Still on Watch

12 x 16

Oil on Wood Panel

Plein Air

SOLD

Commissioned Painting

One of few remaining, if any,  of the 19th Century "Screw-Pile" Coast Guard lighthouses, this old beacon is now back in the water as part of its restoration process that is still under way in Edenton Bay. Each metal piling that held and holds this building now was literally screwed into the sound or river bottom in the effort to help prevent them from pulling up in a bad storm. Known to local historians as the Second Roanoke River Lighthouse,  this rectangular wooden framed light station was built at the mouth of the Roanoke River in 1887 to replace the original screw-pile that had burned down in 1885.  The Roanoke's mouth is across the Albemarle Sound on the Washington and Bertie County side and served for two centuries as the gateway to Plymouth and thoroughfare to other agricultural and timber port villages further inland. A light had been needed to aid the many schooners and ships in their navigational needs as they sailed up the sound in route to the Roanoke.



Decommissioned in the mid-Twentieth Century by the Coast Guard, it still sat on the its screw-pile frame for many years.    After the Coast Guard turned the light off and took the flag, this building, as it still stood at the mouth of the Roanoke, became a de facto clandestine den of sin /  hiding place for bootleggers, poachers, extramarital rendezvous, high stakes poker games and anything else that wasn't acceptable or legal on land.  During this time, local waterman and dredger, Emmett Wiggins bought the structure from the US Government for something like ten dollars.  A retired Naval Engineer, Wiggins devised a plan to transport the old light station across the sound to his lot overlooking Pembroke Creek in Edenton. This involved removing the inner screw piles and floating his half submerged WWII infantry beach landing craft under the frame where it sat until the outer screw piles were disconnected but still left in place to support the building until the water was then pumped out of the half sunken vessel. As it slowly rose out of the water it lifted the lighthouse off of the pilings and rested the old building evenly and balanced on its two gun rails. "Screw-Pile II" was then transported back to Edenton and served as Wiggins' home until he died. In 2007, the Edenton Historical Commission purchased the lighthouse,  and it was moved and placed on top of screw piles once again in Edenton Harbor just off of the banks of Colonial Park. Now it is fully restored and people are able to walk inside.