The Lighthouse tender AMARANTH slowly inched her way through the frigid waters of Lake Superior. The date was December 4, 1929, and the AMARANTH was performing one of her most important duties as workhorse of the lakes: taking keepers off remote lighthouses at the close of the Great Lakes shipping season. Ahead, the reduced winter signal of Stannard Rock Lighthouse flashed the anticipation of its lonely keepers. Cold, weary, and stressed by severe isolation and a heavy, premature freeze, they anxiously awaited departure from their frozen, round prison.
Her vital statistics and historical facts can be neatly recorded, but she defies classification. She is a late 19th-century engineering wonder; a monument of art; an architectural form; and she speaks eloquently, if silently, for the spirit of liberty. She stands in New York Harbor but belongs to the whole nation. Her essence combines the tangible with the intangible. She is the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World.
The Los Angeles was originally the Wyanda, built in 1866 in Baltimore as a government revenue cutter. The governmetn sold the ship in 1873, and the San Francisco company, Goodall, Perkins bought it for coastal passenger traffic. The Pacific Coast Steamship Company, which acquired Goodall, Perkins, owned the Los Angeles at the time of the wreck. The ship, captained by H.D. Leland, had been rebuilt as a screw steamer in 1874 at a cost of $100,000. The Los Angeles was 287 tons net, 493 gross.
In 1820, Stephen Pleasonton, the fifth auditor of the Treasury Department, was assigned responsibility for the management of the U.S. Lighthouse Establishment. In this role he became known as general superintendent of lights. Before coming to the Treasury Department, he served as a clerk in the State Department. As the treasury's fifth auditor, his responsibilities included settling the accounts of the State Department, the Post Office Department, and of Indian Affairs.
Lighthouse Keeper Stephen Woolverton wrote numerous letters to Fifth Auditor Stephen Pleasonton during the third decade of the nineteenth century. This correspondence provides glimpses not only into the life of an early keeper, but reflects the struggles of the growing Lighthouse Establishment in defining the role of a lighthouse keeper. There were 155 light stations in the U.S. when we first hear from Woolverton in 1831, no formal instructions were issued to keepers until 1835.
Since its completion in 1870, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the coast of North Carolina has lit the way for thousands of mariners as they skirted around the dangerous Diamond Shoals off the Outer Banks. Lights and beacons have been used on the North Carolina coast since the early 1700's to guide ships as this was the principal area by which commerce entered the state. As commerce increased, the Diamond Shoals gained a reputation as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" over 600 ships have been lost in the area over the last 400 years.
In early 1943, lightship LV 53 (WLV 501), which was occupying the Stone Horse Shoal lightship station, south of Chatham, Massachusetts, was ordered to proceed to Boston for repairs. No relief lightship was scheduled to take her place, as was customary, as all relief vessels were employed as harbor entrance control vessels. The Stone Horse station was temporarily marked by a lighted buoy.
Stratford Shoal Light has often been categorized as a New York lighthouse, but according to U.S. Geological Survey maps, it's clearly on the Connecticut side of the border in Long Island Sound by about 1000 feet. Beginning around 1820, Stratford Shoal-also known as Middleground Shoal-about three-quarters of a mile in length, was marked by two spar buoys to the north and south.
Churches and lighthouses are certainly not an unusual combination. Among the first coastal lights were open fires lighted on church towers and, even today, one of the main lighthouses in my country, the Netherlands, has a modern optic on a 15th century church tower. For one of the most impressive examples of a lighthouse-church combination, we have to go to Finland. Just off the coast near the capital, Helsinki, we find Suomenlinna. It is an old fortification with an original Russian Orthodox Church that carries a lantern room.
June 1st marked the beginning of another hurricane season, and the thought of surviving a hurricane can be mind-boggling. The damage from wind, rain, and flooding is often catastrophic. And the decision to evacuate or not can be a tough call for coastal residents. Days and weeks without power are not fun because we are accustomed to our wonderful, modern conveniences.