The Buoy Yard
- Charles Thrasher
- Nov 28
- 9 min read
The Buoy Yard was a landmark on Washington’s waterfront for generations. Crowds gathered on the wharves when the Holly and Jessamine, 156-foot-long sidewheel steamers, maneuvered in the stream, their wheels churning the dark water, approaching or departing government dock. There’s now nothing to mark the yard’s existence, not even one of the massive iron buoys thrown about by the 1913 hurricane.
The Buoy Depot
It was officially the Lighthouse Service Buoy Depot, Washington, NC; locals just called it the buoy yard. First mentioned in the Lighthouse Service Annual Report of 1875, details of its construction weren’t included, suggesting the yard already existed for some time.
Besides buoys, the yard stored coal and cord wood, water for the tenders and supplies for the light keepers of the Carolina sounds. By 1877, the Lighthouse Service was already complaining that the site near the foot of the county bridge across the Tar-Pamlico was too small. Ten years later, they were still complaining. [1]
The adjoining wharfs crowded the government dock, making it difficult for the lighthouse tenders to maneuver when vessels were berthed on either side. The Lighthouse Board wanted Congress to appropriate $5,000 to buy the property adjoining to the west.
The Lighthouse Board pitched the property — 60 feet of waterfront, two sheds suitable for coal and buoys, a cistern holding 36,000 gallons of water, and a new house where the keeper could live. $5,000 was a reasonable price, they assured Congress.[2]
A year later they were still complaining. Two years later, Congress finally authorized the purchase. [3]
Two years after that, the Lighthouse Service went back to Congress for more money to repair the decaying wharf of the property they just purchased and build new coal and buoy sheds. [4]
It wasn’t until eight years later, in 1896, that the wharf and wooden bulkhead along the entire 192 feet of riverfront was finally rebuilt as well as part of the keeper’s house that was built on piers over the river. [5]
In 1901, a detached dining room and kitchen were added to the keepers’ house. Surrounded by piles of coal and stacks of iron buoys, the keepers had a waterfront view of the Pamlico River right in front of Jonathan Haven’s house. Both Jonathan Haven’s house and the gristmill he built on the waterfront are still standing; the keeper’s house is gone. [6]
There were also repairs of damages from periodic storms. The night of August 28, 1893, a storm inundated the buoy yard with several feet of water. [7]
And during the nameless hurricane of 1913, iron buoys that weighed as much as 2,000 pounds apiece were tossed about like matchsticks.
The Keepers
In 1889, J. Thomas Phelps was custodian of the buoy yard according to the Washington Gazette. [8]
He was still there in 1896 when he posted in Washington’s Evening Messenger a reward for an “unknown vessel run in Rodman’s Point Black Light beacon, and damaged the Beacon and Lamp. Reward will be given for the parties and their conviction that did it.” [9]
Efforts were made by the black community of Washington to remove Mr. Phelps from his position at the yard. Although the Washington Gazette didn’t provide details of the complaint, it snidely commented “His opponents are colored people, and as it has been the policy of the Harrison administration to recognize the colored brother in the South, it is a matter of some surprise that a deaf ear has been turned to his pleading so far.” The Evening Messenger hoped the government would remain deaf. [10]
Peter Gregory Gallop began service in 1873 as 1st Assistant Lighthouse Keeper, Roanoke Marshes. He was appointed keeper of the Washington Buoy Depot in 1906 and departed the station in 1909. [11]
When he left the Buoy Yard, he had served 35 years, longest in the Lighthouse Service. He was 66 years old and stone deaf. [12]
Gallop was relieved at the buoy yard in 1909 by Tillman F. Smith, the second longest in service according to the Washington Daily News. [13]
Given their advanced age, apparently being custodian of the Washington Buoy Depot wasn’t arduous duty.
The Lighthouse Service
Washington’s success — it’s survival — depended upon shipping; freight inbound, products outbound, but the inlets and sounds of North Carolina were notorious for shoals and shifting channels. The lighthouses, channel buoys, and day shapes placed and maintained by the Lighthouse Service were essential to safely navigate the numerous hazards. Even now there are hundreds of entries in the U.S. Coast Guard Light List for the Carolina sounds.
The U.S. Lighthouse Establishment was created by the First Congress in 1789 and chronically underfunded ever after. In 1852, the Lighthouse Establishment became the Lighthouse Board. The nine members of the board were mostly Naval and Army engineering officers.
The board’s area of responsibility was divided into 12 districts. The Fourth Lighthouse District consisted of New Jersey, Delaware and Delaware Bay. The Fifth District extended from Virginia, including Chesapeake Bay, and the Carolina sounds north of the New River.
The Lighthouse Board set the priorities, but the Lighthouse Service Tenders were the workhorses of the service.
The Tenders
The Lighthouse Service Tender Violet was one of the first to appear regularly in the Washington newspapers.
She first sailed as the Martha Washington, a 107-foot private steamer built in Staten Island in 1864 during the Civil War. She served as an excursion steamer on New York Harbor before being purchased and rebuilt by the Lighthouse Service in 1870. When the work was finally completed in 1871, she was commissioned the U.S. Lighthouse Tender Violet and originally assigned to the Fourth Lighthouse District. In 1886, she was rebuilt again, lengthened to 143 feet, and reassigned to the Fifth District. [14]
In 1887, the Violet was making for Washington, steaming through a dark night with rain falling on the Pamlico Sound. The light on Pamlico Point had just become visible when there was a loud shriek. Seaman William Waterworth, who had been throwing the lead line from the foredeck, lost his footing and fell into the dark water. It was Waterworth’s cry as he was swept into the steamer’s thrashing paddlewheel. [15]
His body was found days afterward near the mouth of the Pamlico River. [16]
Tenders had to be cautious when navigating the Pamlico River. The Violet’s draft was 8 foot 6 inches when heavily loaded, but she had to carefully navigate the Pamlico River channel dredged by the Army Corps of Engineers to a controlling depth of only nine feet. In February 1909, she ran aground below the Norfolk and Southern Railroad bridge when the wind blew the water out of the river. [17]
Lighthouse tenders weren’t used solely for the serious business of maintaining aids to navigation. They also served as party boats.
President Grover Cleveland arrived in Washington on Saturday, May 19, 1894, onboard the Violet. The Washington Gazette reported that news of the President’s arrival spread like a grass fire through the town. Apparently, exciting little interest. Only a few bothered to walk down to the government wharf and only three boarded the steamer – Capt. Lawrence on business with the Naval Secretary, Fred Hoyt to deliver 350 rounds of ammunition and copies of newspapers requested by the President, and a Washington Gazette reporter.
The President’s party consisted of Secretary of the Treasury John Carlisle, Secretary of State Walter Gresham, and Fighting Bob Evans.
Robley Dunglison Evans was probably the most interesting of the party. He was still a Navy captain in 1894, recently appointed Naval Secretary of the Lighthouse Board, but he had fought in the Second Battle of Fort Fisher (1865), would command the battleship USS Iowa in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba (1898), and, as rear admiral, he would command the Great White Fleet in its global cruise (1907-1908).
The Violet was ostensibly on a tour of inspection of lighthouses in North Carolina. The president was there for the sport. His party killed 385 birds on Bodie Island, caught blue fish and drum near Hatteras.
Apparently, his departure drew more attention than his arrival. The Washington Gazette reported that people lined the wharves as the Violet got underway and steamed down the river at 9 o’clock. [18]
Tenders in the Fifth District were kept busy with more serious business, often steaming 12,000 miles in a year, sometimes as much as 18,000 miles. [19]
The Lighthouse Board reported the work done by Holly in 1891.
“During this year she steamed about 13,000 miles, consuming about 800 tons of coal. She made 224 visits to light-houses, and delivered 101 tons for coal, 48 cords of wood, and miscellaneous supplies. She attended to 382 buoys during the year, and when not employed cruising her crew was kept busy repairing and painting buoys at the buoy depots. The fires were hauled under her boilers forty-two days during the year.” [20]
The identical sidewheel steamers Holly and Jessamine were 156 feet long. They burned coal that had a tar-like substance called bitumen that burned hot with a smoky, yellow flame. A single shaft drove both wheels which could not be operated independently. The arrangement made it challenging to maneuver in the constrained space of the Pamlico River when approaching or departing the government dock.
The lighthouse tenders also rendered assistance to distressed vessels but perhaps the most unusual duty was performed by Jessamine. In April 1883, she was directed by the Secretary of The Smithsonian Institution to recover the carcass of a sperm whale that washed ashore near Jupiter Inlet, Florida. [21]
The Coast Guard
The Lighthouse Service was subsumed by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939. The buoy yard remained much the same under different management.
Sue Jacobs Excell remembered visiting her uncle at the Washington Coast Guard station as a child. She remembered the keeper’s house as large, open, filled with light. The floors were highly polished wood. Her uncle worked at a roll top desk illuminated by a brass lamp. The upper floor was accessed by slightly curved stairway. On the second floor were the guest rooms and a bathroom with a clawfoot tub.
The back porch, long and narrow, was screened and served as a dining room during the summer heat. The flock of chickens kept by the keeper’s wife were served for dinner as well as fresh fish, country ham, and fresh vegetables.
In the evenings the family gathered on the front porch, also screened, and talked of the day’s events.
On one occasion she recalled a Coast Guard cutter at the government dock, the ship brightly dressed in colorful flags.
The keeper of the county bridge that spanned the Tar-Pamlico River (the bridge was the point where one became the other) lived with his family in a large house built on a pier beside the bridge. Living beside the bridge, the keeper could respond to requests to raise the draw at any time.
Rex Wheatley remembered the Havens Moss Coal Company adjacent to the buoy yard. For years, coal was piled high against a wall there. [22]
The buoy yard and the coal company are gone now, replaced by apartments and office space. Where lighthouse tenders once berthed at government dock, yachts now berth at a marina. Few people remember the history of the place. Those few remember it with fondness.
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