Taming the Reef The Coast Survey in the Keys

James Tilghman

—No portion of the coast of the United States has stronger claims than this to a speedy and minute survey, whether we regard the dangers to navigation, the amount of commerce which passes it, or the various localities of the Union interest­ ed in the trading vessels. Alexander Dallas Bache Superintendent of the Coast Survey, 18u9

As Ponce de Leon sailed south along the coast of Florida in 1513, he encountered the Gulf Stream where it runs close to shore north of Lake Worth Inlet. Swept back bv a current his log describes as "more powerful than the wind,” it took weeks for the small fleet to regroup. Ponce de Leon’s pilot (navigator), Anton de Alaminos, remembered the ordeal six years later when he was aboard Hernando Cortes' flagship carrying the first Aztec gold and Cortes' bid to be governor of Mexico back to Spain. Speed was of the essence, and it was feared the lone ship might be inter­ cepted by the governor of Cuba, a rival, if it made for the Atlantic through the Old Bahama Channel, the established route that ran between Cuba and the Great Bahama Bank. So Alaminos decided to round Florida and head north instead, convinced that a current as strong as the one he had experienced would lead to open water. He was right, of course. The Gulf Stream not only carried him to the Atlantic but half wav back to Spain.1

This "New Bahama Channel," also known as the Gulf or Straits of Florida, became the most important sea lane in the New World—the route home for thousands of Spanish and European ships, and later the 6 TEQUESTA

wav around Florida for American ships sailing between ports on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts. That made the Florida Reef, a barrier reef complex that arcs for some 200 miles along the coast of the Keys on the edge of the Straits and the Gulf Stream, a menace to shipping and the most sig­ nificant piece of geography in South Florida. Over the centuries it threat­ ened Spanish treasure fleets, appropriated names like Carysfort, Looe and Fowey from British warships lost there, and eventually became the “great American danger to navigation.” By the mid-1800s some $300-400 mil­ lion worth of ships and cargo were passing through the Straits ever)' year, and so many ships were coming to grief on the reef—five hundred dur­ ing the 1850s according to most—that Florida found itself in the midst of its first insurance crisis and Key West, the closest port with a court that had jurisdiction to process salvage claims, was on the way to becoming the richest city in Florida and one of the richest on a per capita basis in the U. S.2

The job ot taming the reef—ending the mayhem by lighting, mark­ ing, charting and otherwise providing the information needed to safely navigate it—fell to two federal maritime agencies: the Lighthouse Service, which was created in 1789 when Congress federalized existing lighthouses and aids to navigation and gave the secretary of the treasury the job of adding more; and the U. S. Coast Survey, born in 1807 when Congress called for accurate charts ot the coast and adjacent waters. The Coast Survey would spend some forty years in the Keys surveying the reef and helping the Lighthouse Service mark and light it—an undertaking remarkable not only for its enormity but for the politics, men, ideas and events that enabled and shaped it. The story, only partially told, begins with the Spanish, the British and the Lighthouse Service, who all strug­ gled with the reef first.

Early Charts and Sailing Directions When Spanish treasure ships began using the New Bahama Channel in earnest, celestial navigation was in its infancy. Pilots of the day paid attention to latitude and sometimes sailed by it, but the instruments and tables needed to get a fix were not user friendly or particularly accurate, and there was no practical way to determine longitude. So they navigat­ ed mostly by dead reckoning, which meant keeping track of their posi­ Taming the Reef

tion by estimating the distance traveled on each heading; plotting it on portolan charts, which provided a scale and configured primitive coast­ lines along constant compass bearings or directional lines rather than lat­ itude and longitude; and following written sailing directions, or “der- roteros," which provided course and distance information as well as descriptions of the geography along the way and observations and advice about such things as weather, current, depth, bottom conditions and anchorages.4

For more than two centuries Spanish pilots refined their derroteros and portolans of the Straits, and dead reckoning served them reasonably well—particularly when it came to the treasure fleets, which ren­ dezvoused in Havana and departed from there, a jog to the south that made it easier to give the reef a wide birth. Of the thousands of ships that passed through the Straits as part of the treasure fleets, only thirty or so were lost in the Keys, or the “Martyrs” as the Spanish called them, and all but three of those were lost when hurricanes struck the fleet in 1622 and 1733. The problem for those that followed was that the Spanish were secretive and became set in their ways. As a result, few of their portolans and derroteros made it into British or American hands, and those that did would ultimately be dismissed as “paltry draffs” or “old Spanish charts.”5

When Spain ceded Florida to the British in 1763 to get Havana back after the French and Indian War, the stage was set for a leap forward in navigation and charting. The Mercator projection, a mapping technique particularly suited for charts because it produced a rectangular grid with parallel lines of latitude and longitude that allowed landmasses to be positioned so that compass courses from one place to another could be determined by drawing a straight line between them, had been on the shelf since the late 1500s. The instruments and techniques needed to conduct land based surveys had improved so that shorelines could be depicted on a chart with reasonable accuracy. The reflecting octant (and soon the sextant) made it easier to determine the angles between celestial objects and the horizon while underway. The tables needed to convert these “sights” into latitude had been simplified. An on-board chronome­ ter capable of telling the exact time sights were taken was about to be per­ fected so that longitude, long the missing piece of the puzzle, could be determined with relative ease, and accurate charts based on Mercator projections could finally be drawn. 8 TEQUESTA

The British put these new tools to use and made surveying and charting the Keys and reef a priority. Three men, William De Brahm, George Gauld and Bernard Romans, took on the job. De Brahm, a German scientist, surveyor and cartographer who immigrated to British North America in 1751, worked as surveyor general of the Southern General Survey District of North America and the province of East Florida. George Gauld, a shipboard schoolmaster in the Royal Navy, was chosen to survey the area for the British Admiralty. Bernard Romans, a captain, navigator, and budding naturalist who emigrated from the Netherlands in 1757, mostly freelanced after working for a time as De Brahm’s principal deputy surveyor. Romans and De Brahm were both engaged in larger, more ambitious projects, but the demand was so great that they published their sailing directions and charts ot the Keys first—De Brahm in 1772 in The Atlantic Pilot, “a little treatise ... calculated for the safer conduct of ships ... through the New Bahama Channel,” and the accompanying Chart of the South End of East Florida and Martiers, and Romans in 1775 in an appendix to the first volume of his A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida and separately published charts. Gauld started surveying the Tortugas in 1773 and made it as far north as Rodriguez Key oil ot Key Largo before the threat posed by American privateers in the run-up to the Revolutionary War caused him to break off the work in 1775. He died in 1782, and the British Admiralty kept his work under wraps until 1790 when William Faden, a prominent London map publisher, secured per­ mission to publish Gauld’s Accurate Chart of the Tortugas and Florida Kays or Martyrs and his sailing directions, which Faden compiled from notes on Gauld’s manuscript charts and called An Account of the Surveys of Florida. Both were well received, and Faden used Gauld’s manuscript charts to produce another, smaller scale chart of the entire Straits, A Chart of the Gulf of Florida or New Bahama Channel, in 1794, and pub­ lished a corrected version of his sailing directions, renamed Observations of the Florida Kays, Reef and Gulf in 1796.b

Each man’s sailing directions had their own flavor. De Brahm the sci­ entist, tor example, took the opportunity to promote his theories con­ cerning the Gulf Stream and the formation of the Keys and reef, and as an employee of the Crown apparently felt the need to rename most of the islands, channels and bays in the Keys after British political figures—an Taming the Reef 9

William De Brahms discrete chart of Biscayne Bay (Sandwich Gulf), Key Biscayne (Biskaino Island) and Cape Florida. The latter, at the southern tip of Miami Beach, at the time still included what later became Virginia Key. Reproduction from the Roland Chardon Papers, HistoryMiami, 1986-255-297. 10 TEQUESTA

effort that produced a few names with legs, like Hawk[e] Channel. In the main, though, they all covered the basics: tides; current; depth; coordi­ nates (latitude and sometimes longitude) of important spots; courses from one Key to another and past the whole lot; the look of the islands and shoreline; the fish and game to be had; and where breaks in the reef, channels, anchorages and fresh water could be found. Though primitive at times—Romans, for example, counseled mariners approaching Key West Harbor to pass close enough to Sand Key "to chuck a biscuit ashore” and then head for the bushes on the western tip ot the island—the infor­ mation was invaluable and compiled for the first time in English. Their charts were also far better than any produced before, includ­ ing those in the first wave of British maps of Florida, which tended to reflect stagnant Spanish geography. Comparing the southern portion of the Florida peninsula in John Gibson’s 1763 Map of the New Governments of East and West Florida with De Brahms Chart of the South End of East Florida and Martiers shows the striking difference, and how, for the first time, something approaching the real size, shape and coordi­ nates of the Keys and reef, as well as the depth at some critical locations, were being depicted. Somewhat surprisingly given his apparent lack of training as a surveyor or cartographer, Gauld’s charts were the best, and it was his work—both sailing directions and charts—that was ultimately made available to American mariners. His sailing directions formed the basis of the sections covering the Keys and reef in the first (1796) edition of Edmund M. Blunt’s American Coast Pilot, the most popular pilot book (compilation of sailing directions) of the day. And his/Faden’s Chart of the Gulf of Florida or New Bahama Channel was incorporated into Blunt’s chart of The Bahama Banks and Gulf of Florida, which was published in 1827.8

Despite these advances, the work ot the British surveyors had no noticeable impact on the number of wrecks on the reef. According to most estimates, by the time Spain agreed to cede Florida to the U. S. in 1819 Bahamian wrecking vessels were salvaging up to a wreck a week there.9 One reason was that any salutary effect was masked by the increase in shipping through the Straits as the territory west of the Appalachians and then west of the Mississippi was settled and goods and produce began to flow to and from the Gulf ports. Another was avail­ ability. With the exception of Blunt’s early use of Gauld’s sailing direc- Taming the Reef 11

dons, their charts and sailing directions were all published on a subscrip­ tion or limited basis, often in England, and were not something American navigators had ready access to. Andrew Ellicott, an American surveyor provided with a copy of Gauld's Accurate Chart o f the Tortugas and Florida Kays to help him round the peninsula as he fixed the bound­ ary between the U. S. and Spanish Florida, made the point in the jour­ nal he kept: As a knowledge of this navigation is of very great importance to the mercantile interests of the United States, it is a subject of regret that we have no charts in common use of the reef and Keys ... sufficiently large and accurate to be useful. ... The labours of [Gauld and De Brahm] have never been communi­ cated to the public.10

Add to this the fact that there were no lighthouses in the Keys, and that the only aids to navigation were poles Gauld had erected on Sand and Looe Key almost fifty years earlier, and it is not surprising that pass­ ing captains still needed more help getting by the reef.

First Light Shortly after the treaty with Spain was ratified in 1821, the secretary of the navy sent Lt. Cmdr. (later commodore) Matthew C. Perry to the Keys to assess the dangers to navigation and Key West’s potential as a naval station and commercial port. Perry zeroed in on the lack of light­ houses in the Keys, and in a letter written on the spot urged the secretary of the navy to urge the secretary of the treasury to build some:

Numberless are the Vessels, and lives, that have been lost on this treacherous Coast, ... so common are ship wrecks in this neigh­ borhood. ...

The great number of vessels that daily pass through the Gulf of Florida, to & from the Ports of New Orleans, Pensacola, Mobile, the Ports of Cuba, Jamaica and the Spanish Maine renders the erection of Light Houses, not only as an act of justice on the part of our Government, But humanity and a regard to the Safety of the lives and fortunes of our citizens Seriously demand so desir­ able a measure. ... 12 TEQUESTA

As to the number and location of the Light Houses I should pre­ sume there ought to be four, one on each extreme of the Florida Reef, the other two at intermediate spaces—Say one on Cape Florida, another on Key Largo and a third on Sand Key (if Sufficiently Stable) and a fourth On the South west Tortugas.11 Under pressure from merchants, underwriters and shipping interests, Congress was already looking at erecting lighthouses in the Keys, and just over a month after Perry made his recommendations it authorized the Lighthouse Service to build a lighthouse on Cape Florida and one in the Tortugas. Lighthouses on Sambo and Sand Keys were authorized in the next few years as well, and by 1827 they had all been built—the one slat­ ed for the Sambos on Key West instead because the small islets were often inundated during storms and high tides. With the exception of Sand Key Light, however, none of these early lighthouses marked the real “shore­ line"—the outer edge of the reef. Instead, they were traditional masonry affairs built miles from the reef on the nearest island, which meant they were hard to see where they were needed. Over the next several decades the lights were derided by most everyone that had a stake in their effec­ tiveness. The Blunts warned readers of The American Coast Pilot “not to place much reliance on ... any of the Florida lights as they are all bad.” Underwriters complained to Congress that the light on Garden Key in the Tortugas was so faint it could only be seen “after the vessel was strand­ ed.” And when Congress sought the input of captains familiar with the lights, one who had passed Cape Florida more than a hundred times claimed to have seen the light there only twice, while another suggested that it “be dispensed with as the navigator is apt to run ashore looking for it.”12

A different tack was tried oft of Key Largo, where the lightship Caesar, completed in 1825, was to be moored outside Carysfort Reef. But it took a beating in open water, had difficulty maintaining station, and often slipped inside the reef to anchor in Turtle Harbor. Frequent repairs were needed, and it had to be replaced five years later by another lightship, the Florida, which reportedly anchored on Basin Hill Bank, next to Turtle Harbor and some three miles inside the reef, for the better part of the next twenty-two years. The lightships proved no more effec­ tive. Insurance underwriters reported that, “as constructed and placed,” they could not be seen from a sufficient distance, and passing captains Taming the Reef 13

Cape Florida Light, pictured here circa 1890, was the last traditional lighthouse built too far from the reef. Photograph by Ralph Munroe. HistoryMiami, Munroe-x-94. thought of their lights as “miserable” things that were “scarcely dis­ cernible.” This was due in part to the fact that lightships have smaller lights than lighthouses. The advantage of location was supposed to offset this reality, but it was lost when the lightship moved inside the reef. There were also questions concerning the quality of the light keeping, 14 TEQUESTA

and even a suspicion that less oil was being burned to support “a brisk trade ... with the wreckers.”13

The difficulties created by the Keys' troublesome geography were compounded by the Lighthouse Sendee’s own problems, which have largely been attributed to Stephen Pleasonton, the fifth auditor of the treasury who was given responsibility for the Service in 1820. Pleasonton had no maritime experience, was frugal to a fault, and was often preoc­ cupied with what he regarded as more pressing duties—a collection of shortcomings that led to a lack of leadership, poor oversight and cut cor­ ners, including in the Keys. Shoddy construction, for example, was thought to have contributed more to the premature demise of the Caesar than harsh conditions. When the Seminoles burned the Cape Florida Lighthouse in 1836, its walls turned out to be hollow, a shortcut that saved half the work and bricks. Pleasonton’s shortcomings also led to an unholy alliance with Winslow Lewis, a ship’s captain turned inventor and marine contractor who gave Pleasonton an experienced shoulder to lean on and the low bids he wanted. Lewis' “reflecting and magnifying lantern,” which featured a parabolic reflector mounted behind an oil lamp, found its way into most lighthouses and lightships, and he often secured the maintenance and supply contracts as well. The brightness of the lantern, as well as its ini­ tial and operating costs, was largely a function ot the number of wicks, so there was little comfort in Lewis' boast that his lights burned only half the oil, and even less in the fact that his supply contracts allowed him to sell any surplus. Worse still, Lewis’ interest in maintaining the status quo and Pleasonton’s aversion to spending money kept the tar superior but more expensive Fresnel lens, which was developed in Europe and used prismatic rings to concentrate and focus the lamp’s light, from being installed in lighthouses in the Keys and elsewhere.

The last straw in the Keys was the loss ot the Sand Key and Key West lighthouses in an 1846 hurricane. Rebuilding them would not be enough. The merchants and underwriters immediately began to lobby Congress for additional and better lights, and motley for new lighthous­ es on Sand Key, Key West and Carysfort Reef was appropriated by 1848.'4 Before Congress acted on any ot the other requests—a better light in the Tortugas and one on Sombrero Key—or the new lighthous- Taming the Reef 15

es could be built, the chorus of complaints from around the country became so loud that Congress appointed a panel of distinguished mili­ tary officers and civilian scientists to investigate the state of the country’s lights and the Lighthouse Service itself.

Florida’s First Insurance Crisis The Coast Survey got off to a rocky start as well. Ferdinand Hassler, a Swiss-born scientist with considerable experience in trigonometric sur­ veying, was its first superintendent and put the Survey on sound scien­ tific footing—to the point that his standards and procedures were used well into the twentieth century. Unfortunately, however, Hassler lacked the administrative and political skills needed to lead the Survey during its formative years. Between turf wars with the military, quarrels with his superiors and battles with Congress over funding and the Survey’s mis­ sion, precious little surveying was done during the first thirty years of the Survey’s existence, and none of it was in the Keys.'5

Hassler died in 1843 and was replaced by professor Alexander Dallas Bache, who had strong ties with the scientific community; serious polit­ ical connections (a great grandson of Ben Franklin, grandson of Treasury Secretary Alexander James Dallas and nephew of Vice President Dallas) and the organizational and political skills Hassler lacked. Bache would eventually use all of these to turn the Coast Survey into one of the great scientific organizations of the world, expanding its mission and using its mandate to shape the scientific infrastructure of the United States. His immediate concern, though, was to build on the foundation Hassler laid by improving the Survey’s image and productivity, which meant doing more surveying in more places. So he divided the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts into nine sections—the Keys were in Section VI, which ran from Saint Marys River on the Florida-Georgia border to Saint Joseph Bay in the panhandle—with the idea that the survey could proceed separately in each and be connected later. By 1848 he had crews working in seventeen states and seven of the nine sections, but still no work was being done in the Keys. Indeed, nothing in the Coast Survey records suggests that Bache had focused on the threat the Keys continued to pose to shipping, or that starting work there was even on his radar screen.'6 16 TEQUESTA

Why is not clear. Priorities had to be set, and Florida had just become a state. Sentiments expressed by the Survey and others over the years, as well as attempts to dispel the notion when the opportunity for additional funding arose, suggest that part of the reason was that the chart glass in the Keys was considered half full based on the work already done there. The British surveys of the late 1700s had long been admired. Ellicott, for example, found nary a rock or shoal out of place in Gauld’s chart of the reef, and thought it was “one of the most valuable works of [its] kind.” Perry thought the hazards in the Keys had been “laid down with admirable accuracy by the English Surveyors.” John Lee Williams, in his 1837 history of Florida, suggested that “[n]o improvement [could] ever be made in Gauld’s Survey of the Florida Keys.” Lt. (later rear admi­ ral) C. R. P. Rodgers, who used Gauld’s chart in the Second Seminole War and was assigned to the Survey at the time, thought it was a “work of merit” and “still valuable.” Even after work had begun in the Keys, an article in Putnam's Monthly about and seemingly informed by the Survey, wrote that Gauld’s chart of the Keys and reef was still considered “quite tolerable as a navigator’s guide.”17

There had also been some recent developments. The British surveyed the Carysfort Reef area, which Gauld never got to, in 1844 and 1845, and in the Survey’s eyes left it “comparatively well determined.” Then in 1846, Key West Harbor and its approaches were surveyed by the U. S. Corps of Topographical Engineers (later absorbed by the U. S. Corps of Engineers) in connection with the construction of Fort Jefferson a year later. The Blunts published a version of Gauld’s large scale chart of the Tortugas and Keys entitled The Tortugas, Florida Reef, Carysfort Reef and Keys, with Additions and Corrections to 1846, which incorporated infor­ mation from both surveys and was in circulation by 1847. The chart still did not cover the reefs north of Key Largo, but according to John Hoyt, the underwriters’ agent in Key West, it was “a good one on a large scale.”18

Whatever the reason for the Keys’ low priority, things were about to change. With commerce between Gulf ports and the Eastern Seaboard continuing to explode, more and more ships were rounding the reef, and more of them were running aground. According to Hoyt, that meant paying on average $169,000 in awards and expenses to salvage thirty- eight vessels with a hull and cargo value of $1,020,000 each year during Taming the Reef 17

Alexander Dallas Bache. From The Popular Science Monthly, 48 (November 1895). Courtesy of Marine Biological Laboratory' Library' and Woods Hole Oceanographical Institution. 18 TEQUESTA

the period 1844-1846. The mounting losses produced Florida’s first insurance crisis, which in by now familiar fashion included skyrocketing rates—the cost of insuring against losses on a passage through the Straits approached and sometimes exceeded that for longer and by all rights more dangerous voyages, such as from New York to Rio de Janiero or San Francisco or China—and conflicting allegations concerning who was to blame—the wreckers and wrecking industry according to the underwrit­ ers, and the underwriters according to those believed they were manipu­ lating rates for their own profit.19

Survey Politics In response to the growing crisis, the merchants and underwriters added an expedited survey and better charts of the Keys to their list of demands, and the timing was right. For one thing, another attempt was being made to strip the Survey of its responsibilities and reduce its budg­ et. The merchants and underwriters were among the Survey’s staunchest allies—chambers of commerce, boards of trade and insurance companies from Charleston, Philadelphia, New York and Boston opposed the effort and filed memorials (testimonials often accompanied by a petition) sup­ porting the status quo—and the Survey needed to keep them happy.20

At the same time one of Florida’s new Senators, James Westcott, was trying to spur development in South Florida, and to that end had intro­ duced a bill to drain and survey the Everglades. He made common cause with the merchants and underwriters, even arguing that promoting settle­ ment of the southern coastline would also help reduce the loss of life and property on the reef, and in a note appended to a committee report rec­ ommending passage of the Everglades bill began to push for a survey of the reef as well, suggesting that Bache thought it could be done in a year:

It is not a little surprising that, in the twenty-seven years Florida has been held by the United States, no complete nautical survey has been made of the “ Florida Reef.”... The charts used by our navigators are the old Spanish charts, and those made by the British from 1763 to 1784, and of the recent British surveys ... and compilations of them by BLUNT and others—all imperfect in many particulars, and erroneous in others. IVL have no origi­ nal American chart of all the reef and keys! That accomplished Taming the Reef 19

and scientific officer, at the head of the “ Coast Survey, ’Professor BACHE, has informed me, that, if the means were appropriat­ ed by Congress, the entire reef and all of the keys ... could be surveyed in one season A chance to do some reconnaissance also arose when Westcott’s efforts led to the appropriation of $7,500 for the General Land Office, which was responsible for surveying and selling public lands, to survey the islands in the Keys themselves. The secretary of the treasury, under whom the General Land Office also operated, decided that the Survey was better equipped to handle the job and asked Bache to do it. Bache agreed with the understanding that the Survey was “at liberty to [use its] own methods,” and told Ferdinand Gerdes, a trusted Coast Survey assis­ tant, to head for the Keys as soon as possible. Bache wanted the “prelim­ inary results ... on which to found a survey”—a plan, maps of the recon­ naissance, a description of the islands, and an estimate of the area to be covered—“before the [next] session of Congress,” and with an eye on the politics ahead wanted a feel for the place and the “usefulness of the work” as well—meet with people in favor of the survey, “fill me with details,” and “collect such statistics to help as you can.”22

Gerdes arrived in early January 1849 aboard his namesake, the schooner Gerdes, and spent six weeks in the Keys. A good part of that was in Key West, where he gathered information, hired a pilot and waited out the weather. Yet even from there, with a few short excursions, he was able to reconnoiter the area from Boca Grande to the Saddlebunch Keys and plan for its survey. When the wind slacked he spent four days beating up Hawk Channel to Key Biscayne, where he looked for a place to begin making the measurements and astronomical observations required to start the whole process, and launched a foray up the Miami River to the Everglades to determine the level of the water there and how difficult it would be to drain. Gerdes provided Bache with the preliminary results he wanted, the statistics Hoyt had complied regarding wrecks on the reef, and some talk­ ing points as well. Indeed, the stakes—Bache alerted Gerdes that Westcott was going for a “large appropriation” to survey the Keys—and Gerdes’ own feeling that the Keys deserved more attention produced hyperbole. The reef was an “extraordinary freak of nature.” Wrecks were 20 TEQUESTA

“almost [a] daily occurrence.” Even when they could be salvaged, "3/4 ot them [were] purposely lost.” The wreckers were cold blooded—gain from “the misfortune of others is [their] sole impulse and all other feelings are strangers to them.” And “every honest man” in Key West was calling for a survey. In short, in terms “of danger to navigation,” the Keys were des­ tined to be the Survey’s number one priority.24

Even as Gerdes was absorbing the reality of the Keys, things were coming to a head in Washington: the merchants submitted memorials to Congress in support of an expedited survey; Hoyt published the latest statistics on wrecks in the Keys—forty-one vessels with a combined hull and cargo value of $1,282,000 salvaged at a cost of $325,860 in 1848; and Westcott procured a Senate resolution calling for a report from the secretary of the treasury concerning the cost and expediency of an expe­ dited survey and charts of the Keys.24

Mallory Weighs In By chance or design, the secretary of the treasury submitted his/Bache’s response to the Senate on the same day debate began on the motion to slash the Survey’s budget. In terms of expediency, Bache sought to answer the Senate’s inquiry by passing along the underwriters’ latest statistics and providing the input of Rodgers and Lt. James Biddle, who had both commanded vessels in the Keys during the Second Seminole War, and Stephen Mallory, the local customs collector and superintendent of the lights who would become a U. S. senator, the Confederate secretary of the navy and a Key West icon. All agreed that an expedited survey would be of great benefit, but Mallory’s points were the most colorful and vehement. The Florida Reef had always “proved disastrous to navigators,” but now lay on the margin of a “highway of commerce” used by “thousands of vessels annually” to carry the “com­ merce of the Mississippi valley ... through the straits of Florida.” Conditions were worse than the underwriters’ figures suggested, because many vessels that struck the reef did not show up in their statistics. It was a national, not a Florida problem, because six of eight vessels coming to grief on the reef were owned by citizens of northern or eastern States and three-fifths of the cargo lost came from the Mississippi Valley. The exist­ ing charts were not up to snuff, because the failed to cover the “portion Taming the Reef 21

of the reef ... most destructive to commerce,” where valuable channels and anchorages “known only to the wreckers" were going unused. Bache, though not as colorful as Mallory’, provided the Survey’s opin­ ion on the existing charts of the Keys and also concluded that an expe­ dited survey was warranted: The great and increasing trade that passes the coast of Florida, and the peculiar dangers that beset the navigation from reefs but imperfectly explored, and currents scarcely at all examined, ren­ der the survey of it of special importance. ... The charts of this part of our coast are, with the exception of detached surveys of some of the harbors, and of portions of the Florida reef, inaccurate and wanting in detail. Bache told the Senate he could complete it in two and one-half years for §160,000, or a little more than $60,000 a year—an estimate that, notwithstanding the caveat that the area had yet to be thoroughly explored, ended up being of! by hundreds of thousands of dollars and more than thirty-five years. Two weeks later, on March 3, 1849, Congress voted to authorize $30,000 a year to begin surveying the Keys, with the Navy’ to provide the “requisite officers, vessels and crew." Thirty' thousand dollars was only' half of what Bache asked for, but it was an extraordinary sum nonethe­ less. Not counting general expenses, the budget for the entire Atlantic and Gull Coast was just over $156,000, so $30,000 amounted to a 19 percent increase just to survey a 200 mile stretch of islands and reefs— an allocation that would remain roughly the same until the Civil War intervened. To make sure it happened Bache got the permission of the secretary' of the treasury' to begin work before any' funds were actually in hand and sent Survey assistant J. E. Hilgard and several work parties to the Keys within weeks of the vote. The idea was to impress with imme­ diate “results of value,” so the spots chosen were Bahia Honda and Vaca Key, where there were harbors, breaks in the reef and channels to the Gulf that were valuable to mariners, and Key West, where the Topographical Engineer’s earlier work provided both a starting point and the opportunity' to address another of Mallory’s criticisms—that the Engineers had failed to finish marking and sounding a new route 22 TEQUESTA

through the channel running northwest from Key West Harbor to the Gulf of Mexico (today’s Northwest Channel) that would provide deeper draft vessels with a way to avoid rounding the Tortugas.-

Reconnaissance Bache also instructed Gerdes to complete his reconnaissance so that they could finalize a plan to triangulate the Keys, meaning create a frame­ work of triangles to provide reference points whose positions were known so that the features and soundings that would end up on the charts could be accurately depicted and located. The math that enabled the process was that if one side of a triangle and its angles are known the other sides can be determined. So the starting point was finding a good spot to measure the first side of the first triangle, known as the baseline. Once its exact length was known, a third point could be selected, the angles from it to each end of the baseline measured, and the length of the other two sides computed. Additionally, it the latitude and longitude ot at least one end of the baseline was established using astronomical observations, those, along with the distance and azimuth (true compass course) to the third point, could be used to determine its latitude and longitude as well. The sides of this first triangle could then be used to create more triangles in the same fashion until a grid of known points and distances covered the entire area. The length of the baseline—the longer the better in terms of the ease and accuracv with which the angles it created could be determined—and the precision with which it was measured determined the accuracy of the rest of the survey. So locating and measuring one was both important and challenging in the Keys, where large expanses of open or easily cleared terrain were rare. Gerdes was told in Key West that Key Biscayne would be the best place to locate one, and after exploring the island he was opti­ mistic—“for 3 miles the track [proposed for the baseline] is in my opin­ ion practicable and can easily be made more so for one mile more and probably for 11/2 or 2.” Upon reflection, though, he began to think the amount of vegetation that had to be cleared made it a last resort. And he was also afraid that “hanging” a two hundred mile chain of triangles from a baseline at one end would lead to inaccuracy at the other. So he start­ ed to lean, sight unseen, toward measuring a baseline on the mainland east of Cape Sable, triangulating south from there to Long and Duck Taming the Reef 23

rp;„i 3frit

Top: Gerdes’ sketch of “supposed site” for the Key Biscayne baseline from first reconnaissance in 1849, Courtesy of the National Archives. Bottom: Gerdes’ 1849 sketch of the preliminary, broken baseline along the beach on Kev Biscayne. Courtesy of the National Archives. 24 TEQUESTA

Keys using the islands in Florida Bay, and then working his way up and down the main chain of islands.28 This put him at odds with Bache, who wanted to start surveying at Key Biscayne and work south towards Carysfort Reef—the part of the Keys Gauld never got to and that Mallory and others said needed charting the most. Bache compromised, instructing Gerdes to locate and measure a preliminary baseline on Key Biscayne and then see what could be done at Cape Sable. In the mean­ time, Hilgard measured two short, even more preliminary baselines to support the work that had already begun—one fifteen hundred meters long on Key West and another twelve hundred meters long on Bahia Honda. Gerdes returned to the Keys in November 1849 and spent three weeks measuring the preliminary baseline on Key Biscayne. To avoid the dense vegetation and uneven ground inland, he measured a broken line along the curve of the beach so that the straight line needed for the base of the first triangle could be projected from its ends some 3.2 miles across the bight on the eastern side of the Key. Broken lines were less accurate than straight ones, so he compensated by measuring the angles where each segment of the line intersected with extra care, measuring the line with wooden rods shod with brass and supported by trestles rather than wire or chain pulled taught along the ground, which was easier and the norm for preliminary baselines, and by measuring over half of the line twice. Both ends of the line were marked with stone monuments, and Hilgard followed up by making the observations needed to determine the latitude and longitude of both ends. Cape Sable was next, and it was a disappointment. The lure was an open, level prairie, and Gerdes had hoped to measure a six mile baseline there. The prairie, though, had standing water where invisible branches of the Everglades intruded and the “solid ground” was often so soggy it trembled—a deal breaker when it came to the precision needed to meas­ ure a baseline. The best Gerdes could do was find room for a line 3.25 miles long. He tried again several months later to check for better loca­ tions and see whether conditions improved at the end of the dry season, but decided that Cape Sable was best suited for a secondary baseline that could be used for verification.29 Other locations—Plantation, Mate- cumbe and Long Keys, the mainland along the western shore of Biscayne Bay and even some shoals on the reef—were also considered and reject- Taming the Reef 25

Drawing of stone monument at north end of preliminary baseline on Key Biscayne. Courtesy of the National Archives.

Gerdes’ sketch of the proposed baseline on Cape Sable. Courtesy of the National Archives. 26 TEQUESTA Ea>

Sable £ FLORIDA

Proposed Base at Cape Sable, Florida. 1850. Rubini Collection, HistoryMiami, 1981-232-2. Taming the Reef 27

View of Bache party measuring the baseline on Key Biscayne with rods and trestles. Courtesy of NOAA Central Library.

ed, mostly because there was too little room or too much vegetation to clear. So the primary baseline would go where Bache wanted it all along—on Key Biscayne alongside the preliminary baseline. Gerdes went back to Key Biscayne again in 1851 and laid out the permanent baseline with the help of fourteen fishermen and wreckers hired in Key West. At one time both he and Bache believed there was room for a baseline close to five miles long, which was thought to be the minimum for accuracy. But, if the line was to stay inland of the bight and beach on the ocean side and out of the mangrove forests to the west, the longest run turned out to be fifty-eight hundred meters, or 3.6 miles, from the southern terminus of the preliminary baseline to a point north­ west of its northern end. No problems were ever attributed to the short baseline, and it was, as Bache pointed out, more in keeping with the smaller triangles that had to be used throughout the Keys. Ironically, though, the baseline on the Cape Sable Prairie, at four miles, ended up longer. Both baselines received their final measurements four years later when Bache and an entourage that included his wife, a visiting University ot Pennsylvania professor, five ships—the steamer Corwin and the schooners Graham, Florida, Bowditch and Joseph Henry—and a shore party of over forty men descended on them for what a Survey historian described as the spectacle and pageantry of a Bache field carnp.^0 A sur­ vey party followed to re-measure the angles to the nearest stations so that the primary triangulation, well on its way to completion at that point. 28 TEQUESTA

(S. Southeast Survey A.D. Bathe Superintedent

1850 sketch of proposed baseline on Key Biscayne, running to the west and northwest of the preliminary baseline measured the year before. Rubini Map Collection, HistoryMiami, 1981-232-1 Submarine Chaser Training Center 29

Northern portion of Gerdes sketch of initial triangulation plan for the Keys. Courtesy of the National Archives.

could be adjusted. The other key to a successful reconnaissance was selecting suitable locations for the points or stations that would form, and be used to meas­ ure, the large primary triangles that provided the framework for every­ thing else. The Keys presented two significant challenges in that regard. One was finding locations for stations that would permit the primary tri­ angulation to be extended south from the Key Biscayne baseline to the ocean side of the upper Keys so that the hydrographers and topographers 30 TEQUESTA

0

Triangulation plan for Biscayne Keys using signals built on the reef. Courtesy of NOAA Central Library Data Imaging Project.

working on the reef would have the reference points they needed. Baselines were supposed to be positioned to permit the easy formation ot triangles, but the north-south orientation ot the Key Biscayne baseline was sufficiently similar to the orientation ot the Keys to the south that lines run from one to the other did not torni angles large enough to accu­ rately measure. In addition, there were no small keys on the reef to the east where stations could be built to create triangles, like Sand Key and the Sambos in the lower Keys, and there were no gaps of any size between the Keys from Sands to Upper Matecumbe, so triangles using points on the mainland could only be carried through to stations on the ocean side Taming the Reef 31

if lines of sight were cleared through some of those Keys—an expensive and time consuming proposition. The dilemma, which was one of the reasons Gerdes initially opposed Baches plan to triangulate south from Key Biscayne, is illustrated by the northern portion of Gerdes’ hand drawn sketch of the initial triangulation plan for the Keys, which pro­ vided no coverage of the reef. When Gerdes returned to the Keys in November 1849 he found that the markers he had erected on the Sambos and Sombrero, Looe and Sand Key, which were under water at times, had fared well. That made him wonder whether the reef itself might hold the answer. While there were no islands on the reef at the northern end, there were places where it came close to the surface, and Gerdes tried digging holes there to support signal poles using steel spikes and a crowbar. The holes weren't snug enough, so he jury-rigged an augur to bore holes in the reef, and discov­ ered that mangrove poles large enough to support durable signals seemed to cement themselves right in. The technique ended up being used to build twenty-two stations on the reef, and the solution was captured by a sketch Gerdes drew to show how stations on Fay [Fowey] Rocks and Landsbury [Ledbury] Reef could be used to provide coverage of the northern end of the reef. The end result was a triangulation plan that called for eighty primary triangles to cover the Keys themselves and another sixty-six to cover the reef.31

The second challenge was how to triangulate across the forty some nautical miles of open water that separated the Marquesas from the Tortugas since platforms and signals could not be built high enough to see over the curvature of the earth. Proposals ranged from anchoring ships in strategic spots as temporary stations to using balloons, buoys with tall poles and even rockets as signals that might be seen across the divide. None seemed practical, or as Gerdes delicately put it, there were concerns about “abandoning ... established principles,”32 and it was ulti­ mately decided that another secondary baseline was needed on Loggerhead Key so that the islands, reefs and shoals of the Tortugas could be covered separately with another thirty-six triangles. The problem of how to connect the two triangulations was solved when it was discovered that a tall signal could be built on Rebecca Shoal, which lay roughly half way between the Tortugas and the Marquesas, and be seen from both. 32 TEQUESTA

Half a Million Casts of the Lead When the survey proper began, triangulation crews went in first. Their job was to execute the primary triangulation and expand it by cre­ ating smaller secondary and tertiary triangles to provide the topographic and hydrographic crews that would follow with more reference points. Since the secondary and tertiary triangles were offshoots as opposed to links in the chain, they did not have to be measured as carefully as pri­ mary triangles. Repetition and cross-checks aside, the basics were the same. First, the chosen point was marked, usually with cones, blocks of iron or stone, or pilings. Then it was marked more precisely with a cross­ cut in an embedded metal cap bearing the Survey’s initials. Signals, usu­ ally tripods supporting a pole or cone, were then aligned and built on top of the surface marks. They ranged from fifteen to sixty-five feet tall and were often painted with alternate colors and topped with reflectors to improve visibility. If the station was to be occupied—sighted from as well

Gerdes’ sketch of signal on Key Biscayne. Courtesy of NOAA Central Library Data Imaging Project. Taming the Reef 33

as to—scaffolding was erected around it so that survey crews would have a platform to work on. From there, the angles from one station to anoth­ er would be measured using a theodolite, a sextant-like instrument designed to measure both horizontal and vertical angles at the same time. To insure accuracy, measurements were repeated from both directions, and in the case of primary triangles repeated again. Once an area was triangulated the topographers and hydrographers moved in. Using the signals that had been erected as reference points, the topographers plotted the surface features and configuration of the coast­ line and islands so that they could be depicted on charts in enough detail to help navigators recognize where they were. The hydrographers sound­ ed the waters off the coast so that depths and the contours of the bottom could be shown on the chart. Small sailboats or rowboats were used in shallow water while the Survey’s schooners and steamers handled the deep water work and acted as mother ships. Measuring depth with a lead

T

Signal with scaffolding. Courtesy of NOAA Central Library Data Imaging Project. 34 TEQUESTA

line was old hat, but determining exactly where the boat was when each sounding was made so that it could be plotted in the right place was trickier. The routine called for the crew to maintain a straight course and uniform speed, observers to measure the horizontal angles between near­ by signals and the boat at regular intervals, leadsmen to sound the depth six to ten times between each fix, and an officer to record the results. The process began in the Keys on the heels of the initial reconnais­ sance work in 1849, with triangulation parties and then hydrographic and topographic parties working their way south from Key Biscayne and northeast and southwest from the secondary baselines measured on Key West and Bahia Honda. Triangulation of the Keys and reef from Key Biscayne to the Marquesas was completed in 1857. The topography and hydrology was finished on the ocean side in 1863 under the protection of Union blockading forces. The triangulation, topography and hydrolo­ gy on the bay side and in the Tortugas were completed by 1876. Hilgard and Lts. James Totten and A. H. Seward, working off of the schooners Petrel, Bowditcb, Graham and John Torrey , were responsible for most of the triangulation. The soundings were done under Lt. Cmdrs. John Rodgers (not to be confused with C. R. P. Rodgers, a cousin), T. A. Craven, John Wilkinson and W. G. Temple of the Navy, Survey Assistant Edward Cordell, and civilian Master Robert Platt aboard the steamers Hetzel, Legare, Corwin, Vixen, and Bibb and the schooners Petrel, Agassiz, Palinums and James Hall. It was quite a cast. Hilgard, a German immigrant and civil engineer, would later become a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences and eventually superintendant of the Coast Survey. Totten became a brigadier general, as did his brother Joseph, who also worked in the Keys and went on to head the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Seward, a West Point graduate, was the son of William Seward, who lost the Republican nomination for President to Abraham Lincoln while his son toiled in the Keys and later, as secretary of state, oversaw the purchase of Alaska from Russia (Seward’s folly). Rodgers would help build and command the Union’s iron clad fleet during the Civil War, rise to the rank of rear admiral and retire to superintend the Naval Observatory. Craven took charge of the naval forces at Key West when the Civil War broke out, moved to prevent the seizure of Forts Taylor and Jefferson bv stationing warships there, and died commanding the Tecumseh in the Taming the Reef 3 5

The only surviving sketches of the vessels used by the Survey in the Keys are of the Bibb, drawn during the Civil War while she served in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and of the Gerdes, drawn during the reconnaissance of the Keys. Courtesy of NOAA Central Library (Bibb) and the National Archives (Gerdes). 36 TEQUESTA

Battle of Mobile Bay. Wilkinson, a Southerner, became a famous Confederate blockade runner and wrote about the experience in The Narrative of a Blockade Runner. Temple commanded the Flambeau, a steamer in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Cordell discovered the six thousand foot seamount off the coast of San Francisco that is today’s Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.33

With the help of hundreds of other military officers, enlisted men and Survey assistants and aids, these men made 65,000 plus observations to triangulate the Keys and reef, and measured 47,000 angles, steamed, rowed or sailed more than 17,500 miles and cast the lead over 500,000 times to sound them. As the numbers suggest, the undertaking was huge. Consider, for example, that from the time the Survey conducted its first hydrographic survey in 1834 until it began in the Keys some fifteen years later, only 1,760,000 soundings had been made, and only 45,750 miles run to make them, along the entire Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. The work was also tedious and difficult. Imagine surveying hundreds of miles of shoreline whose outline is masked by a mangrove fringe that extends well into the water and can only be approached by dragging a boat over flats that extend far beyond that. Try sounding a half mile line on the reef— with an outboard motor, depth sounder and modern electronics—and be amazed at what was accomplished with oars, sails, lead lines, poles and sextants. The conditions, both working and living, were less than ideal. Mosquitoes, sand flies, heat, impenetrable growth to clear or get through, an occasional bear or panther, Indians to watch out for at times, no water to drink, no fresh food except fish, no place to pitch a tent, no place to stay but onboard, and nowhere to go or get mail save Key West, which was usually too far away.

Charts and a Coast Pilot The field work was only half of it. To produce charts the triangula­ tion parties sent their work sheets and measurements back to Washington, where the angles and distances were computed and the points were plotted. The results were then sent, back to the field for top­ ographical detail, returned to Washington for more plotting, sent back again for the hydrographic results, and returned to Washington a final time. At that point the charts were drawn by draftsmen and passed along to engravers to be fixed on plates for printing. Taming the Reef 37

The plan was to produce four kinds of charts. The first was a series of thirty-three preliminary charts on a scale of 1/200,000 that were intended, along with sketch maps of the Survey’s progress that were updated annually, to place the coast hydrography in mariners’ hands as soon as possible without all of the topographical details. The Preliminary Chart of the Florida Reef from Key Biscayne to Pickles Reef published in 1856, was part of this series and covered the area Gauld never got to and Mallory insisted needed charting the most. The rest were to be final charts—offshore or General Coast Charts on a scale of 1/400,000, inshore or Coast Charts on a scale of 1/80,000, and larger scale harbor charts. But they could not be produced fast enough. Engraving was time consuming. Good engravers were hard to find. The area covered by each chart often changed as the work progressed. And the progress of the sur­ vey was uneven. So another kind of preliminary chart, a preliminary edi­ tion of the final chart, was born. In the Keys preliminary editions of three harbor charts were published in the early to mid 1850s, one of Key West Harbor and two of harbors of refuge in the Upper Keys—Legare Anchor­ age in the lee of Triumph Reef and Turtle Harbor in the lee of Turtle and Carysfort Reefs. Preliminary editions of Coast Charts 68-71, which cov­ ered sections of the Keys and reef in detail from Key Biscayne to the Marquesas, were published between 1858 and 1863. A preliminary' edi­ tion of General Coast Chart X, which covered the Straits from Key Biscayne to the Marquesas, was published in 1862.54

Final editions of these charts followed a few years later, but the base­ line on Loggerhead Key in the Tortugas was not measured until 1873, and the hydrology there and on the bay side of the Keys was not com­ pleted until 1876. When the work was finished, additional changes were made to the existing General and Coast Charts, and two new Coast Charts, covering from Key West to Rebecca Shoal and from there to the Tortugas, were produced in 1880 and 1882 respectively. The resulting array of Coast Charts, renumbered 66-71 and then 166-171 to include the two new ones, lasted until 1919 and still provide the basis for the charts Keys boaters rely on today. The preliminary' and final versions of the Keys charts finally provid­ ed real accuracy and detail. They' also provided the mariner with a wealth of additional information. Some of it, light lists and abbreviated sailing directions, for example, had become standard, but most of it reflected 38 TEQUESTA

practical or scientific innovations that set new standards for charting. That included descriptions of the bottom (sand, mud, coral, etc.) based on samples brought up when sounding, which was an aid to both navi­ gation and anchoring; compass roses that reflected the local magnetic variation (difference between magnetic and true north) and the rate at which it changed, made possible by measuring stations built on Cape Florida, Indian and Sands Keys, Key West and Garden Key in the Tortugas; and do-it-yourself tide tables based on data collected by self­ registering tide gauges the Survey invented and placed in the same spots. The Survey also disseminated information in its Annual Report, which began as a no frills summary of what was accomplished the year before and planned for the next and grew into an eagerly anticipated compilation of nautical data and reports on the Survey’s scientific inquiries. Of the latter the most important to the Keys mariner were those concerning the Gulf Stream, whose poorly understood currents often led to wrecks on the reef. Gulf Stream exploration began in the 1850s, but gained practical traction when Lt. John Elliot Pillsbury, who would go on to become a rear admiral and president of the National Geographic Society, developed a current meter and an anchor that allowed Survey vessels to remain stationary in deep water for long peri­ ods ot time. From 1885 to 1890, Pillsbury made 10,000 plus Gulf Stream observations at over 150 locations with his current meter, spend­ ing 1,100 hours anchored between Fowey Rocks and Gun Cay in the Bahamas alone. The results were published in the Annual Reports for those years and began to provide the information needed to account for the Stream when passing or approaching the reef, including the location of its axis; its speed and direction at various locations; how that varied on a monthly and daily basis with the position of the moon; how the wind affected the current; what caused the edge of the Stream to migrate on and offshore; and the characteristics of the countercurrent that some­ times ran between the reef and the Stream. The Annual Reports also included appendices and tables that com­ piled the data available on individual charts, gave notice of newly dis­ covered hazards and new navigational aids, and provided sailing direc­ tions as they became available. Annual Reports were not the best way to get information into the hands of mariners, though, so most of it ended up being published elsewhere as well. The Lighthouse Service began put- Taming the Reef 39

Sketch of deep sea anchor and current meter. Courtesy of NOAA Central Library Digital Initiative.

ting out its own notices to mariners and lists of navigational aids, a prac­ tice that continues today with the Coast Guard’s annual Light List and its weekly Notice to Mariners, and sailing directions were often included in the lists and published in newspapers. Yet in the end the Survey knew that, through “long usage,” mariners wanted all of this information and more in a pilot book. Work began on one in the mid-1850s, but the effort fizzled, and the Survey used The American Coast Pilot and its symbiotic relationship with the Blunts— they also sold the Survey’s charts and Edmund, the son, was an Assistant with the Survey for thirty-three years—to get the information out. The relationship ended with Edmund’s death in 1866, and the next year the Survey acquired the rights to American Coast Pilot and decided to produce its own pilot book. The work it had completed up to that point 40 TEQUESTA

provided much of the needed information, but more was required. Gaps in the survey had to be filled, and to get it right crews had to go out with charts in hand to test their accuracy, prove the courses, compile the nec­ essary notes and descriptions, and draw views of important harbors, inlets and landmarks. The result was that the Survey’s coast pilot, then and now called the United States Coast Pilot, was a long time coming. Part VII, which covered the Atlantic Coast from the Chesapeake to Key West, took so long to finish that an Atlantic Local Coast Pilot, covering smaller sections of the coast, was published on an interim basis as the work pro­ gressed. The Atlantic Local Coast Pilot coveting the Straits of Florida came out in 1890. The United States Coast Pilot, Atlantic Coast, Part VIII, which included the last piece of the puzzle—a section on the Keys from Key West to the Tortugas—was published in 1897.35

Reef Lights The Survey also played a significant role in lighting and marking the reef. Bache was one of the experts Congress asked to help investigate the Lighthouse Service, and when it decided that a permanent Light House Board was needed he was asked to sit on it. In addition, Congress asked the Survey to act in an advisory capacity to help determine how many new lighthouses should go where. Gerdes and Rodgers (John) were the first to weigh in on behalf of the Survey, echoing the familiar refrain that the "difficulties of navigation” combined with “the vast amount of pass­ ing commerce and the number and value of the wrecks” meant there had to be “full illumination.” They had another take on it as well—that the lighthouses would not only save lives and ships, but be money-makers. Because the reef was so poorly lit and dangerous, many ships favored the Bahamian side of the Straits and used Moro Light in Havana as their mark when making for or coming from the Gulf of Mexico. Others, most notably British ships, avoided the Florida Straits altogether by using the Old Bahama Channel and passing south of Cuba when bound for the Gulf. Light the reef up, Gerdes reasoned, and the Florida side of the Straits would become a "highway of nations, and bring many [ships] into our ports and harbors which now avoid us.” Rodgers went a step further, predicting that "the wrecks inevitable to [more] extensive commerce” would be good for the wreckers, paying “salvage [to them] rather than to foreigners. Taming the Reef 41

Sand Key Lighthouse. Gleason's Pictorial, 7, no. 10 (September 9, 1854): 152. HistoryMiami, x-0920-1.

In terms of where the lighthouses should go, Rodgers, like most at that point, wanted them on the reef—"one about Alligator reef, off Indian Key; one about Collins’ Patches [Coffins Patch], off Key Vacas; one on Looe Key; [and] one half way between Cape Florida and Carysfort reef.”3 Ten to fifteen years earlier the British had built a light­ house in the Thames Estuary using wrought iron pilings screwed into the ground and a wrought iron framework to support an elevated keeper’s house and light. The hope was that this kind of “screwpile” lighthouse would work on the reef, and funds were appropriated by Congress in 1848 to build one on Carysfort Reef to replace the lightship Florida and another on Sand Key to replace the masonry lighthouse destroyed in 1846. Both lighthouses were being erected when the investigation of the Lighthouse Service halted construction. During the lull Bache wanted to investigate conflicting reports con­ cerning the nature of the reef and make sure that putting lighthouses there was the right thing to do. Would the reef support them? Were some 42 TEQUESTA

locations better than others? Would the reef keep growing seaward and make lights and beacons there obsolete? Could “the growth of coral reefs ... be prevented, or the results remedied”—read could the reef be destroyed instead? Bache thought these questions, the last unthinkable today, were “of such great importance to navigation” that he prevailed upon his friend Louis Agassiz, a Swiss born Harvard professor of zoolo­ gy and geology, to provide the answers.^8

After spending the winter of 1851 aboard the steamer Legare study­ ing the reef, Agassiz deftly deflected what may have been the first exis­ tential threat to it by telling Bache that it was better to learn to live with the reef than try to destroy it—“I may say that here, as in most cases where the operations of nature interfere with the designs of man, it is not by a direct intervention on our part that we may remedy the difficulties, but rather by a precise knowledge of their causes, which may enable us if not to check, at least to avoid the evil consequences”—and then blessing a little degradation of the reef by agreeing that building lighthouses on it was the best way to avoid those evil consequences—“[U]nless some great revolution in nature modifies the present relative level between land and sea, it may be safely maintained that the present outer reef is the final southern boundary of the North American continent, and that the soon­ er a system of light-houses and signals is established along the whole reef the better. ...”39

Agassiz also addressed the pending structural questions concerning building on the reef. One was whether the reef would wash away in a hurricane as it seemed to do beneath the Sand Key Lighthouse in 1846. According to Agassiz, the moral of that story was to look harder for the reef, not for somewhere else to build: The mass of loose materials [on Sand Key] was mistaken for con­ tinuous coral rock sufficiently solid to support the structure based upon it. This unfortunate event has shown that the loose cap resting upon the more solid reef should always be removed before laying the foundation of a lighthouse. ... The other question, prompted by borings made on Carysfort Reef that revealed sand below the coral’s hard exterior crust, was whether the reef could withstand the load. An engineering change—large iron discs or plates with holes in the center for the iron pilings supporting the light- Taming the Reef 43

Fowey Rocks Light,the northernmost of the screw-pile lighthouses built directly on the reefs. Reproduction of lithograph by Julius Bien, circa 1880, HistoryMiami. 44 TEQUESTA

house to be driven through—had already been made to provide additional support, and Agassiz assured Bache that the problem was ultimately just one of site selection: Even the lower and more solid mass of the reef is not continuous throughout, but has cavities filled with sand, debris and loose material A of all kinds. Any point selected for the erection of a lighthouse should, therefore, be carefully surveyed, and the solidity of the reef should be tested by boring small holes [to make sure] it will afford a safe foun­ dation for beacons, signals or light­ houses. 0

b With Agassiz’ blessing and input, con­ struction resumed on Carysfort Reef and Lt. f] George Meade took over as the engineer in charge. Partly due to his abilities—Meade a would go on to command the victorious rt Army of the Potomac in the Battle of Gettysburg—and partly due to his experi­ ence—he had helped build a screwpile light­ house in Delaware Bay and knew the Keys I from survey work with the Topographical Engi-neers—he was able to complete the Lu Carysfort Reef and Sand Key Lighthouses V successfully and quickly, the former by March 1852 and the latter by July 1853. This all but answered the question of whether screwpile lighthouses were right for the reef, Sketch of iron pile and by 1880 four more had been built in beacon. Courtesy of their likeness—pretty much where Rodgers NOAA Central had recommended. With the exception of Library. Sand Key Light they are all still in service. Taming the Reef 45

Makeshift Markers The Survey’s role in helping mark the reef was more serendipitous. Gerdes started putting signals on the reef to triangulate it. There were precious few navigational aids in the Keys at that point. According to The American Coast Pilot there was a day beacon thirty feet tall with a large red ball on top on Looe Key, and four white floating buoys—two off of Key West, one off of Bahia Honda and one near Cape Florida. According to Gerdes, the beacon on Looe Key and the buoy off of Bahia Honda were gone. So it is not surprising that, when signals were erected on the Sambos and Sombrero, Looe and Sand Key, mariners began to use them as navigational aids. Gerdes worried at first that they would be destroyed

Fowey Rocks Light (left) and its marker (right), circa 1890. Photograph by Ralph Munroe. HistoryMiami, Munroe-96D. 46 TEQUESTA

by wreckers and fishermen tying off to them, using them for firewood or, in the case of the wreckers, tearing them down just to get rid of them. His fears proved unfounded, and in 1850 he reported that the “survey­ ing signals on the reef [had become] the means of preventing many ves­ sels from running ashore,” with “[m]ore than a dozen instances ot this kind ... known in Key West. 41 So Gerdes went into the beacon business—making the signals he was getting ready to construct on the northern portion of the reef easier to identify by painting them different colors, providing descriptions of the signals to Hoyt to distribute in Key West, getting Bache to publish them in the next Annual Report, and passing them along to the Blunts, who included them in the 1850 edition of The American Coast Pilot. As a result mariners knew, for example, that the surveying signal on Turtle Reef was twelve feet high, braced six feet off the water and topped with a tin cone painted red on top and white on the bottom. Gerdes also began to lobby for more, bigger and more durable sig­ nals set in iron fittings that could be screwed into the reef like miniature versions of the pilings slated to support the lighthouses on Carysfort Reef and Sand Key—“How much more effectual would large, distinct and permanent signals or beacons be, if placed at known distances and regu­ lar intervals of say six or eight miles.” His efforts were successful, and by March 1852, Lt. James Totten, who took over the project, had installed fifteen of them using iron screws to secure “a signal-pole of the mangrove wood ..., from thirty to forty feet in vertical height, [topped with] a bar­ rel ... painted black.”2*2 Three years later, Totten replaced these second generation marks with iron poles topped with iron cylinders and wind vanes bearing the letters “A” (Eastern Sambo) to “P” (Fowey Rocks). Since the Survey’s budget did not include funds for installing naviga­ tional aids, Bache eventually balked at the expense and the Lighthouse Service, back on its feet by then, took over.

Last Wrecks Ashore As was the case with the British surveyors, the impact ol the Coast Survey's work on the reel was difficult to judge at first. Bache suggested in his 1858 Annual Report that the beacons the Survey had erected on the reef and the sketch maps it included in prior reports had begun to turn the tide. This optimistic assessment was based on a comparison ol Taming the Reef 47

Though the number of wrecks declined, wreckers and wrecking remained part of the lore of the Keys through the turn of the century. Benjamin, S. G. W. “Wreckers on the Florida Keys." From Harper's Weekly, 1878 October 19, p. 836. HistoryMiami, 2008-321-1. 48 TEQUESTA

the underwriters' statistics for the years 1844-1846, which showed an average of thirty-seven wrecks a year, and those for the years 1854-1856, which showed an average of thirty-five wrecks a year, even though the tonnage passing through the Straits had increased by 60 percent. The numbers were not that clear, though. The same statistics also showed fewer vessels entering and leaving the Gulf ports, suggesting that larger rather than more vessels were making the trip, and if the year 1847, a light year for wrecks, had been included in the earlier period the result would have been an increase rather than a decrease in the average num­ ber of wrecks. Other sources pointed to more wrecks as well: court records for the ten year period ending in 1857 showed an average of fifty wrecks a year; statistics published by the St. Augustine Examiner put the number of wrecks on the reef in 1859 at sixty-six; and Lt. E. B. Hunt ot the Corp of Engineers, who kept track of wrecks on the reef from 1857 to 1862 while working on Fort Taylor in Key West, estimated that they were still occurring “at the average rate of one a week.”4^

At the same time, there were factors conspiring to make the efforts of the Survey and the Lighthouse Sendee seem less effective than they might have been. One was the learning curve, or as Hunt less charitably put it, the tendency of mariners to remain "incorrigibly ignorant” ot the new navigational aids. Several, for example, reported seeing Carysfort Reef Lighthouse, thinking it was Gun Cay Light in the Bahamas, and turning west onto the reef. Fraud was another factor. A salvaged vessel was worth less because of the stigma even when it was repaired, so some were intentionallv sunk after running aground accidentally. Gerdes recounted one incident in which a vessel raised in the Tortugas was found to have fourteen holes augured in the hull. Similarly, running a schooner up on the reef could be the ticket to a new steamer or a way to cash out in tough times, leading some to believe that the new charts just showed those so inclined where to head. Some even thought the insurance com­ panies looked the other wav to pad the number ot wrecks and keep pre­ miums high—a sentiment Hunt expressed when he surmised that, "to exaggerate the dangers" ot the Straits, insurance companies “were less adverse to wrecks and less strict in distinguishing collusive or fraudulent wrecks than they should be."44 The early returns, whatever they showed, stopped coming in when the Civil War started and Union blockading forces closed Confederate Taming the Reef 49

ports. The misfortunes of military vessels and blockade runners aside, the number of wrecks on the reef declined dramatically. Only twenty salvage claims—most involving foreign vessels—were handled in Key West dur­ ing the entire War. Afterwards the number of wrecks never reached pre­ war levels, and as the Survey and Lighthouse Service completed their work the number of salvage claims declined from twelve to three a year. By 1921 the reef was so tame the federal court stopped issuing wrecking licenses, and the fabled cry of “wreck ashore” became a thing of the past.4'’ The rise ot the railroads, which meant fewer ships passing through the Straits, and the fact that those ships were increasingly steamers, which were less susceptible to the vagaries of wind and current, played a role, but the underlying reality was that navigating the Keys had become a much surer thing thanks to the Survey’s charts and coast pilot and the lighthouses and beacons it helped put on the reef. To be sure, vessels continued to run aground on the reef, and do so today, even though modern chart plotters allow a vessel to track its progress on electronic versions of the Surveys charts. Now the reef is a treasure to be saved, and the tables have turned. Under the Florida Coral Reef Protection Act, when vessel and reef meet the reef is the victim, and the owner or operator of the vessel is on the hook for the cost of restora­ tion and fines of up to one thousand dollars per square meter of damage.46

Endnotes

1 T. Frederick Davis, “History of Juan Ponce de Leon’s Voyages to Florida: Source Records,” Florida Historical Quarterly 14, no. 1(1935):1, 17; and Robert S. Chamberlain, “Discovery of the Bahama Channel,” Tequesta 8 (1948): 109-116.

2 Wrecking became an American affair with the passage ot the Federal Wrecking Act in 1825, which required all cargo and ships salvaged in U. S. waters to be taken to a U. S. port of entry. Key West had been designated a port of entry in 1822, and a federal court with exclusive admiralty jurisdic­ tion was established there in 1828. For almost a hundred years before that time, Bahamian wreckers worked the reef, taking the cargo they salvaged to Nassau, where the customs and other duties it generated became the prin­ cipal source of revenue for the government there. Before that, the Spanish salvaged their own wrecks out of Havana, often using Indians as salvors. 50 TEQUESTA

Treasury Department, Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Suri’ey, Showing the Progress of the Survey During the Year 1862 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), 242; Act of March 3, 1825 (4 Stat. 133); Act of May 7, 1822 (3 Stat. 684); Act of May 23 1828 (4 Stat. 825).

3 Act of August 7, 1789(1 Stat.53); Act ofFebruary 10, 1807(2 Stat. 413-14). The actual governing bodies of the Lighthouse Service were the Lighthouse Establishment (1789-1852), the Lighthouse Board (1852-1910) and the Bureau of Lighthouses (1910-1939). The Lighthouse Service became part of the Coast Guard in 1939. The Coast Survey, which was also under the secretary of the treasury, became the Coast and Geodetic Survey when Congress voted to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Coast surveys in 1878. In 1970, it became part of the newly created National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where, under a variety of names— now the Coast and Geodetic Survey again—it has been ever since. Detailed coverage of aspects of the Survey’s work in the Keys can be found in Arva Moore Parks, “Key Biscayne Baseline Marker—1855,” Tequesta 33 (1973): 3-16, which recounts the history of the Key Biscayne Baseline, the founda­ tion for the survey in the Keys, and in John Viele, “Surveying the Keys in the 1850s,” Florida Keys Sea Heritage Journal 16, no. 4 (2006): 3-9. The Survey’s work in the vicinity of Key Biscayne is also addressed in Joan Gill Blank, Key Biscayne: A History of Miami’s Tropical Island and the Cape Florida Lighthouse (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1996), 63-73, 75-76. Several books on other aspects of Florida’s nautical history touch on the Survey’s work in the Keys in passing. John Viele, The Florida Keys, Vol. 3: The Wreckers (Sarasota FL: Pineapple Press, 2001), 161-164; John D. Ware, George Gauld: Surveyor and Cartographer of the Gulf Coast, revised and com­ pleted by Robert R. Rea (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1982), 233-234; Roland Chardon, “The Coast Survey,” in Joseph H. Fitzgerald, ed.. Changing Perceptions: Mapping the Shape of Florida, 1502-1982 (Miami: The Historical Association of Southern Florida, 1984), 29-30; Love Dean, Lighthouses of the Florida Keys (Key West: Historical Florida Keys Foundation, 1992), 17, 142.

4 Celestial observations, often made on land, were also used to refine the dis­ tances in portolans and derroteros, and by geographers and cartographers in Spain to map the New World for geopolitical purposes. These charts were not used for navigation, though for a time Spanish pilots were supposed to carry copies of the master chart—the Padron Real or Padron de las Indies— on their voyages. Taming the Reef 51

5 Commercial vessels would later mimic the treasure fleets' route, using Havana and its Moro light as the mark for turning northwest into the Gulf of Mexico or northeast through the Straits to the Atlantic. Local Spanish ship traffic—vessels rounding Florida on their way to and from the Gulf of Mexico or making the run between St. Augustine and Havana—got closer to the reef and did not fare as well. Solid numbers are hard to come by, but one study puts the number of Spanish wrecks in the Keys unrelated to hur­ ricanes at sixty-one. Oger C. Smith et ah, An Arias of Maritime Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 38-39; Bernard Romans, A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida (1775; reprint, edited and with foreword by Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), 314; Senate Committee on Public Lands, Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 338 to Authorize the Drainage of the Ever Glades, in the State of Florida, 30^ Cong. 1st sess., 1848, S. Rept. 242, 105; Senate Committee on Commerce, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Communicating a Report from the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, in Relation to the Survey of the Coast of Florida, 30“ Cong., 2d sess., 1849, S. Doc. 30, 11.

6 William Gerard De Brahm, The Atlantic Pilot (1772; facsimile reprint, with introduction and commentary by Louis De Vorsey, Jr., Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974), v.; Romans, A Concise Natural History, 292-345; Bernard Romans, Maps of East and West Florida (New York: 1781); William Faden, An Accurate Chart of the Tortugas and Florida Kays or Martyrs (London: W. Faden, 1790); William Faden, An Account of the Surveys of Florida, etc., with Directions for Sailing from Jamaica or the West Indies, by the West End of Cuba, and through the Gulph of Florida (London: W. Faden, 1790); William Faden, A Chart of the Gulf or New Bahama Channel, commonly called the Gulf Passage, between Florida, the Isle of Cuba, and the Bahama Islands: From the Journals, Observations, and Draughts of Mr. Chas. Roberts, Master of the R[oyal] Navy, Compared with the Surveys of Mr. George Gauld etc. (London: W. Faden, 1794); William Faden, Observations on the Florida Kays, Reef and Gulf with Directions for Sailing Along the Keys, From Jamaica by the Grand Cayman and the West End of Cuba: also, A Description, with Sailing Directions, of the Coast of West Florida, Between the Bay of Spiritu and Cape Sable (London: W. Faden, 1796); Ware, George Gauld, 226-229.

7 De Brahm, Atlantic Pilot, 4-5; Romans, Concise Natural History, 298. 52 TEQUESTA

8 Digitized versions of De Brahms and Gauld’s charts can be found at the University of Miami’s Old Florida Map site (http://scholar.library.miami. edu/floridamaps/), and a digitized version of Romans’ chart can be found in the digital map collection of the Library of Congress (http://loc.gov). Capt. Lawrence Furlong, The American Coast Pilot (Newburyport, Mass.: Blunt and March, 1796). Blunt, a small town bookseller, published the first edition of The American Coast Pilot under the name of a well respected cap­ tain to give it some gravitas, an artifice that quickly became unnecessary. Six years later Blunt complimented The American Coast Pilot with the first edi­ tion of Nathaniel Bowditch’s New American Practical Navigator, an ency­ clopedia of navigational techniques and data, and the success of the two— there would be twenty-one editions of The American Coast Pilot and seven­ ty-five (and counting) of “Bowditch”—launched a family nautical instru­ ment and publishing empire that lasted more than seventy years.

9 Although Spain regained Florida in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War, it exercised little control over the southern peninsula, and Bahamian wreckers continued to work the reef as they had at the end of the earlier Spanish period and under the British.

10 Journal of Andrew Ellicott (1803; reprint, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1962), 255-56, 273.

11 Secretary of Navy Smith Thompson to Perry, 7 February' 1822, and Perry to Thompson, 28 March 1822, The Territorial Papers of the United States; Volume XXII, The Territory of Florida 1821-24 (Washington: Gov. Printing office, 1956), 362-363, 385-388.

12 Edmund Blunt, The American Coast Pilot (New York: Edmund and George Blunt, 1850), 262; Senate Committee on Commerce, “Aids to Navigation,” files SEN29A-G3, G3.2, Record Group 46, National Archives, Washington, D. C.; House Committee on Commerce, Report of the Officers Constituting the Light-House Board, Convened Under Instructions from the Secretary of the Treasury, to Inquire Into the Condition of the Light-House Establishment of the United States, Under the Act of March 3,1851, 32n^ Cong., 1st sess., 1852, H, Doc. 55, serial 642, 212, 235.

13 Senate Committee, “Aids to Navigation”; House Committee on Com­ merce, Report of... the Light-House Board, 211, 214. 14 Senate Committee, “Aids to Navigation"; House Journal, 291^ Cong., 2d sess., 15 December 1846, 57; 26 January 1847, 233. Taming the Reef 53

15 There were calls for a survey of the coast of Florida when it became U.S. territory, and Congress appropriated $6,000 for that purpose in 1822. The funds, as well as additional, smaller appropriations, were used by the Navy to survey various harbors, including in Key West and the Tortugas, to deter­ mine whether they were suitable for fortification or use as naval depots—a priority after the British navy had its way with American port cities in the War of 1812. No commercial or civilian charts resulted from the effort. Annals of Congress, 17^ Cong., 1st sess. 1249-50; Act of May 7, 1822 (3 Stat. 689); American State Papers, Naval Affairs 1: 951-52; Senate Journal, 191*1 Cong., 1st sess., 20 December 1825, 51-2, 22 December 1825, 57.

16 Some of the best source material for the work of the Survey in the Keys is the annual reports of its superintendents for the years 1848-1890. Between 1848 and 1877, with a few minor variations, it was entitled Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Showing the Progress of that Work during the Year___. In 1878 it became the Report of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, Showing the Progress of that Work during the Fiscal Year Ending___ . It was published in Washington, at first by a series of public printers and from 1860 on by the Government Printing Office. Publication dates lagged the date of the report by one to three years. The reports can be found in the NOAA Central Library in Silver Springs, Maryland, and accessed online at http://wwiv.lib.noaa.gov. The reports were all submitted to Congress and became House and Senate documents as well. In both text and notes they will be referred to as “Annual Reports.” Invaluable background and context is provided by Capt. Albert E. Theberge, The Coast Survey, 1807-1867: Vol. I of the History of the Commissioned Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Silver Springs, Md.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin., NOAA Central Library, 1998). Captain Theberge’s work is also available online at http:// www.lib.noaa.gov.

17 Journal of Andrew Ellicott, 255; Perry to Thompson, 28 March 1822, Territorial Papers; Volume XXII, 836; John Lee Williams, The Territory of Florida: Or Sketches of the Topography, Civil and Natural History, of the Country, the Climate, and the Indian Tribes .... (New York: A. T. Goodrich, 1837), vi; Senate Committee on Commerce, Report... Survey of the Coast of Florida, 8; “The United States Coast Survey,” Putnam's Monthly 6, no. 35 (November 1855): 450.

18 Until this chart came out there was a disconnect between the praise Gauld’s work in the Keys received and its value to everyday mariners. The praise was 54 TEQUESTA

mostly for Gauld’s large scale Accurate Chart of the Tortugas and Florida Kays or Martyrs, while the work Blunt made available by incorporating it into his own was Faden’s Chart of the Gulf of Florida or New Bahama Channel, a smaller scale chart that used the work of Gauld and others to cover more territory. That made it more suited for the broad coverage afforded by gen­ eral coast charts and The American Coast Pilot, but less suited for navigating the reef—a point made by the captain of the mail steamer Star of the West, who complained to the Survey that “the Florida reefs [were] not very plain­ ly laid down” by “Blunt’s general chart of the coast." General Remarks on the Florida Reef and Keys, appendix 1,1, Draft Report of the Reconnaissance of Section VI, 8, Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Record Group 23, “Journal of the Reconnaissance of Sec. VI, 1848 & 1849, ” Vol. II, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland; Ferdinand Gerdes to Bache, 7 September 1849, Gerdes report to Bache, 26 February 1850, Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Record Group 23, “Records of Assistant Gerdes, 1844-1869,” National Archives II; Annual Report 1849, 47; Annual Report 1858, 461-62. John Hoyt to Ellwood Walters, 1 January' 1850, Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Record Group 23, “Journal of the Third Reconnaissance in Section VI,” Vol. Ill, National Archives II.

19 Senate, Report... Drainage of the Ever Glades, 97-105. Annual Report 1849, 89. Other estimates of the number of wrecks, some of which took into account the misfortunes of those who got off the reef on their own or made private arrangements with wreckers that were not reflected in official records, tended to be higher—around fifty a year. But it was Hoyt’s figures that were provided to the Survey and Congress and framed the debate. Senate, Report... Survey of the Coast of Florida, 2. 20 Congressional Globe, 30t^ Cong., 2d sess., 1849, appendix, 196-212; Senate Journal, 30^ Cong., 2d sess., 29 January 1849, 158, 30 January 1849, 164, 13 February' 1849, 209, 16 February' 1849, 221, 23 February 1849, 250.

21 Senate Committee on Public Lands, Report... Drainage of the Ever Glades, 105. 22 Senate Journal, 30c" Cong., 1st sess., 23 June 1848, 242. Bache Instructions to Gerdes, 6 November 1848, Bache to Gerdes, 27 October 1848, Bache to Gerdes, 23 December 1848, Bache to Gerdes, 30 January 1849, Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Record Group 23, “Records of Assistant Gerdes, 1844-1869,” National Archives II. Gerdes’ records are also impor­ tant to understanding the work of the Survey in the Keys, and in particular the reconnaissance of the area and the formulation of a plan of attack. They Taming the Reef 5 5

underpin much of what is written on these subjects. Gerdes’ records consist primarily of the journals he kept of his work in the Keys, his correspon­ dence and the reports he wrote. His journal is in three volumes, and covers three separate reconnaissance trips to the Keys. The title to each journal is slightly different, so for ease of reference they will all be referred to as “Reconnaissance Journal” followed by a volume number. His correspon­ dence and reports can be found in both the Records of Assistant Gerdes, 1844-1869, and in the Reconnaissance Notes for Section VI. These sources will be referred to as “Records of Assistant Gerdes” and “Reconnaissance Notes” respectively.

23 Gerdes report to Bache, 20 January 1849, Gerdes to Bache, 19 February 1849, Records of Assistant Gerdes. A more tempered version of the same observations can be found in Gerdes’ journal, where the reef was “singular” rather than a freak of nature, wrecks occurred at the rate of 30-40 a year instead of almost daily, “many" but not three-quarters of them were lost on purpose, and the wreckers were not all bad—they “appear to me a blessing, as at least the lives of the unfortunate mariners are generally safe—and the system, though connected with evils, has one good side.” Reconnaissance Journal, Vol. I, 7, Reconnaissance Journal Vol. Il, appendix 1,1, Draft Report, App. I, 10-11.

24 House Journal, 30th Cong., 2d sess., 19 December 1848, 121; Senate, Report... Survey of the Coast of Florida, 4-7; Senate Journal, 30^ Cong., 2d sess., 11 December 1848, 51.

25 Senate, Report... Survey of the Coast of Florida, 9-13. There was some spin here as well. The portion of the reef Mallory was referring to was the eighty mile stretch from Indian Key to Key Biscayne, a good part of which was considered Carysfort Reef under the more expansive definition at the time. His specific point was that there were no American charts of the area, but there were basically none of any part of the Keys. On the other hand, the combination of Gauld’s large scale chart of the reef and the Admiralty’s sur­ vey of Carysfort Reef in 1844 and 1845 produced coverage of the reef up to Long Reef off of Elliott Key. That left only fifteen to twenty miles at the northern end of the reef uncharted, and it was not the stretch that had proved most destructive to commerce. In addition, the British surveyors had all identified channels through the reef and places where vessels could safely anchor in the area. Though their work was not readily available, much of the information concerning channels and anchorages made it into Blunt’s American Coast Pilot.

26 Senate, Report... Survey of the Coast of Florida, 2. 56 TEQUESTA

27 Senate Journal, 30r^ Cong., 2d sess., 3 March 1849, 375; Bache Instruc­ tions to Hilgard, 10 April 1849, Records of Assistant Gerdes.

28 Reconnaissance Journal, Vol. I, 56; Gerdes to Bache, 19 February 1849, Records of Assistant Gerdes.

29 It does not appear to have impacted his decision, but Gerdes’ correspon­ dence reflects considerable concern about the possibility of hostile encoun­ ters with the Seminole Indians on Cape Sable. At one point he asked that the Gerdes, which had been a naval brig (the Apprentice') in its former life, be rearmed, and begged Bache to provide the “means of necessary defense, so that the execution of our work need not suffer for fear of an attack.” He only acquired small arms, and nothing ever happened, but the fear was not unfounded. The Seminoles that remained during the 1842-1855 hiatus between the Second and Third Seminole Wars lived in the Everglades in the southwestern portion of the peninsula with chiefs Sam Jones and Billy Bowlegs, and the uneasy peace had been violated in July 1849 when a small band of renegades murdered several settlers. After the Third Seminole War broke out, hostilities did delay work in the Florida Bay and the Cape Sable area. Gerdes to Bache,__September 1849, Gerdes to Bache, 7 September 1849, Gerdes to Bache, 25 November 1849, Records of Assistant Gerdes; Annual Report 1856, 313; 1857, 82.

30 Theberge, The Coast Survey, 301. The process involved the placement of large, permanent granite markers at each end of the baseline. The Key Biscayne base markers were reported missing as early as 1876, and in 1883 surveyors attempting to use the baseline to begin triangulating north along the Florida coast found its southern end washed away and the South Base Marker in three feet of water. It was recovered in 1988 and now sits in the lighthouse compound in Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. The North Base Marker was found in 1970 when land was being cleared for the Key Biscayne Golf Course. Annual Report 1876, 38; 1883, 44; Parks, “Key Biscayne Base Marker,” 3, 15; Blank, Key Biscayne, 67.

31 The names Gerdes used for these reefs were obvious errors, which is ironic given the fact that inaccurate and confusing names was one of his big beefs about the pre-Survey charts of the Keys—to the point that he prepared his own list of “correct” names. Reconnaissance Journal, Vol. II, 3-13. Those and the names found throughout the Coast Survey records raise questions and perhaps provide some answers regarding the origin or evolution of place names in the Keys. Examples include references to Collins Patches instead Taming the Reef 57

of Coffin’s Patch, Hay Jack instead of Ajax Reef, and Saddle bluff instead of Saddlebunch Keys. A good example of the use of this resource can be found in Roland Chardon, “Notes on South Florida Place Names: Norris Cut,’’ Tequesta 37 (1977): 51-61.

32 Gerdes report to Bache, 28 June 1850, Records of Assistant Gerdes.

33 Capt. John Wilkinson, The Narrative of a Blockade Runner (1877. Alexander, Va.: Time-Life Collector’s Library of the Civil War, 1984); The names of Survey personnel and ships also ended up on islands, channels and shoals in the Keys. Examples include Totten and Adams Keys just south of Elliott Key, Mosher Channel beneath the Seven Mile Bridge, and Legare Anchorage off the northern end of Elliott Key.

34 Harbors of refuge—places where ships could ride out storms—were partic­ ularly valuable in the Keys because there were few ports. Ships also needed places to anchor during calm weather to keep from being swept onto the reef or backwards by the Gulf Stream—as happened to the wrecking schooner Irene on the way back from a pineapple run to New York when she found herself becalmed off Carysfort Reef one day and adrift off Brunswick, Georgia two days later. The initial attention paid to these har­ bors of refuge also addressed one of Mallory’s chief complaints—that “one of the best roadsteads in the world” existed “side by side with [the] chain of reefs” and was unknown to most mariners—and underscores the influence he had on how the survey was conducted in the Keys. Vincent Gilpin, “Bradish W. Johnson, Master Wrecker, 1846-1914," Tequesta 1 (1941): 21- 32, 29-30; Senate, Report ... Survey of the Coast of Florida, 11. Digitized images of many of these preliminary charts are available online using the image catalogue for the NOAA Historical Map and Chart Collection at http://www.lib.noaa.gov.

35 Annual Report 1874, 11. The coverage of the Keys was disappointing in one respect. The practice of including pictorial views ended with the pub­ lication of the preceding Atlantic Local Coast Pilot, which only extended as far south as Jupiter Inlet. Survey records show that views of the Keys were drawn in 1878 by J. R. Barker, a Survey artist of some repute (Annual Report 1878, 28-29, 69), but they were never published and, despite the efforts of the NOAA Central Library, cannot be found today.

36 Annual Report 1851,457; Gerdes to Bache, 19 February 1849, Records of Assistant Gerdes. 11.

37 Annual Report 1851,457. 58 TEQUESTA

38 Annual Report 1850, 39; 1851, 68-69; Louis Agassiz, “Report on the Florida Reefs, 1851,” Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard 7 (1880); 39; Robert Halley, “Coral Reefs and Global Change: Long-term Responses in Florida and the Caribbean" (presented Capitol Hill Oceans Week, Washington D.C., June 2002); Bache to Agassiz, 30 October 1850, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Blank, Key Biscayne, 75-76.

39 Agassiz, “Report on the Florida Reefs,” 39-40.

40 Ibid., 25-26. 41 The source of most of this information was Gerdes’ pilot, Capt. Philip Sawyer, who also informed him that the wreckers were not particularly fond of the markers. Despite the obvious tension between surveyor and wrecker, they were generally able to co-exist. One of the reasons may have been a policy Gerdes adopted and promoted to “make the Survey much more pop­ ular, and give it the good will of the wreckers." The idea was for Survey ves­ sels to save what life and property they could if they happened on a wreck, but turn everything over to the first wrecker on the scene and claim only expenses. Annual Report 1850, 39; Gerdes report to Bache, 28 June 1850, Records of Assistant Gerdes.

42 Annual Report 1850, 39; 1852, 98.

43 Annual Report 1858, 25,267-70; Ibid.; Annual Report 1849, 89; William Marvin, A Treatise on the Law of Salvage (Boston: Little, Brown, 1858), 2; Harold Colee, “Key West and Salvage in 1850,” Florida Historical Quarterly 8, no.l (1929): 48; Annual Report 1862, 242.

44 Annual Report 1862, 242; 1858, 217. Judge Marvin, the federal judge in Key West, was of a like mind. He attributed fully half of the wrecks on the reef to ignorance, carelessness and fraud, and felt that maritime insurance practices produced “many voluntary shipwrecks." Marvin, Law of Salvage, 2-3.

45 Viele, The Wreckers, 171. 189.

46 Section 403.9335, Florida Statutes (2009).