DELAWARE BAY 1940 WINTER
STORM
Wilmington News Journal,
Saturday, January 27. 1940
Captain Charles L. Lewis,
master of the “Lilac”, the only lighthouse tender in the
Delaware Bay, reported
that every light buoy from Trenton to just above Lewes,
has been brought to shore,
except two, which are lost in the ice flows on the bay. He says
the ice conditions are
dangerous and is two feet thick in some places.
It is a 24 hour a day job
for Captain Lewis and his crew. He is telephoned, sometimes
late at night, that a buoy
has broken loose and drifting toward the open sea, so it is out
into the cold, down the
river , plowing through the ice flows, in search of the loose buoy.
Sort of like rabbit hunting
he says, but we need to find the boy, even if it is under water,
and
is no longer a navigation
aid but now a hazard. Once a buoy with a 8500 pound anchor
drifted two miles from its
position. There are some that are found five miles out to sea.
The very large light buoys,
48 of them that Lewis has brought in, are sitting at Edge Moor
dock, crusted with ice,
dented and battered.
Abstract: March 2, 2018,
by Harrison H. at Lewes.
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