On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:45:49 -0500, you wrote: >tis okay... I have a photo of a sign for Hell that has icicles hanging from >it.. >The marina where I live...the owner has had it for 8 yrs.. she said that she >has never >seen the water iced over.. it was so thick off of A and B docks.. (I am on >the last >dock E) that some of the guys were ice skating on it..
Some time around 1976 the Potomac froze so that people were driving trucks on it and building fires and ice skating. We were snowed in down here in Southern MD for two weeks. The Bay also froze and people could walk to Tangier and Smith from the eastern shore. One of the problems for lighthouses on the Chesapeake is that ice flows will sometimes knock them over. Sharps Island light was also knocked askew that same winter (1976-77). That lighthouse was the third one at that location. The first lighthouse was replaced by a cottage style structure in 1866, but it lasted only about 15 years. On February 10, 1881, a powerful ice floe knocked the lighthouse off its foundation and swept it away. The lighthouse keeper clung to the walls of the up-turned structure, and it eventually moored itself on land. The keeper survived. Screwpile lighthouses also turned out to be very vulnerable to ice floes which, when accumulated around the base, broke supporting pilings. The Hooper Strait lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is the second lighthouse constructed at Hooper Strait--the first one was destroyed by ice in 1877. Solomon's Lump lighthouse lasted eighteen years, until January of 1893, when it was destroyed by pressures from the winter ice. Although it was not swept away, the Lighthouse Board reported the structure was pushed over so that part of it is submerged. All the movable property was taken away and stored. In June a lens lantern light was established on the wreck to mark its position at night and afford assistance to local navigation. This is from a lighthouse website about the Solomon's Lump light >Before the installation of radio and telephone technology in the 1920s there >was no way for the keepers to communicated with the mainland. This was of >great concern to the keepers families, who must have worried that the distant >lighthouse could be wrenched by the ice or struck by an errant ship. The >keepers were forced to make an eight-mile journey in a small skiff for shore >leave, and the opportunity to visit family was seldom delayed except in >extreme weather. During the service of keeper Henry Columbus Sterling, who >oversaw the lighthouse from 1900 to 1937, keepers worked for one week and had >shore leave for one week. This meant that Sterling had to take four trips to >and from the shore a month, which he made in a tiny sailboat. >In 1936, shortly before Sterling retired at age 65, there was a great freeze >and the Jan >es Island light was swept away by ice. Sterlings son, concerned for his >fathers safety, climbed atop the Ice Plant in Crisfield in a desperate >attempt to determine if the lighthouse was still standing. Although the light >still shone, Sterling had in fact abandoned the station and walked across the >heavy ice to the safety of Smith Island (much like his predecessors had done >in 1893, when the first station was wrecked). Sterling had initially been >unwilling to escape the potential danger, but was ordered to abandon via a >note, which was dropped to him from a plane. _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
