Ship Island Light, Navigation lighthouse in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States.
Ship Island Light stands on Ship Island, a barrier island in Harrison County, Mississippi. The light on the island today is a 24 m steel skeletal tower beside the site of the 1886 wooden tower, and it carries a daymark of red slats with a vertical white stripe. It shows a white flash every 6 seconds at a focal height of 25.5 m.
The first brick tower, built in 1853 after land disputes delayed work begun in 1848, was seized by Confederate forces in 1861, who stole its lens and burned its interior. Union troops restored the light in 1862. The tower leaned, was condemned in 1886, and collapsed in 1901; a wooden tower erected 91 m away burned in 1972.
The fourth-order Fresnel lens from the original lighthouse remains preserved at the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi.
The only light still standing on Ship Island is the 1971 steel skeletal range tower; the wooden tower replica was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, leaving only its foundation. The island is reached by passenger ferry from Gulfport, and the surviving tower is a private aid to navigation, not a climbable attraction.
The 2000 replica of the wooden tower was built by Seabees on its predecessor's foundation, using beams supplied by the forest service and sponsored by the Friends of Gulf Islands National Seashore. Hurricane Katrina erased it in 2005, leaving only the foundation; the 1886 tower's Fresnel lens, kept at the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi, was badly damaged at the same time.
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