Bill Troxler
Killoch Shoal Light
Killoch Shoal Light was erected in 1886. It was unlike other screw-pile structures in the area, with the lantern set at one corner of a 1-½ story square frame house. The light stood about forty-eight feet above mean high water. During fog the bell was struck by machinery every fifteen seconds. The light was powered by kerosene and shone through a 4th order Fresnel lens. It signaled to mariners fixed white (safe) to W of NNW 1/4 W & S 1/2 E and fixed red (danger) throughout the remaining arc. The light did not rotate.
Killoch Shoal light was automated in 1923, and decommissioned in 1939. The house was demolished and a low steel tower was placed on the platform as a day marker. Today, only the screw-pile legs and the metal platform that held the small house remain. Killoch Shoal Light is no longer a navigational aid.
Killoch or killick is a colloquial or slang term that dates back at least as far as the sixteenth century. A killick is an anchor created by a wooden frame enclosing a large rock or bunch of stones. When a boat lacked a metal anchor, it used a killick. This type of anchor was generally serviceable only in shallow waters and practical only for small vessels.
Some claim killick derives from the Irish Gaelic word killech. In translation killech means wooden anchor.
Others claim killick comes from the Scots Gaelic word gellock or gravelock. Those words name the metal head of a pick-axe. This argument claims that the shape of the pick-axe head is similar to the shape of an anchor.
Outside of limited use in the Royal Navy, killick is obsolete in modern British English.
Clearly Killoch Shoal or Killick Shoal was named by someone who immigrated from Ireland or the British Isles. Most of the early immigration to the British colonies located on the Delmarva peninsula came from England, Wales and Scotland. It's is a good bet the Killick or Killoch Shoal has roots in one of those countries. Because the word was colloquial, no standard spelling ever developed. The shoal remains in place at the bottom of Chincoteague Bay. And the argument over how to spell its name also remains in place.
The foundation platform of Killoch Shoal Light. The small tower supported a day-marker after the Lighthouse was decommissioned and until the structure was determined to no longer be of navigational value.
Killochal Shoal Light foundation in 2025
Today all that remains of Killoch Shoal Light is this steel platform. Recently the short metal tower was removed. Look out across the Bay toward the mainland from Chincoteague and, if you look closely, you may see a small steel structure that resembles the shape of a card table Few people know that once an important lighthouse functioned here. The light under William Major Parker kept commerce safe for a quarter century. These days trucks carry seafood across a causeway that was constructed a decade after William Major Parker died.
The Life and Times of William Major Parker
1900 Photo by United States Life-Saving Service
In 1915 USLSS merged with the Revenue Cutter Service
to form the US Coast Guard
William Major Parker
In February 1886, Parker was promoted to the principal keeper at the newly constructed Killock Shoal Lighthouse, making $500/year. The position was originally offered to Samuel Quillen in January 1886, but Quillen would leave the position after just one month on the job. Quillen had a wife and large family. Living in the small 1-1/2 story house was simply impossible for him.
Parker’s appointment was met with a great deal of local objection.
• In a local newspaper, one critic wrote about Parker and the man who was appointed to replace Parker at Assateague Lighthouse, “We are informed that one if not both of these men are utterly incompetent, knowing nothing of lighthouse work and cannot tell even in what direction the wind is blowing. Such are the men appointed instead of our own citizens, whose life work has been such as to prepare them to fill efficiently the places, which should belong to them. It is to be hoped that an examination will be given these men – so that it may be seen to what folly the civil service laws, enforced without regard to party obligations or efficiency, lead.”
• In October 1905 Parker made a trip to Chincoteague Island to purchase supplies. He was unaware that a shooting had happened earlier on the Island. Local officials required Parker to join a posse to catch the suspect. However, regulations of the United States Lighthouse Board forbid him to leave the lighthouse for an extended period. Parker did not to join the posse and returned to the lighthouse.
• Some time later, when Parker returned to Chincoteague for more supplies he was arrested for refusing to join the posse. The Lighthouse Board had to come to the Island to defend Parker and persuade local officials to drop the charges and release him.
During the early evening of January 23, 1912, while Parker's wife Venus was visiting friends on Chincoteague Island, she and her friends noted that in the gathering darkness the light had not come on. They took a boat to the lighthouse and found William Major Parker in the bedroom of the residence, dead. He was on his knees slumped over the bed. Parker was a man of deep faith, a trustee of Friendship United Methodist Church. Those who found him reported that he must have died while saying his evening prayers.
Venus continued to run Killoch Shoal Light until a replacement keeper was appointed in March. Eventually she remarried and remained on Chincoteague as late as the 1930 US Census.
The Times-Dispatch newspaper out of Richmond, Virginia, wrote that Parker "was the local leader of his race.”