Ambrose

The Ambrose lightship was built in 1908 to guide ships into the broad mouth of lower New York Bay between Coney Island, New York, and Sandy Hook, New Jersey, where sand bars and shoals invisible to approaching vessels made navigation hazardous. Descended from the port’s and the nation’s first offshore lightship, placed off Sandy Hook in 1828, it served where a lighthouse could not because the water was too deep and the bottom too soft. Approaching vessels identified the lightship at night by the pattern of light flashes at the top of its mast, by day by its distinctive hull color and name lettered on the side, and in rain or fog by its powerful foghorn; beginning early in the century, lightships also used radios to communicate with ships. This vessel remained on its original station until 1933, then served as the Scotland lightship closer to Sandy Hook until 1963, and was given to the South Street Seaport Museum by the United States Coast Guard in 1968. The Ambrose Channel’s last lightship was replaced in 1964 by a tower on four tall legs anchored to the sea bottom, with comfortable quarters for Coast Guard personnel and a helicopter landing pad for resupplying, and those living quarters have been unoccupied since 1988, when the Coast Guard automated the tower’s signals.

New York, New York · United States