of bidding,
a man named William Flaherty was the only participant.
(14:55):
Oh God.
And he won the job because he was the only participant.
Oh no.
So just for reference, this is a little off script.
A lot of this comes from lighthousefriends.com.
Shout out to them.
Yeah.
If you want to kind of follow along
and a lot of these bullet points are on there.
So this is one that's not.
So in 1902, $180,000, I wanted to scale that
(15:16):
to today's finances.
There's different ways to do that projection.
I selected for a construction project today.
So it's in the relative share of GDP.
Today, $213 million, $421,783.20.
What?
$213 million lighthouse.
(15:37):
Really?
If you were to construct the same project today.
Wow.
As far as finances go.
Yeah.
So.
That's insane.
Nobody would ever do that.
They tripled their budget.
I mean, if you told me you had a big project,
it was really important.
What is it?
213 divided by 30, 70.
So 70 and change, million dollars.
(15:59):
I'd be like, wow, that's crazy.
200, it's pretty wild.
Yeah, so that's, if anyone wants to look that up,
it's economy cost, measured as the cost of the project
as a percent of the output of the economy.
So the metalwork started its construction in 1904
in Atlanta, Georgia.
(16:20):
Started sending things to the job site.
We're getting ready.
Here we go.
Two days after its arrival at site.
So they built this huge, it was actually made out of wood,
huge case in.
Enormous, one of the biggest ever made.
And that's its own side story we won't get into.
But a lot of lumber was used.
They had trouble finding trees big enough to do this.
Oh my gosh.
Two days after it arrived to the site,
(16:41):
heavy seas filled the cylinder
and knocked it off kilter by seven feet.
Hence the image on screen.
Totally knocked out of place.
Not level anymore, which means they have to fix it.
They have to figure out what to do.
So the case in had been sunk a mere eight feet
into the shoal and it was seven feet offset.
(17:02):
So the contractor left the site
to gather additional materials
and returned in October.
Two more courses of iron plates were added to the case in
and concrete was poured on the high side of the cylinder
in an attempt to level the foundation.
But all this work was for naught.
As a severe storm on October 12th
caused the cylinder to turn over on its side.
No.
(17:23):
Flaherty left the scene once more
and this time he did not come back.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I'd be like, you're done.
He gave up.
This is stupid.
He was under contract from the government.
And he just gave, they sued him.
The government had to sue a contractor
because I don't know how much money
he'd put in at this point, but he spent it all.
Had to have been significant.
(17:45):
Shoot.
So they sued him.
And the insurance company which had bonded Flaherty
was forced to step in and complete the job.
So are you familiar with construction bonds?
No.
So my first job, we would have to talk about
if we're gonna have a job that's been bonded or not.
So a bond is an insurance claim on a project
(18:06):
so that if the contractor's unable to perform,
if they say, hey, I'm gonna come put all your windows,
it's the glazer, and they don't come or they can't do it
or they are delayed so far that it's gonna ruin
your schedule, you claim bond.
So a bond is a financial backup that then is used
to have somebody else come in and finish the job.
(18:27):
Okay, so basically they give you the money
to hire somebody else to finish it.
Right.
Okay.
But it costs extra because you're purchasing a bond.
Yeah.
Agreement, so.
Luckily this was bonded.
Oh, they're probably so thankful for that.
Yeah, so that was the United States Fidelity
and Guarantee Company funded the workmen
(18:49):
so they didn't do the work themselves,
but they lit up their bond.
In 1905, they were moved over half of the 120 iron plates
attached to the structure and then the following spring,
they built a U-shaped pier around the caisson
and brought in counterbalancing equipment
which consisted of a steam engine, air compressors,
(19:09):
water tanks, a hoisting machine, A-frames,
and a temporary quarter, sleeping quarters for the workers.
This U-shape was supposed to protect it.
Just a construction site.
It's basically a construction site.
So they built a rig, if you will,
around this thing to work on it, which is crazy.
That is crazy.
It'd be kind of fun.
Yeah, so during the summer of 1906,
(19:31):
which is the image on screen,
heavy weights were suspended by wire cables
from those A-frames placed on the overturned caisson
and as shown in the diagram,
by the end of September, the caisson protruded
from the shul at an angle of 45 degrees.
Pumps were then used to remove mud
from under the high side of the cylinder.
When the work was stopped in late November,
the caisson was just 17 degrees from vertical.
(19:54):
The following spring, additional courses were set
and added to the cylinder.
80 tons of stone were placed in the compartment
on the high side and mud was pumped out from below.
Over the course of several months,
the caisson was gradually straightened
and it sunk to a depth of 82 feet below high water.
Whoa.
So well over a year, construction crews
(20:16):
were working full-time to get this thing
from on its side to on its top.
And then fell over once very quickly.
Yep.
And then start evacuating the mud from below.
So it'll keep sinking as that, you know,
we talked about before, just madness.
The crazy thing is like none of that is forward progress.
(20:38):
It's all just like redoing or like having to do something
that you wouldn't have had to do in the first place.
Yeah.
Here's some images that show the final construction.
So on the right, you have the caisson,
which eventually was filled with concrete
and had lots of reinforcements added to it.
So that whole structure is below high water is that top line.
(21:01):
And then the lighthouse is on top of that.
Okay.
So that's a massive feat.
If you notice, there's actually a void in the top,
those two empty slots.
They left those intentionally.
One of them stores clean water, it's a cistern.
And the other one, fuel?
I can't remember, it might be fuel.
And then on the left, you can see the lighthouse concept
(21:21):
on top of the caisson.
So pretty.
And then below it are also piers that were drilled.
So that center image is actually part of the left image.
It shows these, I don't know what that length is
because I can't see it that well.
40 feet.
40 feet drilled piers that extend into the bedrock below.
And there's the grid pattern of the layout.
That's crazy.
(21:42):
Wait, so if they can only drill like three feet
in whatever it was, two hours of drilling?
Over a year.
Oh.
Drill, drill.
That thing's not going anywhere now.
It's like an oil field.
So it's not going anywhere, slap the hood, right?
It looks good.
So I'm gonna just describe the light.
(22:03):
So it's in 23 feet of water,
located westward and southerly
at the entrance of Craighill Channel, Baltimore Harbor.
The structure is a brown cylindrical foundation pier
expanding in a trumpet shape to form the gallery.
Surmounted by a white octagonal two-story brick dwelling.
Has a mansard roof, I don't know what that is,
(22:24):
and a black lantern.
The lower part of the structure
consists of a square wooden caisson,
48 feet wide at the bottom, 46 at the top, 21 feet high,
provided with a working chamber
and air and dredging shafts.
So they filled those in,
but that was the shafts that were included.
On the roof of the caisson is a solidical cast iron shell
(22:46):
that has a diameter of 45 feet.
For the five lower courses,
each six feet, three inches in height.
So they made up rings of steel, cast iron,
not steel, cast iron around to build their final form
and then filled those in.
So that's what's going on with the shapes there.
Okay.
After sinking to the proper level
(23:07):
below the bottom of the bay,
the working chamber and parts of the shafts
were filled with concrete
and the entire shell of concrete and large stones,
except for the spaces for cistern and the cellar.
That was the other one, food cellar.
What do you think the volume of concrete
they had to use was?
Like, this thing is.
(23:28):
Thousands of cubic yards.
Kind of crazy.
And to do that, to be fair,
I've seen images of how concrete is poured into caissons,
even today.
There's barges.
So barges make the concrete
and pour the concrete on the water into the caisson,
which is madness.
There was one video,
I've dove into some stuff for this episode.
(23:50):
One video is this company out of Europe,
I can't remember exactly where,
but they build, effectively they're caissons
that are modular.
So they're like a large rectangle
that you put into the water
and then you can build piers out of it,
water support structures, docks, dams, whatever.
And so they, you know, you put them together
and it basically 3D prints them out of concrete
(24:13):
and rebar on the water.
And so you put a floating platform down
and then this thing goes up.
And as it goes up, more concrete is extracted
like a giant 3D printer, but on the water.
So they can do this, I think it's like 10 days
is what it takes to make one unit.
And they can make enormous sets of units.
(24:35):
And they sink them, they fill them with concrete.
So there's a modern technique out there.
I'm sure it's hundreds of millions of dollars,
but this company only has three of these ships
that build them today.
Crazy.
The illuminating apparatus on top
is a fourth order lens showing a flashing white
every 10 seconds.
(24:55):
Nice.
Shown initially for the first time in 1908.
That was long.
Oh, cool.
Is it this, the construction site?
Yep, this is nearing the end of construction.
This is a US Coast Guard image.
It's so funny looking at the lighthouse.
It's just like, we went all through that for this.
(25:16):
It's beautiful and it's so cute.
But it's the same, it's not like a skyscraper.
Yeah.
Just like a little dude.
It's that dang ocean making things hard.
Inside the first floor is a main living space for keepers.
Included a sitting room and a kitchen.
It's equipped with a hand pump to bring up water
(25:37):
from the cistern.
Nice.
Just outside the gallery,
there's a cast iron structure on the left.
See that thing?
Yeah, is that a toilet?
It is a pooper.
The way that it's hanging over the edge of the pier,
I'm like, it's gotta be where you poop.
It is quote, cantilevered over the edge of the water.
(25:57):
And I'll tell you, I know it is still there today.
Really?
You can still dump out there.
You.
Two bedrooms were located on the second floor
with a small watch room directly beneath the manzo roof,
originally covered with colorful shale tiles.
Oh, that's cute.
Okay, so they, yeah.
Pretty cool.
Yeah.
(26:18):
Oh, I bet it was cold out there in that crapper.
Yeah.
So the, and that's funny enough,
I don't remember his name, so I can't give him credit.
There's some influencer that pops up time to time.
He lives near Baltimore and he's a crabber.
He catches crabs, like for his work.
Yeah.
(26:38):
And he's probably young 20s,
influencer type personality.
Right.
He's recording all the time.
I think maybe his girlfriend is, I don't know.
But either way, he spent a night at this lighthouse.
He was invited to do so,
and we'll talk about how you could maybe do that yourself.
Excellent.
And he took a couple of videos
(26:58):
and kind of talked about what was there.
He showed what was there.
And one of the things he showed was that cast iron privy.
It's still there.
I believe that you can use it.
I don't know.
Maybe they ask you not to.
I don't know the details of that.
So it's still there.
So you sit down and it's just like, asked to air.
It's an outhouse and below the seat
is the ocean's down there.
(27:20):
Yeah.
Can you imagine the cold air shooting up that thing?
Like, imagine when it's icy, or when it's winter
and it's dark and you got there and it's just like,
you lift the lid and it's like, ooh.
You just gotta look at your butt.
In a metal box, a cold metal box.
You know there's no heater out there.
Everything's cold.
Unfortunately, the lighthouse had a short life
(27:41):
as a staffed life station.
No.
It was one of the earliest that I've seen
in the United States that was automated.
It's probably because of the toilet.
Well, it's right, yeah.
So in 1923, they spent an additional $1,280.
Oh, chump change.
They changed the lumenate to an acetylene fuel.
(28:03):
Okay.
So it kind of runs more on it.
It's less fuel oil, right?
More pressurized gas.
Not pressurized, you know, liquid gas.
And the fog bell was discontinued, unfortunately.
Even to today, there's still light.
There is no fog bell, no fog signal out there.
Makes no noise.
Is it not foggy?
(28:23):
Time to time.
Don't run into it.
Is this one of those places where they,
it's not, where when it was manned,
it wasn't manned when it was winter?
I didn't read anything like that.
Okay.
I don't remember if Standard Rock was the one that,
no, it was manned because.
(28:44):
Yeah, they froze inside.
Yeah, there are some lighthouses
where they pick you up in December.
Maybe it's White Shoals that I'm thinking of.
I can't remember, but.
I thought those were usually on the open ocean
compared to the bay or lake or river.
I don't remember.
Not a river.
There's some on rivers.
Maybe I'm thinking of light ships.
I think I'm thinking of light ships.
We talked about light ships moving, for sure.
(29:04):
Yes, when they would tow it in.
Okay, that makes more sense.
I think, speaking of light ships,
I don't know for a fact.
I think there's one in.
Baltimore?
Baltimore.
I think it's one of the Chesapeake light ships.
Interesting.
If you look up Baltimore Lighthouses,
you're gonna see a couple different things.
Which we'll have to cover in other episodes.
But one of them is a light ship.
(29:25):
Okay.
So, like I said, it was automated in 1923.
Kind of a shame.
Also kind of neat, because of how early that is.
Yeah.
We're talking 30s through 60s and 70s.
We saw a lot of them automated in the US.
But, part of the coolness,
it is technically, it was the world's
first nuclear power lighthouse.
(29:47):
Oh.
So, there are other out there.
How did they do that?
I'll tell you.
Okay.
There are other nuclear powered lighthouses out there
and the Russians had a whole series of them.
Vincent, I watched a video about this online the other day.
And I guess you're stealing it.
Well, I'm not gonna go further into it.
I'm just gonna say we're talking about the future.
(30:09):
I'm just kidding.
But it's a whole long story and it's really interesting.
For the moment, I believe this is the only one
in the United States that was ever powered by a nuclear cell.
Whoa.
There was a buoy that they had done in 1961,
unmanned, just a light source.
Yeah.
And the lighthouse was the next concept.
So they wanted to kind of test out some of their gear.
(30:31):
So, I went way off the deep end.
We're gonna talk about SNAPs, S-N-A-P-S.
But here's the little quote from the site.
So, it was the world's first nuclear powered lighthouse,
May 20th of 1964, five years before we were on the moon.
There was a 60 watt isotropic power generator
(30:51):
called a SNAP 7B.
It was installed to see if such equipment could be used
in remote locations.
So.
It was like a test site.
Mm-hmm.
According to the local newspaper,
the generator was quote,
smaller than a 55 gallon oil drum,
because lots of newspaper men had oil drums around.
And it was.
Everybody knows this unit of measurement.
(31:13):
It was reputed to be capable of supplying
an uninterrupted 10 year flow of electricity
without any maintenance or refueling.
Which.
Sounds pretty nice.
Makes sense to me now,
just because I've read these things.
The installation of this thing is 4,600 pounds
in such a small package.
It's shown in the photograph.
Thanks.
Here.
(31:34):
Yeah, there it is.
Ooh.
So this thing, radiator fins on the side,
US Coast Guard putting it in.
Very cool.
It was removed two years later,
after having been shown to be completely reliable
and quite stable.
Why?
It was an experiment.
I'll tell you why, it's interesting.
So it was later installed in an offshore oil platform
(31:56):
in the Gulf of Mexico for power.
Okay.
We talked about the buoy was in 1961.
It was the only other lighthouse,
light ship buoy that was powered.
Ironically, the vessel,
the first vessel to pass this lighthouse,
while the generator was being installed,
was the NS Savannah,
(32:16):
which is the world's first nuclear powered cargo ship.
Oh, cute.
Like cousins.
Yeah.
Two ships in the night.
So the SNAP-B.
So a SNAP is a system for nuclear,
nuclear, not nuclear,
nuclear auxiliary power, excuse me.
The United States invested heavily in the SNAP program
(32:41):
from 1951 to 1973.
So 1945, we set off the nukes, right?
Okay.
And then this world of new technology opened up
for us and everybody else.
We were ahead of everybody else at the time.
Whole long history.
So roughly 22 years, there was a program
to come up with these systems for nuclear auxiliary power,
(33:02):
mostly for space travel.
Because it was, we were trying to get to space.
We're trying to see how would you have power on a spaceship?
So you have combustible fuels,
but what are you gonna carry?
Combustible oxygen, fuel.
Yeah, there's byproducts.
Yeah, it's a whole problem.
So they thought, well, if we could use atomic power,
(33:23):
inevitably you could have a 10 year battery
that produces no waste, it produces some heat,
which you could reject to outer space.
That's kind of the dream.
And this was gonna be the answer.
It was made non-practical near the end of these experiments
and basically mothballed,
specifically for space travel because of solar technology.
(33:47):
Solar.
It came soon after this.
Panels and not so much solar panels
that we have available to us as residents,
as normal people, but the outer space capable solar panels
really took off.
And so we had battery technology and solar panels
and for the reasons listed,
these nuclear high risk things were discontinued.
(34:11):
Well, and think about the cells
without the obstruction of the Earth's atmosphere protecting
how much more UV they would get.
I mean, normal Earth ones would probably burn,
but whatever they created to withstand being up in space,
that much closer without any sort of protection
(34:32):
from the sun probably.
I think they have gold foil on them.
Oh yeah.
Gold the color, but also the material.
Yeah, whatever the satellite is
that's millions of miles away from the US right now.
The US.
The United States of Earth.
America.
Oh man, you know what I mean.
(34:54):
So good.
So.
Sorry.
No, it's really interesting.
The Russians, it's a whole side story.
They were following along trying to do their best
to keep up with the United States.
I thought it was interesting.
This image on the right is really captivating.
It's in black and white.
It shows this industrial block.
This could be from a movie, right?
On the left, you see a similar scene.
(35:16):
I think this is the same scene,
but one's in black and white and one's in color.
So either two different cameras
and the one that's in black and white is much sharper.
So maybe that was, they were still working
on color cameras when this happened.
Or left is the colorized.
You said it was the 60s?
This was installed in 64.
Okay, so that'll probably check out.
(35:37):
Two different cameras, one of them's less high quality
because it's color.
It's the same ship.
W5, I assume.
US Coast Guard signs right there.
Is this, is the lighthouse a different color now?
It's all white in this picture.
I don't know.
So you have to remember it was military
(35:58):
all the way up until recently we'll talk about.
And I think it might've gone through some changes.
Like it looks like those windows are boarded up.
So like after it was not manned anymore.
Actually, I know that to be a fact.
There was some ship captain
who thought it was really important that this be preserved.
And we're gonna get to talk about that some too.
(36:20):
But I don't remember the colors if they're changed.
Okay, we'll probably see in pictures.
Yeah, we will see some newer photos.
So Russia, that thing that we watched.
Russia saw us do this and then did it to their lighthouses.
Yeah. And then they were abandoned.
Well, one of the things with,
so what this is, is you take,
you have to forgive me
(36:40):
because I really don't understand much of this.
You take a very small amount of radioactive material
and it has a slow reaction continuously.
And that as it breaks down,
as it deteriorates that sample of whatever that material is.
And it generates heat.
And so the heat is used to power a temperature difference.
(37:03):
And the temperature difference can make electricity.
So it's using a really small amount of fuel
to go a long time to provide different amounts
of amperage voltage, electricity,
you have different transformers and whatnot
to make that work.
So this is not a bomb,
but it is in the realm of being dangerous
(37:23):
in a radioactive way.
So the reason it was used out in lighthouses,
I think is because no one's there.
And there also need to be really reliable places,
lighthouses.
So it's kind of a handshake of trusting the lighthouse
to protect people, keep them away.
And also give this piece of technology a test.
So I think the Russians were probably doing the same thing.
(37:46):
From my impression on history,
they are a little more rapid
with their development of technology.
And we are pretty slow and methodical, it seems like.
I don't know any of that.
That's just what I think.
Neat.
So it was only two years that they had it in there?
Okay.
And they moved it on.
(38:07):
Because it was successful.
So then they sent it somewhere useful.
Yep.
Like most lighthouses, Baltimore Lighthouse
has suffered since automation.
No.
Removed its live-in caretakers.
So 1983, yeah, which is before this image.
That makes sense.
The Coast Guard wrote a report
in preparation for the extensive, quote,
(38:28):
operation spruce up.
Cute.
The report. Spruce up.
The report is pretty bad.
The damage, unfortunately, people are people.
So besides the near ubiquitous water damage,
unsealed windows had led to proliferation
of pigeons and eggs.
Oh no.
This is where I was laughing out loud the other day.
(38:50):
And the accumulation of guano, quote,
several inches thick on the all decks
and even in the stairway.
Gross.
End quote.
The lantern glass panes and the lens
serving as a beautiful beacon
inevitably attracted their share of bullets.
People shoot at lighthouses apparently.
(39:10):
Rude. It's a recurring theme.
Why is that a thing?
Vandals also left their mark on the station's wooden door
and even tried to burn the interior of the lighthouse.
Oh!
What is happening?
Why do people feel the need to destroy things?
Don't know.
Go to a rage room.
They don't think they had rage rooms in the 60s.
(39:31):
Well, go to a forest and shoot at trees.
So, yeah, this is where this image comes from.
To preserve the lighthouse, the windows were bricked up,
the wooden floor was replaced with a steel one,
acrylic panes were installed in the lantern
and the access ladders were raised
beyond normal human reach.
I could have gotten them.
In 1988, Lieutenant Sam Neal,
(39:52):
commander of the Coast Guard buoy tender Red Birch,
expressed concern over the condition of the lighthouse.
While he acknowledged that the boat Davits,
the boat Davits and the iron outhouse
no longer had any utility,
he still recommended painting them
in the interest of historical significance.
Wonderful.
Between-
(40:13):
Need more people like that.
Yes, we do.
Yes, we do.
Between 89 and 90, the Red Birch's efforts,
that ship included sandblasting the caisson,
caulking and painting the masonry
and replacing the waterlogged timbers of the lantern floor
with tongue and groove boards.
What is that?
Tongue and groove, each board fits into another,
(40:33):
it's like a common flooring now.
It's tongue and groove.
Like it's a U shape?
Yeah, one is a tongue or groove rather,
where the tongue fits inside.
Okay.
So they snap into place.
Nice.
Baltimore Lighthouse was put up for public auction
and it's sold.
I'm skipping a section because we talked about
how US Coast Guard could sell public auction lighthouses
(40:56):
to preserve them, keep them alive.
Good idea.
What year?
2006.
Whoa.
The final bid was $260,000.
That's pretty good.
Not bad.
The new owner, BHL LLC of Annapolis,
is a partnership of private citizens for couples
who are committed to the preservation and restoration
(41:16):
of Baltimore Harbor Light.
The terms of sale dictate the Coast Guard
be granted access to the lighthouse
for occasional checkups on the still active light.
Kind of cool.
Oh.
The owners eventually plan on sharing their quote,
privately owned museum with the public
through evenings or overnights at the lighthouse.
Overnights.
Which I think is what they're getting into now.
(41:37):
I think this guy is, he's got like half a million followers.
This person whose video I saw.
So he's slightly bigger than our podcast.
Oh.
Just a little bit more.
But yeah, so I'm gonna go to their site that they keep now.
But one more thing I thought was interesting.
This lighthouse only had five headkeepers the whole time.
Yeah, short span.
(42:00):
Crazy.
So that's an image.
So they painted the top part black.
And I think, okay, that's what it used to,
that's what it looked like originally too.
So the Coast Guard must have painted it white.
And then whenever they,
and then they restored it to original,
its original look which had a black roof.
So the red steel below,
(42:21):
the white building itself and the black roof.
The black roof had colorful shingles it said.
First direction.
I don't know exactly how that works.
So this is their site.
I just wanted to click around for a minute.
I won't spend quite as long as we did
when we were talking about St. Augustine.
But.
Do you like this website?
They have a great website, yeah.
So their work goes sideways.
(42:44):
So this is their timeline.
We talked through a lot of these points.
Great, beautiful images.
And then 06 it talks about the partnership.
That would be us, the folks who run this site.
So.
You know, can support their mission,
visit the site to learn more.
One thing I wanted to do, they have the About Us,
how to visit.
(43:04):
It's really interesting.
Because they have different options.
So first off, they show the weather, which is great.
But then they show links to private tours
where you can actually get in the lighthouse.
Private boat is what it is.
Watermark tours, charts and charters and cruises,
those are all in the area.
(43:24):
A schooner woodwind, Annapolis sailing cruises, heck yeah.
Fish out there, cruise at Chesapeake.
Photography workshops, looks like a couple options.
So.
I've seen a lot of lighthouses do photography packages.
Really?
Interesting.
I mean, this is just, this is nice to me.
Cause it's like, ah, you know, not everybody's like us
where they've got to go and climb.
(43:45):
I got to see the inside.
Yeah, you got to have a bunch of different options.
They do all these things.
Support their mission, get a look.
So, look at that background, first off.
This is a lot of the work that they've done themselves
in restoration recently.
So I saw some of these images.
There's a bar upstairs that they built
from some of the original wood called Splinter's Bar.
(44:07):
Neat.
Pretty cool.
So I think it's going to be quite the adventure
if you're able to stay here.
It looks like a really cool place.
I think the windows look cool.
Beautiful doors.
And beautiful views.
Yep.
I just thought it was cool.
I think that's all I have.
I think we're going to take us home.
Beautiful photo.
(44:28):
There's those access.
That'd be kind of daunting to you to get up there.
The picture you have as our, the cover screen
has the toilet.
Oh yeah.
The toit.
The toit.
Can you imagine?
The wood door is cool too.
It's beautiful.
Can you imagine getting up those?
Like do you remember when we went to Cape Cod
(44:49):
and she took some photos of me getting onto,
into lantern rooms, like through the stairs.
Tiny holes.
I'm kind of a big person and it's a little tight.
But that would be daunting coming up those stairs and ladder.
The ladder especially.
There is no protective anything around that ladder.
(45:12):
If you fall, you're in the water.
It's embarrassing.
Yeah, that's bad.
Can you, if it's rough, if it's cold, you just die.
I don't think they're going to let people die out there.
Just saying.
What is the current flash pattern?
Is it the same as it used to be?
You know, I don't know that it's any different.
I can go back and read the one from earlier.
That would be on the US LHS light lists.
(45:36):
Flashing white every 10 seconds.
Yeah, I will say Lighthouse Friends was good.
The Visitation Site for Modern Information Today was good.
But there wasn't a ton of information.
There was no Fitzgerald.
There was no huge event marking the history
(45:57):
that I found of this lighthouse.
You covered the case
and that was probably the biggest thing that could happen.
Yeah, the construction was a real trick.
They had to pull off.
Very cool.
I think I've seen that lighthouse before.
You know, like when you open lighthousefriends.com
and it scrolls through different lighthouse images up top
(46:18):
before you type in what you want.
Yeah.
I think one time it went by
and I'm like trying to click on it
because what I want is for my mouse to go over it,
to hover over it and it tells me what lighthouse it is
and it doesn't have that capability.
It's just like a random scrolling of lighthouses.
That's one of these, you think?
It changes every time you open it,
(46:39):
which is actually a really cool feature.
Or at least maybe it uses every image on the website
and like cycles through them.
Yeah.
But yeah, see, like those are so cool.
Anything that's a case in out in the middle of nowhere
is super neat.
I'm glad we finally got to cover one.
And what's nice about this lighthouse
is it's not just the tower.
It's like, see, I get distracted by these lighthouses.
(47:01):
It's like, it's almost like integral
because it's like a house and a lighthouse.
Yeah.
I think the only reason they don't have
like occupied spaces in the case on
is because there's no windows.
Yeah.
So it's officially the most expensive lighthouse ever made.
(47:22):
I don't know that.
Okay.
I could remember if you said that.
It was one of the most difficult to construct.
It's gotta be close.
Can I look it up really quick?
Sure.
St. George Reef Lighthouse.
I remember this was a question on the US LHS
40th anniversary extravaganza located off the coast
of Northern California, most expensive lighthouse ever built
(47:43):
cost $704,000 equivalent to 24 million
when adjusted for inflation.
Yeah.
11 years.
But I'm telling you, I went down this rabbit hole.
If you go and explore adjusted for inflation.
Yeah.
In what terms like.
Right.
Cause this one, that influencer said six million something
(48:09):
was the cost of this one was what he had quoted.
Yeah.
That's what I was like looking it up.
It's different because it's not like,
that's what it would cost to buy a lighthouse.
It's like construction costs now are a lot different
than what money was worth back then.
So I get what you mean.
Like if you had, if you were bidding to build a lighthouse
(48:30):
like this, it would be a lot more than the cost
of what it was back then.
The guy's name that I couldn't think of.
I looked up Maryland crabber influencer.
See if you recognize this dude.
Luke McFadden, this guy.
He looks strangely familiar to me.
Just a little though.
But shout out to that dude.
(48:52):
Crabs.
Bringing this on the map for a lot of people.
Very good.
Cool.
Thank you for covering that.
You're welcome.
Good case in lighthouse.
I feel like we haven't talked about those in a long time.
Have we talked case in before?
I don't know that we have.
I did talk about case in.
No, I don't know.
I was stuck between case in and snap on this one.
Oh yeah.
For the lighthouse.
(49:12):
Both good.
I think case in is probably more applicable
to more lighthouses.
True.
It's been a fun Thursday night.
We'll see you all next time.
Ah.
What?
Check out our website, thelighthouselowdown.com
where you can leave us a review.
You can send us lighthouses to cover.
I'm about to do a few in a row
of listener lighthouses.
(49:34):
And you can check out our YouTube,
also on our website,
and our Instagram at the Lighthouse Lowdown.
And we hope you catch us next time on
The Lighthouse Lowdown.
Bye.
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