Sunday, August 12, 2007

Bodie Island Lighthouse


It's pronounced "Body", which leads to all sorts of cool speculation about the origin. We stayed a few minutes from this lighthouse, which is my favorite of the Carolina lighthouses. I took it from the porch of the lighthouse keeper's cottage.

Full size here.

5 comments:

JimII said...

As of 1998, I know that ships still used lighthouses for navigation. We also used GPS and some dead reckoning with the aide of gyroscopes. But, we also took bearings to things like light houses to fix our position.

I wonder if they still do it? Probably in the NAV.

Matt Dick said...

We visited Hatteras in 1996 and it was still used back then. I think anything that can help any ship along the Carolina coast is a welcome addition.

We stayed in Nags Head, a town on the Outer Banks. It's called that because "ship wreckers" used to put a ship's mast light around a horse's neck and walk the horse along the top of Jockey's Ridge (the tallest sand dune in America). Ships would assume the sea was still deep and sail too close to the shoals and run aground. Then the wreckers would go claim the wreck.

Unknown said...

Great picture. Love it.

Anonymous said...

Very nice photo of the lightouse! I like how you framed it!

Matt Dick said...

Thanks! One thing I've learned over the years is that lighthouses are very photogenic. You want to look like an artistic photographer? Go shoot a lighthouse.