Ralph Tinkham

It was the good fortune that my family and I resided in Hawaii for eight years during the nineteen twenties... when we arrived, Hawaii had been a territory of the United States only 22 years. The total population of the islands was only about 250,000, 70 percent living in Honolulu. The islands of Kauai and Niihau were the western most and oldest of this group, and to the west of them for over a thousand miles is a succession of small islands of coral and sand, occupied only by sea birds (turtles and harbor seals) terminating at Midway, which is a Navy base.

On one occasion while waiting in Cordova for a ship, advantage was taken of the few days interlude to make a maintenance inspection of the Cape Hinchinbrook Light Station. This station is located at the entrance to Prince William Sound, thirty miles south and east of Cordova. A fishing boat and crew was hired for transportation to the cape and return. Leaving Cordova at midnight the boat arrived at the station about five in the morning and anchored. A safe landing was made with a dinghy through light surf to a narrow beach below a high cliff on which the station was situated.

Departure... from residence in Alaska was in the spring of 1918. As a reserve Captain of Engineers, US. Army, I had been ordered to active service in Washington, D.C. This departure was made by boarding the Canadian Pacific SS Princess Sophia at Ketchikan boundfor Seattle . . . . It was a pleasant voyage, made so chiefly by the kindness and friendliness of the captain .... this captain .... was a veteran.... looking forward to a well earned retirement that same year. He was doomed to disappointment.

Arriving in Ketchikan, Alaska, headquarters of the 16th Lighthouse District, in April, 1915, I assumed my new position of Superintendent, making me the district engineering officer and second ranking official. My chief, the district Lighthouse Inspector, was Captain W. C. Dibrell, formerly of the US. Coast and Geodetic Survey where he acquired the title of Captain. Our first conference indicated that the most urgent problem confronting the district was the establishment of a lighthouse and fog signal station on Cape St. Elias in the Gulf of Alaska.

Over fifty years before the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway (1959), I was building lighthouses and related engineering projects in some of the most isolated regions of the Great Lakes and along their connecting waterways.