The Tower on the Lighthouse Ruins

A timber lookout tower stands on a rubble mound with men posted up its frame and a row of tents pitched at its base — the site the Library of Congress titles the ruins of the Charleston lighthouse, with Haas & Peale's signature on the plate.

The lighthouse itself was already gone; what the army needed from its stump was the one thing the island otherwise refused — height. A tower on a ruin, watching a harbor: the siege in one structure.