History
As one approaches the Delaware River from the south 14
Foot Bank Lighthouse is the second Delaware Bay lighthouse to
be seen, Brandywine Shoal lighthouse being the most
southerly.
Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse is named for the 14 feet
of water that cover this shoal bank. The shoal is nearly
6,000 feet long and 1,300 feet wide and many ships lie
beneath the sea in and around the shoal. Since 1876 the
shoal had been lit by a lightship during most of the year,
but due to the ice floe danger, it could not remain on
station during the winter months when it was most needed.
The Lighthouse Board decided to erect a lighthouse on
the location. Many plans were submitted to the Board, but
the Board finally adopted the proposal of its chief engineer,
Major D. P. Heap, in 1883.
Heap proposed to build a lighthouse with a caisson
construction of a cast-iron cylinder 73 feet high with a 35
foot diameter, composed of 1.50" thick iron plates each 6
feet high and 6 inches wide with both horizontal and vertical
flanges that would be bolted together to assure a water-tight
fit.
The government supplied the materials and requested bids
from contractors to assemble and sink the caisson. The firm
of Messrs. Anderson and Barr, a New York civil engineering
firm was awarded the contract. They proposed to sink the
caisson by means of a pneumatic process.
A square wooden working caisson was constructed on the
shore. It measured 40 foot square, 5 feet thick, with walls
7 feet high around all four sides. The water-tight
structure was roofed on top and open at the bottom. The
bottom was to act as a cutting edge when resting on the
bottom of the bay. An air shaft was constructed in the
center of the wooden caisson, and provided the means for
entry and exit from the working chamber. The permanent
caisson of iron was built atop this working caisson initially
to a height of 18 feet.
When completed the composite structure was towed into
position on the shoal. A layer of concrete was put on top of
the wooden caisson and this formed the floor of the permanent
structure. Both units were then sunk to the bottom by
allowing water to enter through 6 inch valves.
The box and the cylinder descended slowly to the bottom
of the bay, but unfortunately came to rest listing 12 . The
top of the cylinder's upper edge was just inches from the
surface of the bay, an increase of tide or wind conditions
would drive the sea over the top thus repeating a disaster
that occurred during the construction of the Rothersand Shoal
Lighthouse.
The engineers quickly averted disaster by adding
additional sections of cylinder wall and filling the
cylinder partially with rip-rap hastily procured on shore and
rushed to the site by tugboat. The cylinder finally righted
itself, the extra weight driving the edge of the wooden
caisson deep into the bed of the bay.
More sections of wall were bolted onto the iron caisson
and the water was pumped out from below. The wall of the
iron caisson was finally some 20 feet above mean high water.
It became necessary then only to increase the length of
the air shaft at the same rate at which the men dug into the
bay bottom, and fill the upper iron caisson periodically
with concrete to drive the wooden caisson to the required 33
feet into the bottom of the bay.
Eight men worked eight hour shifts around the clock
removing about two inches of bottom an hour. On August 18,
1855, the required depth had been reached, just one month
after digging and concreting had begun.
While the digging and sinking operation was going on,
another group was busily engaged in the dumping of some 6,000
tons of rip-rap around the base of the caisson to secure it
from movements of the current as well as to protect it from
ice floe and shipping.
The iron caisson was then flattened, the air shaft
filled in, and a quaint, picturesque three-story gabled house
built upon it. The lighthouse cost $125,000 to build. It is
59 feet to the focal plane of the light. The lighthouse is
still in operation and described on current nautical charts
as "GP Fl (2) 20 sec. 50 ft. 12 m Horn," which indicated to
mariners that the light is a group flashing light (2), every
20 seconds on a 59 foot tower, visible 12 nautical miles at
sea and that the station is equipped with a fog horn.
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