THE LIGHTHOUSE AT ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA.
Indeed, these beacons have become so thickly planted that it has been found necessary to distinguish between them in order to avoid mistaking one for another. At first this was done by doubling, as in the case of New York’s “Highland Lights,” or the twin lights of Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann, or even trebling them as at Nauset, on Cape Cod, but now the display is made to vary. Thus some of them are simply fixed white lights; some are white and revolve—the whole lantern on the summit of the tower being turned on wheels by machinery, and the flame disappears for a longer or shorter time; while others are white “flash” lights, glancing only for an instant, and then lost for a few seconds, or giving a long wink and then a short one with a space of darkness between. Some lighthouses show a steady red light; others, alternate red and white. By these colors and varying periods of appearance and disappearance (noted on charts, and published by the government in a general seaman’s guide called the “Coast Pilot”), navigators know which light they are looking at when several are in sight. For daylight recognition the towers may be painted half black and half white, or in stripes or bands or spirals, like the big barber’s pole in front of St. Augustine, Florida.
It is impossible here to describe in detail the beautiful machinery by which the rays from the large but simple argand kerosene lamp are condensed into a single beam and projected through the Fresnel system of condensers and lenses, and by which the revolution and “flashing” are effected. Petroleum has superseded all other oils for general use, but electricity is now being extensively employed in the illumination of coast lights, especially in France, where they are introducing new principles, such as producing lightning-like flashes with a certain recognized regularity, and waving stupendous search-light beams in the sky, so that the approach to the coast may be seen when the land and lighthouse themselves are still below the horizon. If you have an opportunity to go into the lantern of a lighthouse, by all means take advantage of it; and if you can be there when a storm is raging, or when, on some misty night, the lantern is besieged by migrating birds, you will never forget the scene.
On some especially dangerous—because hidden—shoals, reefs, or bars, like those off Nantucket or the extreme point of Sandy Hook, it may be out of the question or bad policy to erect a lighthouse. Here its place is taken by anchoring a stout vessel, built to withstand the severest weather, and arranged to carry lanterns at its mastheads.
These are called “lightships,” and they are manned by a crew of keepers who have a very monotonous and uncomfortable time of it; yet in some cases men have spent twenty years or more in the service.
The most desolate and dangerous lightship station is that of No. 1, Nantucket. “Upon this tossing island, out of sight of land, exposed to the fury of every tempest, and without a message from home during all the stormy months of winter, and sometimes even longer, ten men, braving the perils of wind and wave, and the worse terrors of isolation, trim the lamps whose light warns thousands of vessels from certain destruction, and hold themselves ready to save life when the warning is vain.”
Seven years ago Mr. Gustav Kobbé, and the artist, William Taber, spent several days on the lightship and gave a graphic account of the life there, which I wish I were able to quote in full.
The anchorage is twenty-four miles out at sea beyond Sankaty head, at the extremity of the shoals and rips which make all that space of water beyond the visible coast of Nantucket fatal to ships, hundreds of which are known to have been beaten to pieces on its treacherous bars. She is moored to a 6500-pound mushroom anchor by a chain two inches in thickness, yet she has been torn adrift twenty-three times, and has wandered widely before returning or being overtaken.
“No. 1, Nantucket New South Shoals,” to quote Mr. Kobbé,
is a schooner of two hundred and seventy-five tons, one hundred and three feet long, with twenty-four feet breadth of beam, and stanchly built of white and live oak. She has two hulls, the space between them being filled through holes at short intervals in the inner side of the bulwarks with salt.... She has fore-and-aft lantern-masts seventy-one feet high, including topmasts, and directly behind each of the lantern masts a mast for sails forty-two feet high. Forty-four feet up the lantern-masts are day-marks, reddish brown hoop-iron gratings, which enable other vessels to sight the lightship more readily. The lanterns are octagons of glass in copper frames five feet in diameter, four feet nine inches high, with the masts as centers. Each pane of glass is two feet long and two feet three inches high. There are eight lamps, burning a fixed white light, with parabolic reflectors in each lantern, which weighs, all told, about a ton. Some nine hundred gallons of oil are taken aboard for service during the year. The lanterns are lowered into houses built around the masts. The house around the main lantern-mast stands directly on the deck, while the foremast lantern-house is a heavily-timbered frame three feet high. This is to prevent its being washed away by the waves the vessel ships when she plunges into the wintry seas. When the lamps have been lighted and the roofs of the lantern-houses opened,—they work on hinges, and are raised by tackle,—the lanterns are hoisted by means of winches to a point about twenty-five feet from the deck. Were they to be hoisted higher they would make the ship top-heavy.