Brandywine Shoal, NJ 
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The first attempt to replace the lightship with a permanent structure was launched in 1827 when William Strickland of Philadelphia erected a wooden pile structure on the shoal. A sum of $29,200 was spent on the project that year, but the structure sustained serious damage from the sea before its completion. An additional $10,000 was allocated the following year to preserve the structure, but this only delayed the demise of the lighthouse by a few more months.
Major Hartman Bache inspected the site in 1835 to determine what type of structure was best suited for the shoal that was buffeted by the sea and, during the spring thaw, swept by ice flows. Baches proposal called for a stone foundation topped by an elliptical, squat lighthouse. The artificial island foundation alone would cost $84,500, and the entire project an astounding $124,000.
Baches superior, Colonel J. J. Albert, balked at the inordinate sum, and the project was postponed after over $20,000 had been spent. At this same time in England, a blind engineer named Alexander Mitchell patented a screwpile foundation for constructing offshore lighthouses. He described his invention thus: A bar of iron having at its lower extremity a broad plate or disk of metal in a spiral on the principle of a screw, in order that it should enter the ground [sea bed] with [ease], thrusting aside any obstacles to its descent, without materially disturbing the texture of the strata it passes through, and that it should at the same time [provide] an extended base, either for resisting downward pressure or an upward strain. The screwpile was a means of obtaining a much greater holding power than was possible by any pile or mooring then in use.
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Nine iron pilings served as the foundation for Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse, but it soon was apparent that additional rows of iron pilings were needed to form an ice breaker to protect the load-bearing screwpiles from large moving ice fields. By 1858, a network of sixty-eight interconnected iron piles encircled the lighthouse. In an 1878 report, the lighthouse was described as made of iron, with a wooden platform, supported on screw-piles surrounding the house and forming an ice-fender. The house in shape is the frustum of a cone, and is made of cast-iron plates bolted together and lined on the inside with wood. The lantern is on top of the house. The first floor is divided into kitchen, store-room, and hall, with stairway leading to the second floor, which is divided into two sleeping-rooms and oil-room.
When first lit in 1850 by Keeper John Burton, Brandywine Lighthouse became just the third U.S. lighthouse to be equipped with a Fresnel lens. In this case, it was a third-order lens manufactured in Paris by Henry-Lepaute. The Fresnel lens had been used in Europe since the 1820s, and mariners who had sailed abroad knew the lenses produced a far superior light. The U.S. was slow in adopting the technology mostly due to the parsimonious Stephen Pleasonton, head of the U.S. Lighthouse Service.
An ad hoc Lighthouse Board, charged with improving the countrys lighthouses, conducted an experiment at Brandywine Shoal with the Fresnel lens. The board was transported by vessel to a point fifteen miles east of Brandywine Shoal, 6.25 miles north of Cape Henlopen Lighthouse, and 8.75 miles south of Cape May Lighthouse. Both of these other lighthouses were coastal beacons, equipped with numerous lamps and reflectors. The board observed the three lights and concluded, without difficulty, that Brandywine Light was at least three times more brilliant even at a greater range than either of the first-class seacoast lights, while burning just one-third the amount of oil. Not long thereafter, the Lighthouse Board assumed control of the Lighthouse Service from Pleasonton and started installing Fresnel lenses in all American lighthouses as quickly as possible.
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Large fields of ice drifting down with the wind to the northward, shaking the house terribly and continuing until the 15th, with the wind from the E. and N. N. E. Large body of ice came from the eastward with such force that caused the house-posts on that side to spring, so that one would suppose that it would part or remain bent; but they held on remarkably, though at the same time bending the bars attached to the ice-breaker used for fenders, likewise the stepladder. It certainly is astonishing how the house does to bear the great pressure occasioned by the ice; but the supposition is, with us, if we can be called judges, that if every winter is like this and winter of 1852, it would jar the frame-work off inside, if not entirely sweep away the house. With moderate winters the house will stand for ages. Nothing can do it the least harm except the ice.The keepers letter triggered an inspection of the lighthouse, which resulted in over $25,000 being provided in 1856 to protect and preserve the structure.
After several years, there was some concern as to the condition of the iron screwpiles supporting the lighthouse, and a diver was sent down in the waters in July 1873 to examine the effect of time and saltwater on the pilings. The wear on the pilings was varied. Some had lost a half-inch to corrosion, while others showed no appreciable loss. Most of the pilings were bent, but none were found to be more than 15° from vertical. Overall, the foundation was found to be in good condition.
In 1877, a new fog bell weighing over 3,000 was installed at the station, replacing the original 500-pound fog bell. A 187° red sector was added to the light in 1884, and in 1892, the lights characteristic was changed from fixed to twenty-seven seconds of light followed by a three-second eclipse through the installation of a brass shade that was raised and lower around the lamp. In 1901, a fog signal house was built at the station and equipped with a coal-oil engine and an air compressor to sound a Daboll trumpet.
The Brandywine Lighthouse screwpile experiment had proved successful, but by the twentieth century, living conditions at the station were considered somewhat cramped compared to other offshore lights then being built. The sum of $75,000 was provided in 1911 for rebuilding and improving the present light and fog signal at Brandywine Shoal on the present or adjacent site. The decision was made to build a reinforced concrete lighthouse just fifty feet from the current light, and the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Lighthouses of 1915 provided a detailed description of the newly completed lighthouse.
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The foundation of the structure consists of a reinforced concrete pier filled with sand, stone and concrete, 35 feet in diameter. At the top of this pier is a reinforced concrete deck 46 feet in diameter and 24 and one half feet above mean low water. The deck supports a three-story dwelling of reinforced concrete, circular in plan, from the roof of which projects a circular watch room, which supports a third-order cylindrical helical-bar lantern whose focal plane is 60 feet above high water. The main deck is covered by a veranda roof and there are galleries with railings on a level with the watch-room floor and the lantern floor. The concrete pier was constructed on shore, launched, towed out to the site, and sunk in place on a pile foundation. The pile foundation consists of 74 timber piles driven about 3 feet on center to a penetration of 19 feet. The heads of the piles project 1 foot above the surface of the shoal, upon which the concrete pier rests. In addition to the wooden pile foundation, the lighthouse is also fixed in position and supported by 12 reinforced concrete piles 16 inches in diameter and 34 feet long. These piles were driven into the shoal through annular pockets near the outer circumference of the caisson and the pockets around the piles filled with concrete. A layer of riprap protects the bottom about the structure.
The third-order Fresnel lens was transferred from the old to the new lighthouse where it was first lit on the evening of October 20, 1914. The two towers stood side-by-side for a while until the superstructure of the screwpile light was torn down. The platform surrounding the old light, however, was retained, and several structures, used by the Navy in the 1940s and 50s, were built thereon. To form a protective harbor near the light, a protective wall of riprap, forming almost a complete circle, was placed around the lighthouse in 1923.
The keepers of the new lighthouse were provided a kitchen and storage space on the first floor, and bedrooms on the second and third floors. Edward Warrington served at Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse longer than anyone else, starting as a first assistant keeper in 1924, being promoted to head keeper in 1939, and not retiring until at least 1948. In December 1935, the captain of a Norwegian freighter heard the foghorn blaring from Brandywine Lighthouse even though the night was clear. Thinking the foghorn might be a distress signal, the captain radioed the Coast Guard at Cape May who immediately dispatched a boat to the lighthouse. Forty-five-year-old Keeper Warrington was found in great pain and was rushed to a hospital in Lewes, where a physician pronounced it was just colic.
Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse was the last remaining manned station on Delaware Bay when it was automated in 1974 an appropriate distinction for a station where the first screwpile design in this country was deployed, where one of the earliest lightships served, and where tests were conducted with the third Fresnel lens to be used in the United States. A part of the stations history can be visited without venturing out into Delaware Bay, as the original third-order Fresnel lens from Brandywine Lighthouse is on display at Tuckerton Seaport in Tuckerton, New Jersey.
In June 2011, Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse was declared excess to the needs of the United States Coast Guard and offered to eligible organizations under the provisions of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. Qualified entities were given sixty days to submit a letter of interest and were required to obtain a Tidelands Lease from the State of New Jersey to occupy the submerged lands. On July 16, 2012, the Lower Township Council, at the behest of Cape May Maritime Museum and Educational Center, agreed to apply for ownership of the lighthouse, but in February 2013, the National Park Service announced that the lighthouse would be transferred to Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse Inc., a non-profit organization headed by Capt. Jeff Stewart Sr. and Jr., owners of the Cape May Whale Watcher. Stewarts company has been running lighthouse boat trips in Delaware Bay since 1993 and hopes to have the lighthouse open to visitors in five years.
The first task was to restore access to the lighthouse that had been lost since a winter storm in 2014 damaged the catwalk connecting the dock to the main gallery deck of the lighthouse. Plans and the necessary funds were in place in 2019, but the pandemic delayed completion of the catwalk until 2023.
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