Fayetteville Observer & Gazette January 21, 1886
From the Wilmington Star.

The drift ice made a clean sweep of everything in its way in the lower part of 
the Cape Fear River Thursday night.  It carried away the light-house built on 
piles of Drum shoals, just above New Inlet and the Drum shoals buoy.  No. 7 
buoy, in the Horse Shoe, and the buoy in the lower part of Snow’s Marsh 
channel were also carried away, besides the piling along the channel.  Some of 
the fields of ice were half a mile square or more and four to five inches 
thick.  At Smithville the pilot boat Oriental, Capt. Newton, was dragged from 
her moorings and carried out about a mile before she could be freed from the 
ice.  The copper on her sides was cut through in places.  The schooner Ware, 
used as a lighter, was jammed on Battery Island shoals, where a hole was cut 
in her side and she filled and sank to the water’s edge.  She was loaded with 
rosin for the barque Richard, lying at Smithville.  Pilots say that all the 
marks at the mouth of the river are now gone, and until they are replaced 
navigation will be difficult, especially in thick weather.





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