Diamond Shoal lightship WLV-189 was replaced by a “Texas Tower” light in 1966. The last US lightship in service was the Nantucket lightship, WLV-612, which was decommissioned in 1985.
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Mulitbeam image of the Diamond Shoals lightship, on the seafloor. The wreck of lightship No. 71 lies in 180 feet of water off the coast of North Carolina. recreational divers better interpret the wreck site, which is managed jointly by NOAA and the US Coast Guard. NOTES 1 The Lighthouse Service was merged into the Coast Guard in 1939. 2 The relief light vessel off Rattlesnake Shoal (off Charleston, SC) was seized and sunk by Confederate forces during the Civil War, but they are not considered a “foreign” enemy. 3 Shortly after the Lighthouse Board took charge of the nation’s lighthouses in the 1850s the vessel designation was changed from “lightboat” to “lightship.” 4 Francis Ross Holland Jr., America’s Lighthouses. Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Greene Press, 1972. 5 Dennis Noble. Lighthouses & Keepers: The US Lighthouse Service and Its Legacy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. 6 Calvin D. Jarrett, “Sub Sighted—Sighter Sunk” in the Bulletin of the USCG Acad-
emy Alumni Association. June 1971 7 Willard Flint. Lightships of the United States Government: Reference Notes. Washington, DC, US Coast Guard Headquarters: US Coast Guard Historian’s Office, 1989. C. Douglas Kroll, a US Coast Guard Academy graduate and a former Coast Guard officer, holds a master’s degree in history from the University of San Diego and a PhD in history from the Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of numerous articles in Coast Guard and maritime journals and in maritime encyclopedias, as well as author of Commodore Ellsworth P. Betholf: First Commandant of the Coast Guard (Naval Institute Press), Friends in Peace and War: The Landmark Visit of the Russian Navy to Civil War San Francisco (Potomac Books) and A Coast Guardsman’s History of the US Coast Guard (Naval Institute Press). An emeritus professor of history at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California, he now resides in Keizer, Oregon.
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No. 72, the relief lightship for the 5th district, which spent part of her time at Diamond Shoals. In 1925 Barnett returned to Diamond Shoals as first mate of the new Diamond Shoals lightship, No. 105, launched in 1922. In 1926 he was appointed master of Cape Lookout Shoals lightship, also off North Carolina. His final assignment came in 1930 when he was sent back to LV No. 72, assigned to the Chesapeake Station in Virginia. Walter Barnett retired on disability in 1933 and died in 1957. Lightship No. 105 remained on station at Diamond Shoals, except during World War II, when she was sent thirty miles off Cape Henry, Virginia, as an exam vessel in 1942. She was rammed and sunk at that location on 20 July 1944 by two large steel barges that broke loose from the seagoing tug P.F. Martin during a storm. After World War II, lightship No. 189 served at Diamond Shoals and remained in service there until 1966, when it was replaced by a “Texas Tower” lighthouse. The US Coast Guard assumed responsibility for all lighthouses and lightships in 1939 when it merged with the US Lighthouse Service. Lightships were gradually replaced by large navigation buoys and Texas Towers; the last lightship on station, the Nantucket (WLV-613), was decommissioned in December 1983. This ended the era of lightships as navigational aids in the US, which lasted for more than 150 years. LV 71, the only US lightship sunk by enemy action, now rests on the seafloor in approximately 180 feet of water where she sank off the coast of Hatteras, North Carolina. In August 2015, teams from NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, in partnership with the US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, began a survey of the historic wreck of Diamond Shoals lightship No. 71. The expedition documented the wreck site, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places that same month. Information from the survey was also used to create educational exhibits and materials to help
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