THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
Heroes, also, are the men who build and tend our lighthouses, and there
are few finer stories than that which tells of the erection of Tillamook
Rock lighthouse, probably the most exposed structure in the world.
Tillamook is a basaltic rock, rising abruptly from the deep waters of
the Pacific a mile off the Oregon coast, and eighteen miles south of the
mouth of the Columbia River. Projecting to seaward, it receives the full
force of the stormiest waves of the Pacific, which often break with
appalling violence on its summit, ninety feet above the level of the
sea, boats being able to reach it only when the sea is calm.
Four workmen in October, 1879, were landed on the rock with their tools,
fuel, provisions, a stove, and canvas for a tent. They were in a few
days joined by five others, who brought with them a small derrick. The
foreman of the party lost his life in attempting to land, and the lot of
the survivors was one of great discomfort and constant danger. To
prevent being blown or washed away, they tied the canvas to ring-bolts
driven into holes drilled in the rocks, and then quarried out a nook in
which they built a shanty, which they also bolted to the rocks. Next a
flight of steps was quarried up the steep side of the cliff, and the
work of cutting down and leveling the summit began.
The weather often compelled a suspension of work for days at a time, and
in January came a tornado which lasted for nearly a week. During this
storm the shanty of the workmen was repeatedly flooded with water and
their supplies were swept into the sea. They were able at the end of a
fortnight to make those on the mainland acquainted with their condition,
and fresh supplies were passed to them over a line cast from the rocks
to the deck of a schooner, which had come as near as safety would
permit.
When May, 1880, came, the dome of the rock had been cut down to a height
of eighty-eight feet from the surface of the sea, and a spot leveled for
the lighthouse. A small engine and more derricks were now landed, and
with them came three masons, who in June laid the corner-stone of the
lighthouse. The stones were made ready for laying on the mainland, and a
fresh supply conveyed to the rock whenever the weather would permit.
First, a square, one-story house for the keepers was built, and above
this was raised a tower forty-eight feet high, raising the light 136
feet above the sea level. Sixteen months after work was begun the lamp
was lighted for the first time, and has since prevented scores of
wrecks. Over the beacon raised amid such difficulties, three keepers
stand sentinel, and their lot is an exciting as well as a lonely one. A
few winters ago a terrific storm broke upon the rock, and the water
poured in torrents through the holes cut in the dome of the lighthouse
to give ventilation to the lamps. Stout wire screen shutters protected
the lantern and broke the force of the water hurled against the glass.
But for this it would have been battered in, and the heavy plates might
have killed the man attending the lamps.
Tillamook is known in the service and to mariners as a light of the
first class, since lighthouses are roughly divided into three classes:
First, those on outlying headlands and deep-sea rocks, the
distinguishing features of a country's coastline, and the first to give
the mariner warning of his nearness to land. The second grade of lights
show him his way through the secondary shoals and rocks, and the third
grade, or harbor lights, take him safely into port. There are fifty-two
first-class lights on the coasts of the United States. New Jersey and
Massachusetts have each a double light; and Florida, by reason of the
treacherous reefs which girt its coast, has as many first-class lights
as any other two States put together.
A majority of the lights of the first-class are housed in tall stone or
brick towers, and a number of them stand upon very high ground. The
light on Cape Mendocino glows from an eminence of 423 feet above the
level of the sea, and is visible for twenty-eight miles. There are ten
other lights whose elevation averages from 204 to 360 feet above sea
level, and which are visible from twenty-one to twenty-six miles. The
light at St. Augustine, Fla., is a fine example of its class. The strong
and massive tower of brick rises 150 feet from the ground, and the light
is reached by winding stairs. The apparatus for the light is twelve feet
high and six feet through, and the lenses alone cost thousands of
dollars. A powerful lamp in the centre of the apparatus sends its rays
in all directions, the lenses being arranged at such angles as to gather
the light and to send it out in parallel rays in the course desired. The
cost of the St. Augustine lighthouse was $100,000.
Each lighthouse must have peculiarities of its own, so that both by
night and by day the mariner can distinguish it from its neighbors, and
thus guard against the mistakes that might otherwise prove fatal. The
first result desired is accomplished by the use of fixed, revolving,
blended, flash and intermittent lights, and as the timing of the second
and the two latter classes is capable of great variety, it will be seen
that the elasticity of the system is ample to meet all possible needs.
To secure the second result desired the lighthouses are painted in
different colors, and the application of the colors is varied in each
instance. Some retain their natural colors, while others are painted
black and white, or red and white; here broad horizontal bands
alternating, and there slender spiral ones setting off the background of
a sharply contrasting color. Again, the shape of the houses is varied,
some being circular and others cone-shaped, some tall and others short,
some square and others octagonal, while in many cases the shape and
color of the keeper's dwelling nearby also help to make distinction
easy. Thus the character of the light guides the sailor by night, and
by day the form and color of the lighthouse give him welcome knowledge
of his whereabouts.
The first lighthouses in this country were beacons, made by piling up
stones, from the summit of which "firebales of pitch and ocum" were
burned in iron baskets at night. It is a far cry from that time to this,
and the construction of the lighthouse of the present day is, as has
already been shown, a task demanding mechanical skill and engineering
ability of the first order. A lighthouse on the mainland has few
difficulties involved in its construction, but where the foundation is
an isolated rock, a submerged reef, or a sandy shoal, the best resources
of the engineer and mechanic are called into full play.
The lighthouse most difficult to build is that on the submerged rock or
partly submerged rock. Race Rock Light, in Long Island Sound, belongs to
this class. Portions of Race Rock are three and others thirteen feet
under water. Diving-bells were used to level the foundations for the
lighthouse, and the masonry and concrete under water were laid in the
same way. The United States has two other lighthouses built on submerged
rocks, Minot's Ledge in Boston harbor, and Spectacle Reef, on Lake
Huron. The first lighthouse on Minot's Ledge was built above stout iron
rods driven into the rocks. In April, 1851, there was a severe gale
which lasted five days. On the third night of the storm the house was
blown down and light and keeper went out together. Four years later a
second structure was begun, this time with a foundation of masonry and
concrete. Minot's is barely awash with the lowest tide, and so rare were
the opportunities for work that three years were required to prepare the
rock for the first course of stone, which was laid in 1857. In 1860 the
structure was completed and has ever since stood proof against wind and
storm.
Spectacle Reef lighthouse, near Mackinac, was built with the aid of a
coffer-dam. A large wooden cylinder was constructed by banding long
staves tightly together and towed out to the rock, where it was set up
on the surface and the stones driven down into the uneven places. Then
the crevices were filled with cement and the water pumped out. After
this the rock was leveled and the limestone courses rapidly raised one
above another. Spectacle Reef light stands eleven miles from land, and
its base is seven feet under water.
Where there is a shifting shoal, whose unstable character no degree of
mechanical or engineering skill can overcome, resort is had to the
lightship. The United States has twenty-five of these vessels. Seven of
them are employed off Massachusetts Bay to mark the Vineyard and
Nantucket shoals, and a line of equal number lies along Long Island
Sound stretching from Brenton's Reef to Sandy Hook. Four more are
stationed off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts, one off Cape Charles,
three off North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and two off
Louisiana and Texas. The life of a lightship crew, as will be told in
another place, is a laborious and often a dangerous one.
The United States is divided into sixteen lighthouse districts, each
one with its inspector and engineer. The former, drawn from the navy,
inspects the lights under his jurisdiction at least every three months;
the latter, a member of the Corps of Engineers, superintends the
building, removal or renovation of the towers. Both are responsible to
the Lighthouse Board, a body appointed by the President and composed of
veteran naval officers of high rank, who are no longer fitted for active
duty at sea.
The station of the third lighthouse district is on Staten Island,
between St. George and Tompkinsville. Here over a hundred men are
constantly employed and half a million dollars annually expended. From
this station one hundred and eighty-nine lighthouses and beacon lights
and seven lightships are maintained and supplied, while thirty-six day
or unlighted beacons, thirteen steam fog signals, six electric light
buoys, and five hundred and seven other buoys are looked after and kept
in repair by the inspector and his assistants.
Fog often obscures the rays of the most powerful light, and it is then
that the fog signal and the whistling buoy come into play. The most
effective fog signal is the American siren, a steam machine worked under
seventy pounds pressure, and from which a series of noises come forth
that can be heard from two to four miles. Certain intervals in the
sounds designate the nearest light and afford a welcome and often
much-needed guide to the mariner enveloped in a cloak of fog. This
system of fog signals extends along the entire seaboard, extra
precautions being taken on the Northern Atlantic coast.
Mineral oil is the principal illuminant used in our lighthouses. It is
selected with the greatest care, and is subjected to three several tests
before being accepted. Gas has been tried as a lighthouse illuminant,
but with inferior success, and there are at the present time only three
lighthouses in which it is used. Experiments with electricity have also
been only fairly successful, its light blinding instead of giving aid
to the pilot. The lighthouse station on Staten Island is a busy place,
and much work is done there, but the wheels of industry are so well
oiled and run so smoothly, that a deep peace seems always to brood over
the establishment. Day after day and year after year the work, moving in
well-marked channels, goes on with quiet and certainty. Everywhere the
neatness and order prevail that mark all departments of the lighthouse
service.
Indeed, in no branch of the government service is stricter discipline
and closer attention to duty insisted upon than is demanded from the
brave and devoted men who tend our lighthouses. The pay of these keepers
ranges from $1,000 to $100, the average, by an Act of Congress passed
some years ago, being $600. The Lighthouse Board, which controls the
service, selects as keepers the best men obtainable, preference being
always given to men who have served for lengthy periods in the army and
navy.
Members of this class know what discipline means, and hard experience
has taught them that orders are to be obeyed to the letter. Many an old
veteran, whose scars tell of valiant service in the Civil War or on the
Western frontier, and many an old shipmaster or mate, whose
weather-beaten face bespeaks long years spent on the quarter-deck, as
lighthouse keepers now do duty on solitary and barren beacon rocks,
where for months at a time, aside from their own voices and those of
their families, the roar and moan of the ocean, as it beats against the
breakers below, are the only sounds that are heard.
The life of the keeper--though many who follow it seem wholly contented
with it, and doubtless would not leave it for any other calling--is thus
a lonely and arduous one. Two breaches of the rules which govern the
keeper's conduct bring as a penalty immediate dismissal from the
service. The absence of a light for a single moment may bring disaster
to life and property on the seas, and neither excuse nor previous good
conduct can save from instant dismissal the keeper who allows his light
to go out. He may plead that his wife or child was dying, but he is told
that he must subordinate his light to nothing. And he must not only keep
his light burning, but stay by it so long as the lighthouse stands. Some
years ago an ice pack lifted from its foundations, overturned and
carried away the Sharp's Island lighthouse in Chesapeake Bay. The two
keepers had a staunch boat and could have made their way to shore.
Instead, they bravely chose to remain at their post of duty, and for
sixteen hours, without food or fire, drifted with the wreck at the mercy
of the ice cakes. When the wreck finally grounded the keepers carried
ashore all the movable portions of the light, the oil, and everything
else they could take with them.
At the same time the keepers of another light, fearing danger, left
their post and went ashore. They pleaded that the ice had rendered the
light useless for the time being, but this excuse had no weight with
their superiors. They had proven recreant to their trust and were
dismissed from the service, the places they had filled being given to
the two keepers who had refused to leave their post of duty, even when
to remain seemed certain death. Drunkenness, when detected, also leads
to removal from the service. That and allowing one's light to go out are
the two unpardonable sins in the eyes of the lighthouse inspector.
Aside from his duties at night, the keeper finds plenty of work to do.
Promptly at a given hour in the morning the lights must be extinguished;
and during the day all put in order for the coming night. In the lantern
room the lenses must be kept free from speck or tarnish, and the
reflectors, the brass railings and the gun metal carefully burnished and
polished to the last degree of brightness. The oil tanks must also be
filled and the wick trimmed. Carelessness or negligence in any of these
particulars is dangerous, for the visits of the inspectors are always
unannounced, and may occur at any moment.
Most important of all, the lamp must be lighted on time, for a delay of
even a few minutes will not escape notice. Each keeper is required to
record the time the lights appear in the stations within his range, and
tardiness in this particular is noted by watchful eyes, and at once
reported. At inaccessible stations, as a rule, from three to four
keepers are employed. In stormy months, when communication with the
mainland is impossible, one or more of the keepers may die or be
disabled, and experience has taught that, to insure safety, three men at
least must be posted at every dangerous station.
No keeper is allowed to engage in any business which may interfere with
his presence at the lighthouse. However, there are some keepers who work
at tailoring, shoemaking, and similar trades; and there are others who
are preachers, school-teachers and justices of the peace. The keeper
whose lighthouse is located on land is encouraged to keep a garden, and
a barn is provided for his horses and cattle. Until a few years ago many
keepers greatly increased their incomes by taking boarders in the
summer--life in a lighthouse has a strong attraction for those fond of
the romantic--but the Lighthouse Board finally prohibited the renting of
quarters to outsiders in buildings owned and constructed by the
Government, and this pleasant and convenient source of revenue was cut
off.
Whenever keepers are located at stations where the cost of carriage
exceeds the cost of fuel and rations, they are furnished at the expense
of the Government. This applies to the keeper of the lighthouse on a big
rock near Cape Ann. No sea-going vessel can come within a quarter of a
mile of his home, and it is impossible for a loaded boat to reach his
abiding-place in safety. The coal he uses is shipped in bags from Boston
to as near the lighthouse as the vessel can approach. The bags are then
loaded into small boats and taken to the edge of the shoal water, inside
of which it is dangerous to enter. From the boats the bags are carried
ashore on the backs of the crew, who wade through the shoals, clamber up
the rocks with their burdens and empty the coal in the lighthouse bin.
Coal is worth thirty dollars a ton at Cape Ann lighthouse. The keeper's
other bulky supplies are delivered in the same manner as his coal.
[Illustration: A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER]
At all the lighthouses built on rocks and ledges the keepers have to be
supplied with fresh water from the mainland, that collected from rains
in cisterns and tanks being generally insufficient for their needs. Each
lighthouse keeper is supplied by the Government with a well-selected
library of fifty volumes. There are five hundred and fifty of these
libraries, and they are continually kept moving from station to station,
the inspector, when he makes his quarterly visit, bringing a fresh
library, and taking the old one with him, to his next stopping-place.
Captain Oliver Brooks, now living in honored and well-earned retirement,
besides being for thirty years keeper of the great light on Faulkner's
Island, five miles off the Connecticut coast in Long Island Sound, was
also one of the most remarkable men ever connected with the lighthouse
service. He had been a sea captain before he became a lighthouse keeper
and was a man of signal mechanical skill and marked inventive genius.
His knowledge of electricity, and of light and sound was thorough and
exact, and the results of many of his experiments, adopted by the
Lighthouse Board, have contributed greatly to the improvement of the
service. All the apparatus with which he conducted his experiments was
constructed by him in a little workshop he had fitted up in the
lighthouse tower.
But his fondness for the theoretical never caused him to neglect in the
slightest detail the practical side of his work, and he was, indeed, a
model keeper. Faulkner's Island lies directly in the path of all vessels
passing either in or out of the Sound, and its light is one of the most
important ones on our coasts, but there has not been a night in more
than a hundred years that it has not flashed out its warning to sailors.
The island was a barren and desolate spot when Captain Brooks settled
there, but he and his family turned it into a paradise. All of his large
family of boys and girls were born there, and there grew up to sturdy
manhood and splendid womanhood. One daughter was an authority on
ornithology; another, a gifted water-color artist, and every one of the
children was a skilled musician, their family concerts, in which not
less than five different instruments were brought into play, being
treats to hear. All of the children had noble records as life-savers,
and many were the men, women and children they saved from death in the
treacherous waters surrounding their island home. It was not until his
youngest child had left the island that the captain gave up his place as
keeper to spend his last days on shore.
Even better known than Captain Brooks is the keeper of Lime Rock light
in Newport harbor. Should you chance to be in Newport on some pleasant
summer afternoon, walk out on the long wharf that runs from the mainland
into the west side of the harbor, and when you have reached its end,
wave your handkerchief toward the lighthouse opposite. Soon a woman will
appear in the door of the tall gray tower, and running down to the boat
moored to the stone wall, step into it, take the oars, and with graceful
yet powerful strokes, pull rapidly toward the wharf. As she approaches
her erect back and evident strength give the impression of youth, but as
she turns the boat about to receive you for a visit to the lighthouse
you discover to your surprise that she is a woman of middle age.
Your hostess is Ida Lewis, keeper of Lime Rock light and famous as the
American Grace Darling, a modest and kindly hearted heroine, whose skill
and daring have saved nearly as many lives as there are years in her
own. In fact, it was due in part to her record as a life-saver, that she
was given the place she now fills. Besides attending to her duties as
keeper, there are other cares that keep her busy; she is a careful
housewife, keeps abreast of current literature; and is a devoted
churchwoman, spending her Sundays on shore whenever possible. To her
credit, no light in her district is as regularly or perfectly attended
to, nor does any other gain from the inspector so high a report as Lime
Rock light.
There are several other women light-keepers, but none of them has ever
had to face an experience as trying as that which a few years ago befell
the wife of Angus Campbell, keeper of the light on Great Bird Rock, a
lonely islet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the farthest beacon to the
harbors of Nova Scotia. When the late fall comes and the tardy fishermen
hasten away to the mainland, the gulf turns to ice and hems the rock in
with a clutch that only the returning summer can loosen. There, in the
autumn of 1896, Angus Campbell took his newly wedded wife to share his
loneliness. During the winter James Duncan and George Bryson, two of
Campbell's friends, journeyed to Great Bird Rock to remain until spring.
They were professional seal hunters, and a great many seals play around
on the ice and rocks at the foot of the big cliff.
The men landed on the rock early in February. At that time there was no
open water within five or six miles of the lighthouse in any direction.
The men were landed on the ice and made their way up to where Campbell
was waiting for them. On February 27, Campbell and his visitors left the
rock to go in pursuit of the seals they had noticed on the ice the day
before. His wife saw them start across the ice and then returned to her
household duties. They had not been gone more than four hours, when the
wind, which had been growing colder and blowing steadily from the
eastward, shifted to the southwest. The southwest wind is the agency
that dashes the ice fields against the cliff and breaks them up. She
thought that the men, being so much lower, might not have noticed the
wind, and she hoisted the danger signal. They must have seen it, for she
soon caught sight of them hurrying over the ice toward the rock.
They were within gunshot of the lighthouse, when the ice cracked with a
sound like thunder, and a long, blue line appeared, running east and
west, parallel with the lighthouse rock and with North Bird Rock, about
five miles to the westward. The big crack was followed by a general
splitting up of the ice floe. She saw the men standing just the other
side of the open water. She saw her husband wave his hands at her and
she waved back. Then the darkness came, like a great blanket dropped
from the wintry skies, and men and ice were blotted from her vision. But
even in her sore distress she did not forget the duty incumbent on the
lighthouse keeper. She clambered up into the lantern and lighted the
great oil lamp, saw that it was filled, and attended to the other duties
she had seen her husband perform.
Morning, when it came, gave no glimpse of her husband and his
companions, nor did the third or the fourth day bring them back to her.
After that the days grew into weeks, and the worse than widowed woman
found herself confined to lonely and racking imprisonment on the
ice-locked rock. But not for a single night did she fail to fill and
light the lamp that had been her hapless husband's charge. When the
Government steamer touched at Great Bird Bock, on May 5, 1897, the
captain looked long and earnestly at the lighthouse perched far above
him, and wondered why there was not the customary greeting. He saw no
sign of life. There was the derrick rope swinging in the wind, but no
moving figures at the top of the cliff, as there were wont to be.
Closely scanning the rock, he saw at last a white, gaunt face at the
window. In a little while a thin, tottering figure crept to the brow of
the ledge, but it was some minutes before the tender's captain could
recognize in that wasted being the comely woman whom he had known as
Angus Campbell's wife.
"Where is your husband?" he shouted.
"Angus is dead," came the answer, in a faint, palsied voice, "and so are
Jim Duncan and George Bryson."
An instant later the captain had swung himself into the derrick ropes
and was making his way up the rocks. When he reached the woman she burst
into tears and fell at his feet. Calmed at last, she told her story.
"How did you stand it?" asked the captain when she had finished.
"God knows," was the reply. "I knew I had to keep that light burning,
and that I think kept me alive. That was all I had to do, except watch
the sea through my husband's glass. I got up night after night, and I do
not think I ever slept two hours at a time. There were plenty of
provisions, but I could not eat more than one meal a day, and sometimes
I did not eat that. I had some hope on the morning after the boys were
carried out on the ice floe, that they might be in sight and might be
saved some way. But that morning there was nothing to be seen but water
and ice. Then hope was gone. I knew there was nothing to do but wait for
the spring. And I have done it. Every day I have swept the horizon with
the aid of the glasses. It was merely a formality, after a while, but I
kept on doing it. I do not know why. At last life got to be like being
buried alive. I had no interest in living. I had no appetite, no thought
of sleep. In all the time I do not suppose I have slept two hours in
succession, nor at any time eaten more than one scanty meal a day. I was
going crazy, and should have killed myself or died of starvation in
another week."
A few days later Mrs. Campbell was removed from the rock to her former
home in Prince Edward Island.
Many of the most picturesque lighthouses in the United States
establishment are on the rocks and islands off the coast of Maine.
Notable for its beauty is the one on Matinicus Rock. The first
lighthouse thereon, erected in 1827, was a cobblestone dwelling with a
wooden tower at each end. Twenty years later this was replaced by a
granite dwelling with semicircular towers, which has since developed
into an establishment requiring the services of a keeper and three
assistants. Matinicus Rock rises fifty feet above the sea, and presents
what seems a precipitous front to the ocean, but there is no more
rugged, dangerous coast along the seaboard of Maine than here, and when
a gale rages the waves pound the rock as if bent upon washing it away,
the thunder of the green-gray wall that beats against it, sounding, at
such times, like the cannonade of a hundred heavy guns. Life on
Matinicus for years past has been a never ending struggle between man
and the elements, and this lends peculiar interest to the history of the
light and its watchers, bound up with which is a love story at once
tender, wholesome, and true. Captain Burgess, keeper of the rock from
1853 to 1861, had a daughter Abby, a maiden as comely as she was brave,
whom he often left in charge of the lights while he crossed to Matinicus
Island. On one occasion rough weather for three weeks barred his return
to the rock, and during all that time, Abby, then a girl of seventeen,
not only tended the lights, but cared for her invalid mother and her
younger brothers and sisters.
In 1861 Captain Grant succeeded Captain Burgess on Matinicus, taking
his son with him as assistant. The old keeper left Abby on the rock to
instruct the newcomers in their duties, and she performed the task so
well that young Grant fell in love with her, and asked her to become his
wife. Soon after their marriage she was appointed an assistant keeper. A
few years later the husband was made keeper and the wife assistant
keeper of White Head, another light on the Maine coast. There they
remained until the spring of 1890, when they removed to Middleborough,
Mass., intending to pass the balance of their days beyond sight and
hearing of the rocks and the waves. But the hunger which the sea breeds
in its adopted children was still strong within them, and the fall of
1892 found them again on the coast of Maine, this time at Portland,
where the husband again entered the lighthouse establishment, working in
the engineers' department of the first lighthouse district. With them
until his death lived Captain Grant, who in the closing months of 1890,
being then aged eighty-five, retired from the position of keeper of
Matinicus light, which he had held for nearly thirty years.
Not less lonely, but far more perilous than the life of the keepers of a
light like that on Matinicus is the lot of the crew of the South Shoal
lightship, whose position twenty-six miles off Sankaty Head, Nantucket
Island, makes it the most exposed light-station in the world. Anchored
so far out at sea, it is only during the months of summer and autumn
that the lighthouse tender ventures to visit it, and its crew from
December to May of each year are wholly cut off from communication with
the land. It is this, however, that makes the South Shoal lightship a
veritable protecting angel of the deep, for it stands guard not only
over the treacherous New South Shoal, near which it is anchored, but
over twenty-six miles of rips and reefs between it and the Nantucket
shore--a wide-reaching ocean graveyard, where bleach the bones of more
than a half thousand wrecked and forgotten vessels.
The lightship is a stanchly built two-hulled schooner of 275 tons
burden, 103 feet long over all, equipped with fore-and-aft lantern masts
71 feet high, and with two masts for sails, each 42 feet high. The
lanterns are octagons of glass in copper frames, so arranged that they
can be lowered into houses built around the masts. In the forward part
of the ship is a huge fog bell, swung ten feet above the deck, which,
when foggy weather prevails, as it frequently does for weeks at a time,
is kept tolling day and night. A two-inch chain fastened to a "mushroom"
anchor weighing upward of three tons holds the vessel in eighteen
fathoms of water, but this, so fiercely do the waves beat against it in
winter, has not prevented her from going adrift many times. She was two
weeks at sea on one of these occasions, and on another she came to
anchor in New York Harbor. Life on the South Shoal lightship is at all
times a hard and trying one, and, as a matter of fact, the crew are
instructed not to expose themselves to danger outside their special line
of duty. This, however, does not deter them from frequently risking
their lives in rescuing others, and when, several years ago, the City of
Newcastle went ashore on one of the shoals near the lightship, all
hands, twenty-seven in number, were saved by the South Shoal crew and
kept aboard of her over two weeks, until the story of the wreck was
signalled to a passing vessel.
Nor are the South Shoal crew alone among lighthouse keepers in displays
of heroism outside the duties required of them. Isaac H. Grant holds a
silver medal given him by the Government for rescuing two men from
drowning while he was keeper at White Head; and Keeper Marcus Hanna, of
the Cape Elizabeth station, Maine, received a gold medal for the daring
rescue of two sailors from a wreck during a severe storm, while
Frederick Hatch, keeper of the Breakwater station at Cleveland was
awarded the gold bar. The last mentioned badge of honor is granted only
to one who has twice distinguished himself by a special act of bravery.
It was given Hatch in the winter of 1898. A wreck occurred at night,
just outside the breakwater. The eight people aboard made their way to
the breakwater pier, but the heavy seas swept several of them back, and
one lost his life. Pulling to the pier in a small boat, Keeper Hatch
took off the captain's wife; but she was hardly in the boat before it
was swamped and capsized. The woman was utterly exhausted and almost a
dead weight; but though nearly overcome himself, Hatch, at the risk of
his life, maintained his hold upon her until he could reach a line
thrown from the light-station, with which he and his helpless burden
were drawn to the lighthouse steps. Before that, and while a member of
the life-saving crew at Cleveland, Hatch had helped to rescue
twenty-nine persons from two vessels on two successive days during a
terrific gale.