USLHT Jessamine
US lighthouse service ship
USLHT Jessamine was a steam-powered sidewheel lighthouse tender built in 1881 for the United States Lighthouse Board. She spent forty years in government service, homeported in Baltimore, Maryland as part of the 5th Lighthouse District. Her primary mission was to build and maintain lighthouses in Chesapeake Bay and nearby waterways in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Some of the lighthouses she built still stand.
In 1922 the ship was sold to private interests. She spent most of the rest of her career carrying freight between Salisbury, Maryland and Baltimore. When competition from trucks on improved roads and bridges rendered her service uneconomic in 1957, she was repurposed to carry bananas from Mexico to Brownsville, Texas. She sank on this route in October 1959.
Construction and characteristics
During the 2nd session of the 46th Congress, Congress appropriated $90,000 for the construction of two "steam-tenders for general service on the Atlantic Coast." The Baltimore shipbuilding firm of Malster & Reaney secured the contract and began work on Jessamine and her sistership USLHT Holly in 1880. Jessamine's original cost was $41,911.
“USLHT Jessamine” enters the record as uS lighthouse service ship. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what USLHT, Jessamine and lighthouse can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “USLHT Jessamine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.