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Chronology of Aids to Navigation
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1847 An "iron boat" of four hundred tons with one lamp was placed on Merrills Shell Bank, Louisiana, despite the fact that lightships up to about 1877 were normally built of wood. (Putnam, p. 203).
1847 The construction of six lighthouses was placed under the Corps of Topographical Engineers. (Putnam, p. 43).
1850 (1 January) The light in the Minots Ledge Lighthouse was first shown. This lighthouse was the first one built in the United States in a position directly exposed to the sweep of the open sea. It and two keepers were destroyed in a great gale in April 1851. (Putnam, p. 74).
1850 (28 September) An Act of Congress (Stat. L., 500, 504) provided for a systematic coloring and numbering of all buoys for, prior to this time, they had been painted red, white, or black, without any special system. The act "prescribed that buoys should be colored and numbered so that in entering from seaward red buoys with even numbers should be on the starboard or right hand; black buoys with odd numbers on the port or left hand; buoys with red and black horizontal stripes should indicate shoals with channel on either side; and buoys in channel ways should be colored with black and white perpendicular stripes." (Putnam, pp. 217-218; Weiss, pp. 40, 110).
1850 (28 September) An Act of Congress (9 Stat. L., 500, 504) gave legal authority for the first time for the assigning of collectors of customs to lighthouse duty. Section 9 of this act authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to assign to any of the collectors of customs, the superintendence of such lighthouses, beacons, lightships, and buoys as he might deem best. The act also stipulated that no collector of customs whose annual salary exceeded $3,000 a year should receive any compensation as disbursing officer in the Lighthouse Establishment and, in no case, was the compensation of the collectors of customs for disbursements in the Lighthouse Service to exceed $400.00 in any fiscal year. (Weiss, p. 5).
1850 Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse, a screw—pile structure, was completed, being the first lighthouse in the United States to be erected by this method. (Putnam, p. 84).
1850	Iron buoys were probably introduced about this time, for an appropriation of this year provided for an iron can buoy at Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. (Putnam p. 218).
1851	(17 April) The Minots Ledge Lighthouse, the first one built in the United States that was exposed to the full force of the ocean, was swept away by a storm with the lost of the two men manning it. (Snow, pp. 51-68).
1851	A board was appointed to make a general investigation of the lighthouse problem; "this preliminary board submitted an elaborate report of seven hundred and sixty pages, which led to the law creating the Lighthouse Board, which was organized October 9, 1852, and which administered the lighthouse work for nearly fifty—eight years." (Putnam, p. 43).
An air fog whistle and an air trumpet or reed horn were experimentally Installed at the Beavertail Lighthouse on the south end of Conanicut Island at the entrance to Narragansett Bay, the air compressor being operated by a horse. This was the first installation of this type in the United States. (Putnam, p. 24).
1851	About this time, fog bells rung mechanically were introduced, operated by a striking
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5/17/2005