The Totten Beacons: Iron Poles That Guided Ships Through the Florida Reefs

The poles were put in the reefs to help make a map. The sailors who saw them realized they were more useful than that. The Totten Beacons — 19th-century iron markers in the reefs of the Florida Keys — became aids to navigation almost by accident, and what remains of them is now a protected historical resource.

A dangerous shipping lane

In 1513, the Spanish explorer Ponce de León sailed into the strong currents of the Florida Straits. Within a few years, those uncharted waters, which feed the Gulf Stream, became a major international shipping route between Europe and the New World. Europeans used the straits' winds and currents as they explored and colonized the Americas — but the winds changed direction often, driving countless ships onto miles of submerged coral reefs off southern Florida.

Poles for charting, beacons for sailing

By 1852, Lieutenant James Totten, the U.S. Army's assistant to the Coast Survey, had set 15 wooden signal poles in the reefs to make more accurate charts of the Florida Keys. Local mariners quickly saw that the poles themselves helped them steer through the reefs. By 1855, Totten's team had installed a second generation of 16 poles in a more permanent material: iron. Each beacon carried a letter, from "A" to "P."

Protected today

The remnants of the Totten Beacons are protected as historical resources by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS).

Navigating the reefs now

Today GPS and electronic navigation systems, along with lighted aids, buoys, radar beacons and other markers maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard, warn mariners of reefs and shoals. The sanctuary itself installs and maintains more than 700 buoys for resource management:

Sources

Based on "What are the Totten Beacons?" from NOAA's National Ocean Service, a work of the United States government in the public domain.