A HISTORY OF THE FPS
The shoals were first shown on a 1738 map by James Wimble and called Cape Fair Shoals. A 1790 map had them listed as Frying Pan Shoals.
They get their name because of their shape and they are formed by silt carried out to sea by the Cape Fear River. They are hazardous because they occasionally shift and over the years have cause numerous shipwrecks.
Lightships were stationed there from 1854 to 1964 with the exceptions of the Civil War and World War II. Lightship D too station from 1854 to 1861 when it was removed to Fort Caswell and burned by the Union Navy the night of Dec. 30-31, 1861. It was a first-order lightship, mounting two lights 40 feet above the water.
The Navy Department tried to send Lightship No. 8 to replace it, but it was seized by Confederates. On December 1864, it was sunk in the Cape Fear River 3 miles south of Wilmington as an obstruction.
That Light Is Still On. --Blockade-R
The Battle of Fort Fisher, N.C.
