The man who bought a lighthouse
30 miles out to sea
Hi! I wanted to use this weekend’s newsletter to tell you a story about a special place I visited some time ago. Back then, I’d written a short piece about it for National Geographic, but today I thought I’d share with you something a bit longer, sort of like a page pulled from my notebook, a story about one extraordinary man and his love for the sea and for the world. I hope you like it.
All my best,
Jordan -
The man who bought a lighthouse
In 2016, 56-year-old Richard Neal was laid off from his job as a software salesman and decided to live in a lighthouse in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I went to visit him.
Neal had owned Frying Pan Tower—a giant, decommissioned Coast Guard light station 32 miles off the coast of North Carolina—since 2010, when he bought it at auction from the United States government for $85,000. For the first six years he held the deed, he’d hardly had time to visit. But now, he decided, things would be different.
“I was depressed,” Neal told me one November afternoon on the Frying Pan, speaking candidly as he put together a new beacon light that would soon shine atop the tower. Outside, the wind was calm and the sea a rich, cerulean blue. “So, I picked up a hammer and I got to work.”
He stayed there for six months, relying on fishermen for food and supplies, and occasional visitors for company as he made repairs and installed new technology. Most of the time, though, he was alone. “Just staring at the stars and talking to the ocean,” Neal said, “and getting my head back on straight.”
Neal decided to dedicate himself full-time to the tower, and created a nonprofit that’s now tasked with its restoration. As the organization’s executive director, he has worked to transform the old lighthouse into a high-tech marine conservation station, rescue outpost, and eco-adventure lodge. “I wake up first thing in the morning and think about what I’m doing here,” he said, reaching into the large red-and-white lantern with a pair of pliers. “I just hope I’m the right person for the job.”
Now 64, Neal is still agile and adventurous. A few hours earlier, he’d leapt nimbly from the bow of a fishing boat and scaled a rusty ladder up one of Frying Pan’s tall legs, in order to operate a mechanical hoist to lift guests 80 feet up towards the tower’s entrance. “I haven’t dropped anyone—yet,” he joked, while one woman dangled high above the ocean. Neal speaks softly, with a wry, deflecting sense of humor that offers a welcome air of calm and control over what he admits is a monumental task. “It’s a pretty crazy place.”
Frying Pan Tower was built by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1964, to light the way for ships navigating North Carolina’s treacherous coastline—famously nicknamed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” because it has seen so many shipwrecks and squalls. The tower marks the start of Frying Pan Shoals, a skillet-shaped stretch of dangerously shallow waters.
Seven of these so-called “Texas Tower” style lighthouses, which look similar to offshore oil rigs, were built during the twentieth century at strategic locations along the East Coast of the U.S. They have not aged well. Most were automated and then decommissioned, left to rust in the dark until they were declared structurally unsound and eventually dismantled. Some have also been struck by large vessels, including Savannah Light—positioned off the Georgia coast—which was destroyed when a container ship slammed into it in 1996.
Three remain standing today: Diamond Shoals Light, off North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras; Chesapeake Light, marking the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay; and Frying Pan Tower, 32 miles from Cape Fear, near the NC/SC border. Of these three, only the Frying Pan is at least somewhat accessible to the public. Visiting engineers have tested remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that aim to explore the ocean depths. Researchers have set acoustic buoys to monitor the presence of migrating whales in the Atlantic. Volunteers willing to work on the restoration project can join trips out with Neal, so long as they can cover their own transportation costs—usually a few hundred dollars to get there by boat, or more by helicopter (tourists can make a much larger donation to the nonprofit in exchange for a more relaxing, if unusual, getaway). “Depending on their skillset, they may be doing some electrical work, they might be doing some welding, they might be sweeping the floor or doing laundry,” Neal said. “Everybody that comes out here and has a heart to restore the tower gets to participate.”
And there is plenty of work to be done: Everywhere, there are signs that the tower has been severely battered by the sea for more than half a century. Its metal pilings are covered with rust. The wraparound grated steel platforms are loose in some areas, which are cordoned off with rope. Inside, the paint is peeling, and ceiling tiles are falling down. The walls are draped with just a few of the many American flags that have flown here, only to be torn up by the constant wind and replaced after just a couple of weeks. The tower was structurally sound when Neal bought it in 2010, but hasn’t had a proper inspection since. “We’ve had some engineers come out, and they think it’s still okay,” Neal said. But he, too, sees the project as something of a race against time.
Despite the elements, Neal and his companions have made impressive, if still ongoing, progress. Frying Pan exists completely off the grid. Power, when conservatively used, can be fully provided by several large flanks of solar panels and batteries (a backup fuel-powered generator is also in place for heat, air conditioning, and other significant energy expenditures). Reverse-osmosis filters process rainwater from tanks that can hold up to 110,000 pounds of liquid (still, bottled water is encouraged for drinking). There are two modern bathrooms with several flushing toilets, large sinks, and hot-water showers, from which wastewater is deposited deep into the ocean. A full kitchen has modern appliances and a stocked pantry. The eight bedrooms, each one named for a different North Carolina lighthouse, are far from fully renovated, but are heated and sparingly decorated with nautical pieces from the tower’s past—dusty life preservers, old maps, and analog weather instruments and radios.
Among Neal’s proudest achievements during the past few years has also been the installation of public-access livestream cameras, both on the tower’s deck and beneath the waves. “I want this place to be a window onto the ocean for those who might not have one every day,” he said. At any given time, one might log on to see ships passing in the distance, or a sand tiger shark cruising the reef below. Large schools of fish congregate around the tower’s metal pilings, stalked by stealthy barracuda whose long, dark silhouettes are visible from kitchen window. From the tower’s deck, one can see nothing but the clear blue sea stretching to the ends of the earth. Sunsets light the horizon on fire, and at night, atop the rooftop helipad, Neal launches fireworks towards the stars.
Today, communications and emergency assistance remain central to the tower’s mission in its second life. Starlink, a satellite internet system operated by SpaceX, provides public-access internet coverage in an area far out of reach of land-based cell towers; all other communication is by radio, with direct emergency lines to the Coast Guard and the FAA. With the push of a single button, American rescue teams can immediately be dispatched to the Frying Pan, despite the fact that the tower technically sits well within international waters.
Now, for the first time in decades, the Frying Pan would be lit up again at night—even though most ships, practically speaking, don’t need the light anymore. “We all have GPS,” Neal said. But that is not the whole point. As much as it remains a beacon for seafarers, the Frying Pan has also in recent years attracted plenty of volunteers who are feeling lost, seeking something, or want to work towards a project bigger than just themselves (a logbook on the living room table is filled with their testimonies). “You see this thing out there in the middle of the ocean and you think, I can never get on there,” said Dirk Swart, a volunteer who has come on thirteen work trips over the past year. “And then you do, and you’re okay. And then you try a new skill and you’re okay then, too.”
Yes, Neal is in a race to fortify the tower before it rusts into disrepair. Yes, he has concrete plans for what’s to come: more underwater cameras; expanded solar and other renewable power; lights and rescue technology that can be controlled from shore, even when the tower is unoccupied.
But the overwhelming sense that this job is never meant to end seems to be what keeps Neal going. “It’s a safe haven,” Neal said as he put the finishing touches on the red-and-white light and remembered the time, six years ago, when the tower saved him, too. “It will bring a level of reassurance.” He closed his eyes and brought his voice down to a whisper. There’s the tower, I see it. I see it.