#idk what else to tag this with...

[starswallowingsea]

I have one (1) person saying they'd like a post about different styles of lighthouses so that's what this is going to be. As lighthouses serve as aids to navigation both during the day and at night, they have to stand out from each other so every lighthouse will look unique in some form or another. On top of that, many lighthouses were built out in the water and their structures had to be able to withstand the harsh weather in the open water (which not all of them did, several structures have been washed away in particularly powerful storms and had to be rebuilt). Under the cut will be several images of various lighthouses and the different classifications of these structures.

The first type of lighthouse we'll discuss in this post is the integrated lighthouse. Wikipedia describes these lighthouses as "...a lighthouse in which the tower and keeper's dwelling are united in one structure." This refers to lighthouses on land almost exclusively, but these lighthouses take on many different appearances. There are some standard designs, such as the school house design used at South Fox Island and Copper Harbor in Michigan (below), and others are more unique in their designs.

Both of these lighthouses, South Fox Island and Copper Harbor respectively, follow a standard "schoolhouse" design in their basic structure, however to tell them apart, they were given different daymarks, such as South Fox Island's whitewashed brick compared to Copper Harbor's natural cream brick. These differences help sailors to identify which specific lighthouse they're passing by and every single lighthouse will look at least slightly different, especially if it was constructed during the golden age of lighthouse construction, generally considered to be from about 1840-1910 (and obviously lighthouses were constructed before and after this period, but these 70 years saw a huge expansion in lighthouse construction, in part, due to the invention of the fresnel lens and the ability to mass produce them in France).

Not all lighthouses constructed on land are considered to be integrated lighthouses, however. Lighthouses like the one at Cape Hatteras are simply the tower, with the keepers' quarters often being nearby to the structure, but not attached. Cape Hatteras is also one of very few lighthouses bearing a "barber pole" daymark. So far as I can tell, only three lights in the US have this daymark, including St. Augustine in Florida and White Shoal in Michigan (which we'll discuss a little later).

Pictured above: Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, North Carolina, United States // Contis Plage Lighthouse, Landes, France. Both of these lighthouses are towers detached from any keepers quarters.

These are the two most common lighthouses you'll find on land, but what about those lighthouses built on the water? Well, they're divided into a few different categories: Caisson lighthouses, Screw-pile lighthouses, and Crib lighthouses.

Let's start with the Screw-pile lights. These were some of the first lighthouses built out on the water, with their piles being screwed into the mud and sand. These are actually slightly modified from older straightpile or simply pile lighthouses, differing mostly in the shape of the structure. Straightpile lights were taller and more skeletal compared to screw-pile lights. These structures had open legs which helped alleviate some pressure from the waves crashing on the structure, literally just giving them less surface area to hit and damage.

Above: Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, Florida, United States // Chesapeake Bay Lighthouse, Maryland, United States. Fowey Rocks is a Pile Lighthouse and Chesapeake Bay is a Screw-pile lighthouse. Both types of lighthouse included a keepers quarters in the structure above the water on a suspended platform, but are not considered integrated lighthouses like their mainland counterparts.

Caisson Lighthouses were created in response to Screw-pile lights, being both cheaper to build and sturdier as a structure. These lighthouses were built on metal or concrete caissons which were screwed into the sediments, with the rest of the structure completed on top. These lighthouses weren't immune to accidents though, as seen with the Sharps Island lighthouse in Maryland, which was knocked on an angle from an ice floe in 1977 and remains at a tilt to this day. It was decommissioned in 2010.

Above: the Sharps Island Lighthouse, Maryland, United States. This lighthouse actually replaced earlier screw-pile lighthouses that were also destroyed by ice floes through the area. The keepers quarters on the last Screw-pile lighthouse was fully lifted off its legs and carried safely away by the ice floe and none of the keepers inside were hurt.

The final type of lighthouse built out on the water are the crib lighthouses. These lights were built on wood and concrete cribs, often in the Great Lakes region due to the composition of the lake beds. The first crib light was built in 1851 on Waugoshance Shoal and more lighthouses soon followed. The most striking of these crib lights is White Shoal, located near Waugoshance, which has the only red and white barber pole daymark in the United States. Both of these lighthouses are located in the Straits of Mackinac region, which has ~15 lighthouses, including several crib lights (Gray's Reef, Poe Reef, and Spectacle Reef, just to name a few).

Above: Waugoshance Shoal Lighthouse // White Shoal Lighthouse, both located in the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan, United States. Waugoshance Shoal sits in just 4 feet of water, making it very difficult to access for repairs and restoration. The lighthouse was used as bomb target practice during the second World War due to it's location inland and the fact that it had been decommissioned in the 1930s. It still retains it's iconic birdcage lantern room, one of only four that survives in the United States.

There is one more type of lighthouse to discuss, and those are skeletal tower lighthouses. Not every skeletal tower light is considered an official lighthouse for a variety of reasons, but there were a number of lights built in this style. They are very reminiscent of pile lighthouses with their open frams, though skeletal towers can be built on shore as well. They became popular due to the relative ease of construction in remote locations, and that they could be deconstructed and reconstructed if need be. One of the most famous lighthouses built in this manner is Whitefish Point, where the modern Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is located and where you can still go and see the bell of the infamous Edmund Fitzgerald, which was the last major wreck on the lakes occurring in 1975.

Above: Two different angles of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse. It contains a central staircase in a white column. This lighthouse was not operational during that November gale in 1975 when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, as the captain noted how inconvenient it was that the light was out in one of his final transmissions. Thankfully there has not been a major shipwreck since then, though shipping culture on the Great Lakes is a whole other post in and of itself.

These are just a few examples of lighthouses, and these structures decorate the coasts of our oceans and several lakes in the world to help ships navigate the rough waters and stay safer on their journeys. I hope you learned something about lighthouses here and can appreciate the effort put into creating them just a little bit more! If you'd like to learn more about American Lighthouses, I'd recommend reading Brilliant Beacons by Eric Jay Dolin, which is where I got a lot of this information, and it includes a lot of anecdotes about lighthouses and their keepers throughout the country.

Above: Cape Agulhas Lighthouse, South Africa // Yokohama Breakwater Light, Japan. Just showing some more examples of lighthouses outside of the United States. Can you identify what types of lighthouses these are?

[maspen15]

happy halloween >:3

did a ghostface drawing inspired by the way my BESTIE @raincandyart does coloring

this was super fun :3 :3

[image description: a green and somewhat blocky drawing of ghostface from the chest up. over his left eye, there is a yellow star doodle. and he has cat ears and whiskers doodled on top of him too. behind him in the background, there is a green to blue gradient splatter. the splatter is outlined in white. in around the area of the left and right corner, there are two white star doodles. in the very back, behind the splatter, there is two dark gray outlines of the ghostface figure. end image description.]

[ragdolls-and-such]

invented a guy

[notnaruse]

waow

[everoutoftouch]

If you have Spotify reblog this and tag what your number one song on your “on repeat” playlist is.

[wdapteo]

hey everyone be careful

I don't know if anyone has talked about this, but lately this has been happening in other fandoms too. There'll be these bot accounts that straight up steals people's posts and adds "expand" "read more" "continue" as a link in the end of the post - DON'T CLICK ON THAT, it's most likely a malware or something of the like.

so if you see a post like this: no profile picture, something that looks reposted (I've seen this happening to artists too) and a link at the end, even if the post has tags, that's a bot. Block and report it.

stay safe, and I hope @staff finds a way to stop these bots soon!

[prplino]

jayvik piece i made for valentines 💗 happy valentine’s day !

[noelledeltarune]

EVERY SINGLE DAY there are MILLIONS of characters in their late 20s who get falsely accused of being father figures to teenagers when in reality the description of "weird older cousin" or "step-sibling that moved out before you were born" is 1000000x more apt

[manquesit0]

VOCALOID CHIBIS 🌟

[rosenkranz-does-things]

iwtv studies

[speakingtruthfully]

Dead on main writing prompt: Jason gets dosed by a rogue and accidentally exposes his and Danny's relationship......

“And this GIW kidnap ghosts?” Batman asks.

“Totally, Dad.” Jason nods. “But you can’t tell anyone I’m a ghost!” Jason claims.

“You don’t want them to get you?” Diana questions.

“Me?” Jason scoffs, “I don’t give a fuck about me. I just don’t want them to get Danny again.” He says in a duh kind of tone.

“Danny’s a ghost?” Dick asks in shock.

Jason smiles again, “He’s a Halfa; like me.”

“Two Halfas exist?” Zatanna asks sounding shocked.

Jason laughs, “Don’t be silly. There are four of us: Me, My husband, My husband’s clone, and that one asshole.”

“You and Danny are married!” Dick yells.

“Yes, Dickwing. My husband and I are in fact married.” Jason states.

“Why didn’t you invite me to your wedding?!” Dick doesn’t do a very good job hiding the hurt in his voice.

“I will invite you to the human one.”

“Wait, your wedding was a ghost one?” Dick asks.

“Duh.” Jason nods, “we’re only legally married in the Ghost Zone.” Jason then quickly adds, “Or Infinite Realms.” Jason shrugs, “Whatever you want to call it.”

“You’ve been to the infinite realms?” Constatine asks.

“Yeah.” Jason laughs. Then, stops as if realizing something, “Oh, My God.” He looks at his older brother, “Big Bird, Did I tell you that I met Jane Austin? Because I fucking met Jane Austin!”

“That’s- great, Little Wing.” Dick says in shock.

[nocek]

And we all should be jelly.

(at least Miguel is so maybe they are closer to that dumb triangle than Wade thought XD)

[lalalychee]

closer than you know

i've been working on this painting for over 3 months and i am exhausted 💀 so excited to be done with it. i'm really proud of it though!! it's definitely the most detailed painting i've done in quite some time.

(please be sure to zoom in to see all the little details i worked so hard on!)

[notnaruse]

thign that blew up on twt ig

[medievalgremlincore]

Some highlights of the Europa Ice War