A lightvessel, or lightship, is a ship that acts as a lighthouse. They are used in waters that are too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction. Although some records exist of fire beacons being placed on ships in Roman times, the first modern lightvessel was off the Nore sandbank at the mouth of the River Thames in London, England, placed there by its inventor Robert Hamblin in 1734. The type has become largely obsolete; lighthouses replaced some stations as the construction techniques for lighthouses advanced, while large, automated buoys replaced others.
The United States Lighthouse Service, also known as the Bureau of Lighthouses, was the agency of the United States Government and the general lighthouse authority for the United States from the time of its creation in 1910 as the successor of the United States Lighthouse Board until 1939 when it was merged into the United States Coast Guard. It was responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of all lighthouses and lightvessels in the United States.
The Carroll A. Deering was an American five-masted commercial schooner launched in 1919 and found run aground without its crew off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in January 1921.
The United States lightship Huron (LV-103) is a lightvessel that was launched in 1920. She is now a museum ship moored in Pine Grove Park, Port Huron, St. Clair County, Michigan.
SM U-151 or SM Unterseeboot 151 was a World War I U-boat of the Imperial German Navy, constructed by Reiherstieg Schiffswerfte & Maschinenfabrik at Hamburg and launched on 4 April 1917. From 1917 until the Armistice in November 1918 she was part of the U-Kreuzer Flotilla, and was responsible for 34 ships sunk (88,395 GRT) and 7 ships damaged.
German submarine U-66 was a Type IXC U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. The submarine was laid down on 20 March 1940 at the AG Weser yard at Bremen, launched on 10 October and commissioned on 2 January 1941 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Richard Zapp as part of the 2nd U-boat Flotilla.
Waldemar Kophamel was a highly decorated German U-boat commanding officer in the Imperial German Navy during World War I.
SM U-156 was a German Type U 151 U-boat commissioned in 1917 for the Imperial German Navy. From 1917 until her disappearance in September 1918 she was part of the U-Kreuzer Flotilla, and was responsible for sinking 45 ships and damaging two others. She took part in the Attack on Orleans.
HMS Splendid was a third-batch S-class submarine built for the Royal Navy during World War II. She was laid down on 7 March 1941 and launched on 19 January 1942. After an initial patrol through the Bay of Biscay to Gibraltar, Splendid conducted two patrols in the Mediterranean Sea; one was abandoned after technical problems and on the other she sank two Italian ships. On her next patrol, the submarine attacked two Italian convoys, sinking an Italian destroyer in the second attack. Based in Algiers, the boat operated north of Sicily, sinking six Italian ships, including two tankers and two heavy merchant ships. Splendid was detected by a German destroyer on 21 April 1943 while patrolling off Naples, Italy; the submarine was attacked with depth charges by the destroyer and forced to surface, after which she was scuttled and her surviving crew members taken prisoner. She was the most successful British submarine by tonnage sunk between November 1942 and May 1943.
SS William Rockefeller was a tanker ship built in 1921 and named after financier William Rockefeller. At the time of her sinking by a German submarine in 1942, the SS William Rockefeller was one of the world's largest tankers, and she was the largest to be lost off the North Carolina coast.
HMT Bedfordshire (FY141) was an armed naval trawler in the service of the Royal Naval Patrol Service during World War II. Transferred to the East Coast of the United States to assist the United States Navy with anti-submarine patrols, she was staffed by a British and Canadian crew. Bedfordshire was sunk by the German submarine U-558 on 11 May 1942 off the coast of Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with the loss of all hands.
Lightship No. 114, later U.S. Coast Guard WAL 536, that served as lightship Fire Island (NY), Examination Vessel, Diamond Shoal (NC), 1st District relief vessel, Pollock Rip (MA) and Portland (ME). After decommissioning in 1971, in 1975 the lightship became a historic ship at the State Pier in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She received little maintenance, and eventually sank at her moorings in 2006 and was sold for scrap the next year.
Diamond Shoal Light is an inactive offshore lighthouse marking Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras.
SM U-117 was a Type UE II long-range minelayer submarine of the Imperial German Navy. She was laid down in 1917, at Hamburg, Germany, by Aktiengesellschaft Vulcan and launched on 10 December 1917. She was commissioned in the Imperial German Navy on 28 March 1918, with Kapitänleutnant Otto Dröscher in command. After shakedown, U-117 was posted to the U-Kreuzer Verband on 1 June 1918. Over the next five weeks, she completed fitting out at Kiel.
USS YP-389 was a United States Navy yard patrol (YP) boat that served in World War II. The ship was built in 1941 as the fishing trawler Cohasset at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, for R. O'Brien and Company.
The Torpedo Alley, or Torpedo Junction, off North Carolina, is one of the graveyards of the Atlantic Ocean, named for the high number of attacks on Allied shipping by German U-boats in World War II. Almost 400 ships were sunk, mostly during the Second Happy Time in 1942, and over 5,000 people were killed, many of whom were civilians and merchant sailors. Torpedo Alley encompassed the area surrounding the Outer Banks, including Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras.
United States Navy operations during World War I began on April 6, 1917, after the formal declaration of war on the German Empire. The United States Navy focused on countering enemy U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea while convoying men and supplies to France and Italy. Because of United States's late entry into the war, her capital ships never engaged the German fleet and few decisive submarine actions occurred.
German submarine U-576 was a Type VIIC U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. She carried out five patrols, sinking four ships of 15,450 gross register tons (GRT) and damaging two more of 19,457 GRT. She was sunk on 15 July 1942 by depth charges from two US aircraft and gunfire from a merchant ship, near the East Coast of the United States. The wreck was discovered in August 2014.
The Ephraim Williams was a sailing ship wrecked off the coast of Hatteras Island, North Carolina, during a late December storm, late in 1884. The rescue of the barkentine's crew by Benjamin B. Dailey and his six oarsmen of the United States Lifesaving Service was considered particularly heroic, and the rescue is celebrated to the present day.
SS Ashkhabad was a merchant ship of the Soviet Union sunk in 1942. She had been built as a British merchant ship in 1917 in Glasgow, Scotland as War Hostage. Over the next three decades she passed through a number of owners and had several different names; Milazzo (1919–1924), Aldersgate (1924–1925), Mistley Hall (1925–1934), Kutais (1934–1935), Dneprostroi (1935–1938) and finally Ashkhabad from 1938 to 1942. Originally designed as a freighter, she was at several points converted to a tanker to carry fuel oil. At the time of her loss the four hundred foot tanker was owned by the Soviet Union's Sovtorgflot organisation. She was torpedoed on 29 April 1942, and then sunk as a hazard to navigation on 3 May 1942. The wreck is now a popular dive site.
United States
