LIGHTSHIP NO. 1, NANTUCKET NEW SOUTH SHOALS.
A conspicuous object forward is the large fog-bell swung ten feet above the deck. The prevalence of fog makes life on the South Shoal Lightship especially dreary. During one season fifty-five days out of seventy were thick, and for twelve consecutive days and nights the bell was kept tolling at two-minute intervals.
The actual work to be done is small, the daily cleaning of the lamps requiring only two or three hours, and other chores being very light, and the men nearly die of loneliness and “nothing to do.” It is pathetic to read how intense and friendly an interest they take in a single red buoy anchored near them; and they admit that fog is dreaded more because it hides this neighbor than for any other reason.
Mr. Kobbé tells us that the emotional stress under which this crew labors can hardly be realized by any one who has not been through a similar experience.
The sailor on an ordinary ship has at least the inspiration of knowing that he is bound for somewhere; that in due time his vessel will be laid on her homeward course; that storm and fog are but incidents of the voyage: he is on a ship that leaps forward full of life and energy with every lash of the tempest. But no matter how the lightship may plunge and roll, no matter how strong the favoring gales may be, she is still anchored two miles southeast of the New South Shoal.
CLEANING THE LAMPS ON A LIGHTSHIP.
Besides enduring the hardships incidental to their duties aboard the lightship, the South Shoal crew have done noble work in saving life. While the care of the lightship is considered of such importance to shipping that the crew are instructed not to expose themselves to dangers outside their special line of duty, and they would therefore have the fullest excuse for not risking their lives in rescuing others, they have never hesitated to do so. When, a few winters ago, the City of Newcastle went ashore on one of the shoals near the lightship, and strained herself so badly that although she floated off, she soon filled and went down stern foremost, 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 signaled to some passing vessel and the lighthouse tender took them off. This is the largest number saved at one time by the South Shoal, but the lightship crew have faced great danger on several other occasions.
This is, perhaps, the extreme picture of lightship life, but apart from the prolonged isolation and continuous roughness of the water, the experiences of the men off Sandy Hook and elsewhere are not greatly removed from it, and no philanthropy is more worthy of support than that which seeks to mitigate the loneliness of these exiles by providing them with reading matter. The Lighthouse Board provides a small circulating library for these ships, and contributions of books and files of illustrated periodicals will be gratefully received and put to good use by the Superintendent of the Lighthouse Service in Washington.