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The United States Lighthouse Service never missed an opportunity to show off its technology at World Fairs and Expositions that were popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. As well as exhibiting lenses, fog horns, and new aids to navigation technology, they used a variety of well-detailed and constructed models of noteworthy lighthouses to help them educate the general public. Among the models were ones of Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse, Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, Spectacle Reef Lighthouse, Holland Island Bar Lighthouse, Sombrero Key Lighthouse, and Florida’s Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, which, like Sombrero Key, was one of the more detailed and intricate models in their collection.
When these models were not being shipped and displayed around the nation, they were generally on display at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses, which was more commonly known as the Lighthouse Service.
According to Lighthouse Service records, the model of the Fowey Rocks Lighthouse was “built to a scale of three-fourths of an inch to the foot,” and it was “made of brass, silver plated and oxidized, covering every detail in the structure as originally built.” It cost $6,000 to build the model in 1878, which is the equivalent of approximately $182,000 today, which is a little more than the $175,000 that it cost to build the real lighthouse that was also completed in 1878.
Interestingly, the material for the real Fowey Rocks Lighthouse superstructure was supplied by Pusey, Jones & Company of Wilmington, Delaware, in whose shop that the model of Fowey Rocks Lighthouse was also made. According to the February, 1926 Lighthouse Service Bulletin, it required the work of six machinists to build the model. The Bulletin went on to say, “Part of the work was machined by Julius E. Rettig, who was the Government Inspector for the metal work of the tower itself and who also laid out the work for the model and made the jigs and special tools needed for its construction.”
The Bulletin added that the Fowey Rocks Model “has been deposited as a loan in the marine transportation section in the old building of the National Museum in Washington D.C.” A records search of the Smithsonian verified the fact that the model was documented as received on January 9, 1926 with an inventory number of 89,920 (Cat. 308.424).
Our research revealed that in 1932 a dispute arose between the Department of Commerce-Bureau of Lighthouses and the National Museum of American History on whether the model of Fowey Rocks was given to the museum or just on loan to the museum. The Department of Commerce-Bureau of Lighthouses wanted the model back to be used in an exhibit in a planned new building. The dispute was resolved, and in 1932 the Fowey Rocks model was returned to the Bureau of Lighthouses.
The model of the Fowey Rocks Lighthouse was next mentioned again in the June 1938 edition of the Bulletin when it said that the model was on display at the general offices of the Bureau of Lighthouses in Washington D.C. “as a matter of public interest.”
When the Coast Guard took over the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1939, most of the Bureau of Lighthouse models, such as the ones of Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse, the Sombrero Key Lighthouse, a skeleton tower that resembled Devils Island Lighthouse, and the model of the Spectacle Reef Lighthouse cofferdam were given to the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia. The Sombrero Key Lighthouse model, which was actually labeled as the Coffin Patches Lighthouse, was eventually sent to the Key West Historical Society in Florida, and the cofferdam model of Spectacle Reef Lighthouse was loaned in 1956 to the Detroit Historical Museum. But, we don’t know what happened to the rest of the collection, especially the intricate and detailed model of Florida’s Fowey Rocks Lighthouse.
Our search took us back to the Smithsonian, to the Coast Guard curator in Washington, to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London Connecticut, and to the National Aids to Navigation School in Yorktown, Virginia; they all verified that they do not have the model of the Fowey Rocks Lighthouse. So where is it? Is it on display somewhere else in the United States or is it in storage in some warehouse, forgotten about? Or, was it thrown out and destroyed? Perhaps it was used as scrap metal to be used in the building of planes or tanks during World War II. However, the Lighthouse Service considered the Fowey Rocks Lighthouse model a “legacy piece,” so it should not have been used for scrap metal or thrown out; or at least it shouldn’t have.
Where is the model of the Fowey Rock Lighthouse? Will it remain a mystery, or will the mystery be solved?
If any of our readers know the answer, we’d love to hear from you by email at Editor@LighthouseDigest.com or at Lighthouse Digest, P.O. Box 250, East Machias, ME 04630. You can also call us at 207-259-2121.
This story appeared in the
May/Jun 2019 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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