By Dr. Robert Thorson
Dude. Go with the wave, not against it.
Ignore the best-laid plans of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build an enormous bulwark of boulders in front of the Montauk Point lighthouse, arguably Long Island’s most distinctive landmark. Instead, move it back to safer ground, brick by brick if necessary. Do what the surfers do, which is to acknowledge the “higher power” of the wave, rather than fight against it.
This case pits preservationist against preservationist.
Those who preserve above high tide are the keepers of a light commissioned by George Washington in 1796. They understand that the human historic remains are an important part of the environment and deserve vigilant protection. I couldn’t agree with them more. Save the lighthouse. Spare no expense.
Those who preserve below high tide are the beach boys. They fear that the construction of a revetment (a sea wall 40 feet wide, 840 feet long, and built of 12-ton boulders) will diminish the power of the waves in what is arguably the best surf break in the northeastern U.S. They understand that messing around with one part of the natural order always creates consequences in another. Though it is not proved that the revetment will, in fact, diminish the waves, the surfers would rather be safe than sorry.
In 1797, the shoreline stood 300 feet beyond the lighthouse. Today it stands only 75 feet away, despite attempts by the Corps to halt the erosion. An earlier sea wall, for example, built in 1946, failed after a few strong storms. Instead of retreating to a safer spot, however, the Corps intends to stand firm and fight, if only to honor the memory of its first commander. It is prepared to defend the lighthouse as if it were the Alamo against the relentless erosive energy being focused on the unconsolidated glacial soils beneath the light.
This energy comes from the sun, which heats the Earth unevenly. Wind blows to help even the balance of heat. It shears over the surface of the ocean, converting the physical momentum of moving air into the oscillatory energy of periodic waves. The wave energy migrates efficiently from its source in the open ocean toward Montauk. Near the shore, however, the waves begin to experience friction with the bottom. They slow down, their heights build, and the curl intensifies as the energy of wave oscillation converts back into mechanical energy, which strikes the beach. The power is focused on headland peninsulas by a process called wave diffraction.
More succinctly, the energy from a volume of air is concentrated to the area of the sea surface to the line of the shore, then, finally, to the point of a headland. With so much focus, it’s no wonder that the surf’s up at Montauk and the shore is eroding at more than one foot per year.
In a case of exquisite irony, the surf break in question is called the Alamo. The original Alamo is a rock-solid Spanish mission near San Antonio, Texas, built 72 years before the Montauk light. Texas settlers moving into Mexican territory used it as a defensive stronghold against the Mexican army before being overpowered in 1836. Since then, the Alamo has become a symbol of patriotic resistance against overwhelming force.
This symbolism is turned on its head at Montauk. There, those who would hold their ground and fight to the last inch of soil are the officers and civilian employees of the U.S. Army, allied with anyone else who stakes a permanent claim on the lighthouse point. There, the overwhelming force is not the army of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, but the power of the sea.
William Shakespeare would side with the surfers on this issue. In “Sonnet 64” he writes of places like Montauk:
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, …
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
Dude. If you love the lighthouse, it’s only a matter of time before it’s gone … unless you move it back out of harm’s way, beyond the maw of the hungry ocean.