19th Century American Maritime

5 Fast Facts On The Union Blockade During The Civil War

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 6 Comments

It’s time to focus on some aspects of maritime history during the American Civil War. We’ll spend the rest of the year (on Wednesdays) taking about Blockade Runners – their voyages, international politics, ships, captains and crew, and other aspects of these “secretive” merchant vessels.

However, in today’s blog post we’ll talk about the blockade. After-all, it’s rather hard to have a blockade runner if there is no actual blockade. So I’ve asked the five classic questions (what, when, where, why, and how) and the answers will give some anchoring information as we sail into this new topic connected to 19th Century American Maritime. Continue reading →

American Lighthouses: Then What Happened? (And What About Today?)

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 4 Comments

We’ve chatted about lighthouse history in the last couple months, and in 2018 there will be more lighthouse posts specifically related to my new novel, Lighthouse Loyalty. However, today will be the final lighthouse post since we’ll move on to Civil War maritime history in this Wednesday series.

So…I thought it might be good to answer questions about what has happened to lighthouses in American in the 20th and early 21st Century. It’s sort of an epilogue to the 19th Century lighthouse history. Continue reading →

Lighthouses: Lamps & Lenses

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 4 Comments

We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about lighthouses along the U.S. coasts – New England, Middle Atlantic, Southern and Gulf, West, and Great Lakes. While we talked about architecture features, we didn’t focus on the absolute most important part of a lighthouse. In fact, take this factor away and you’d just have a building, just a house.

I’m talking about light. What produced the light and sent warning beams blazing into the darkness to warn or guide passing ships? That is today’s topic. Continue reading →