Velociworld

Texas Towers

That lighthouse and ATON post got me to thinking about other aids to navigation. In the bad old days lightships would anchor offshore, with a powerful beacon on top, as semi-permanent positioning markers for sea-going vessels. These were expensive to operate, however, requiring crews, fuel, and foodstuffs, and they were eventually replaced by permanent towers that could operate with smaller crews, or even be remotely operated from shore. Loneliness and wanton buggery no doubt contributed to their demise.

The greatest of the offshore platforms were the so-called Texas Towers, which were designed after the oil platforms off the coast of Texas. They only built 6 Texas Towers: Buzzards Bay, MA (1961), Savannah, GA (1964), Frying Pan Shoals, NC (1964), Chesapeake, VA (1965), Diamond Shoal, NC (1966), and Ambrose, NY (1967).

The Savannah Tower was destroyed in 1996 when a containership, the Neptune Jade, collided with it. A damned bummer.

When I was a kid hitting the Savannah Texas Tower was the ultimate in an offshore fishing trip. I only recall making it all the way out to the Tower once, because it was many miles offshore, a dangerous trip for a pleasurecraft with no radio. It was a behemoth, though.

A Texas Tower would probably be a good place to burn one. I'll have to check into that. In the meantime, keep watching the History Channel, and one day you'll catch the story of the oil platform Alexander Keilland, which collapsed and capsized in the North Sea in 1980 after getting slammed by a hundred foot wave during a storm. Unbelievable footage as the storm whipped up and they tried to helivac workers off, with no luck. 120 men dead. Significantly worse than a damned bummer.