There are some points which, while being so extremely perilous to the mariner as to demand the provision of a lighthouse, yet cannot be guarded at present. The peculiarity of their situations and their physical characteristics completely defy the ingenuity, skill, and resource, of the engineer. Cape Hatteras, perhaps, is the most forcible illustration of this defeat of science by Nature. The sea-bed for miles off this point is littered with the most treacherous sandbanks, beside which the Goodwins of Britain appear insignificant. Every seafarer knows the Diamond Shoals, and gives them a wider berth than any other danger spot in the seven seas. For some seven and a half miles out to sea from the prominent headland, the Atlantic, according to its mood, bubbles, boils, or rolls calmly, over shoals and serried rows of submerged banks. The currents are wild and frantic; the storms which rage off this point are difficult to equal in any other part of the world; and the number of ships which have gone to pieces or have been abandoned to their fate in these inhospitable stretches of sea is incalculable.
Time after time the engineers have sought to subjugate this danger, but without avail. The sea-bed is so soft and absorbing that a firm foundation for a tower defies discovery. One brilliant attempt was made to sink a caisson, similar to that employed for the famous Rothersand light in the River Weser. The mammoth structure was built, and with extreme difficulty was towed out to the selected site. But the seas roared against this attempt to deprive them of their prey. They bore down upon the caisson and smashed it to fragments, causing the engineers to retire from the scene thoroughly discomfited. When a huge mass, weighing several hundred tons, could be broken up by the maddened seas so easily, of what avail were the knowledge and effort of man? The Diamond Shoals still resist conquest. The only means of warning ships of their presence is a lightship moored well out beyond the pale of their sucking embrace.
At the present time the United States Lighthouse Board mounts guard over 17,695 miles of coastline. This aggregate embraces, not only the two seaboards of the North American continent, but sections of the Great Lakes, the Philippines, Alaska, Hawaiian Islands, and the American Samoan Islands, the total detailed coast or channel line being no less than 48,881 miles. In order to guide the mariner on his way through waters over which the Stars and Stripes wave, no less than 12,150 lights of all descriptions are required, demanding the services of an army of 5,582 men and women; while the cost of maintenance exceeds £1,200,000, or $6,000,000, per annum. Seeing that the country levies no tolls for services rendered in this connection, the shipping community, and humanity in general, owe a deep debt of gratitude to a powerful nation.
The United States share with Great Britain, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden, the expense of maintaining a lighthouse which is situate on the property of none of them. This is a kind of no man’s, and yet it is every man’s, light. The beacon is not located in an out-of-the-way part of the world, such as the Arctic Sea, as might be supposed, but mounts guard over one of the busiest marine thoroughfares of the globe—the western entrance to the Mediterranean. This unique light is that of Cape Spartel, on the Moroccan coast. While it was built at the expense of Morocco, the responsibility for its maintenance was assumed by the foregoing Powers, in accordance with the convention of March 12, 1867, which has remained in force since. There is no other light upon the seven seas which has so many Powers concerned in its welfare and maintenance.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAMP-POSTS OF THE GREAT LAKES OF NORTH AMERICA
On the North American continent the efficient lighting of the coasts washed by two salt oceans is only one, although the most important, concern of the United States and Canadian Governments. In addition each has a long stretch of rugged, tortuous shore hemming in those capacious depressions draining a vast tract of country, and known generally as the Great Lakes. These unsalted seas are rightly named, seeing that they constitute the largest sheets of fresh water on the inhabited globe.
The responsibility of safeguarding the navigator as he makes his way across these wastes is shared equally by the two countries which they divide, with one exception. This is Lake Michigan, which lies entirely within the United States. The narrow necks of water which link these lakes into one long chain likewise are lighted by the two nations. For some years the Lower Detroit River, connecting Lakes Erie and St. Clair, was maintained for the most part by the United States, but the practice was not satisfactory; so, as the result of a conference between the two Governments, Canada assumed charge of the aids in certain specified portions of the navigable channel lying entirely in Canadian waters. The result of this new arrangement has been the better patrolling of the waterway.
The water-borne commerce on these lakes, although possible for only half the year, is tremendous, while navigation is extremely difficult and beset with innumerable dangers.[B] The different means whereby a ship is handled and maintained on its course upon the salt-water ocean are not completely applicable in this case. The greater number of the boats are freighters and engaged in the transport of ore, which, from its metallic character, is apt to disturb the compass, rendering it somewhat unreliable. Nor is the lead of much avail in thick weather, as the lake-bed varies suddenly from comparative shallowness to great depths. Navigation on these lakes has been likened to coastal traffic, only with land on both sides of the mariner, and the intervals when the ship is out of sight of the shoreline are comparatively brief. Accordingly, the captain picks his way rather by the aid of landmarks, and the vessels are fitted with a bowsprit, to give the master a point whereby to judge his direction. But landmarks, however conspicuous and trustworthy they may be by day and in clear weather, are useless at night and in fog, to which latter visitation, by the way, these waters are extremely susceptible.