LIGHTHOUSE ESTABLISHMENT, THE UNITED STATES. 



451 



this vessel from dragging her anchors that 

 she is now fitted with moorings as heavy as 

 those of a frigate. In spite of her brilliant 

 lights and her powerful fog-signal, she has 

 been repeat3dly run into by passing vessels 

 and more or less damaged, as have most of the 

 other light-ships in the service. She has a 

 master, a mate, two engineers, and a force of 

 six men. Her cost was $50,000, and it requires 

 about $5,000 a year to maintain her exclusive 

 of repairs a larger sum than is needed for 

 smaller ships, or for those without fog-signals. 

 It is estimated, however, that it costs $10,000 

 per year to maintain and keep in repair each 

 of the first class light-ships in the service, and 

 this is urged as a reason for replacing them as 

 fast as possible with lighthouses. 



The buoy is to the seaman by day what the 

 light is at night, and what the fog-signal is in 

 thick weather. It tells him by its size, form, 

 color, and number how to avoid the rocks and 

 shoals, and shows the way in and out of har- 

 bor. 



The growth of the buoy service may be 

 measured by its cost, which was for the five 

 years preceding the organization of the board, 

 in 1852, about $75,000 per year, and for the 

 five years after about $82,000 per year. 



In 184-2 there were nearly 1,000 buoys in po- 

 sition: in 1855 the board had 1,034; in 1860 it 

 had 1,738; during the war it lost those on the 

 southern coasts, but in 18G7 it had so far re- 

 placed and added to them that it had 2,044 ; in 

 1875 it had 3,002 ; and on June 30, 1880, it had 

 3,140 buoys in the waters of the several dis- 

 tricts. An appropriation of $325,000 was 

 made for maintaining the buoyage of the 

 United States coasts during the year ending 

 June 30, 1882. 



The buoy service has its own code of laws, 

 state and national, a fleet of small tenders for its 

 maintenance, besides a corps of contractors to 

 attend to the buoyage of coves and inlets imprac- 

 ticable to the lighthouse tenders. It has its de- 

 pots for the storage of iron buoys, where they 

 are painted and numbered, or repaired, and also 

 where wooden buoys are made ready for ser- 

 vice. It has its own directory printed yearly, 

 in twelve volumes, distributed gratuitously for 

 the benefit of commerce, in which each one of 

 the more than 3,000 buoys is mentioned by 

 name, located by station, and is described by 

 size, shape, color, number, and vicinity. The 

 problems connected with its improvement, as 

 well as its maintenance, are considered as of 

 grave importance, and are made the subject of 

 deep consideration by the best scientific aid at 

 the disposition of the board. 



Buoys are of wood or iron. The wooden 

 buoys now in u^e are sticks from twelve to 

 sixty feet long, of pine or spruce, but prefer- 

 ably of cedar. The board frequently contracts 

 for the delivery at one of its depots' of a cargo 

 of logs, in the rough, at from $10 to $15 each, 

 where they are freed of their bark, smoothed 

 of their protruding knots, painted to the pat- 



tern required to tell their allotted story, fitted 

 at the larger end with an iron sleeve, to which 

 the stone or iron anchor can be attached by a 

 mooring chain, when they are packed in classes 

 or sizes on skids to season, and finally to take 

 their tour of duty in the water to replace 

 others which are to rest a while on shore, be 

 freed from acquired barnacles, take on a fresh 

 suit of paint, and, by drying, recover their 

 buoyancy. Spar-buoys are classified firsVby 

 length and thickness, and then by acquired 

 color; but they are interchangeable within 

 these conditions. The cuts represent spar- 

 buoys and their appendages, much as they 

 appear in the water. 



Iron buoys are hollow, with air-tight com- 

 partments, and are made of three shapes, called 

 nun, can, and ice buoys. The nun-buoy is al- 



IBON NUN-BUOY. 



IRON CAN-BUOY. 



most conical in form ; the can-buoy is in shape 

 the frustum of a cone nearly approaching a 



