Lightships and Lighthouses

by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

[B] For a full description of the marine traffic on the Great Lakes, see “The Steamship Conquest of the World,” chapter ix., p. 119.

Steamship traffic cannot be carried on with financial success by daylight and in fair weather only, so it became necessary to distribute beacons around the indented shores. This procedure was rendered additionally necessary owing to the formidable character of many of the dangers besetting navigation, in the form of shoals, projecting ridges, and submerged reefs, quite as terrifying to the master of a fresh-water ship as similar dangers on an ocean-swept coast.

At the same time, however, one would not expect to find examples of lighthouse engineering comparable with the great sea-rock lights rearing above the ocean, such as the Minot’s Ledge, Dhu-Heartach, or Bishop’s Rock. On the other hand, the uninitiated might conclude that buoys and small lights, such as indicate the entrance to harbours, would fulfil requirements. So they would but for two or three adverse factors. These lakes are ravaged at times by storms of great violence, which burst with startling suddenness. Fogs also are of frequent occurrence, especially in the spring and autumn, often descending and lifting instantly like a thick blanket of cloud. But the most implacable enemy is the ice. The engineer can design a tower which will withstand the most savage onslaughts of wind and wave with comparative ease, at, relatively speaking, little expense; but the ice introduces another factor which scarcely can be calculated. The whole of these lakes are frozen over during the winter to such a thickness as to defy all efforts to cut a channel, becoming, in fact, as solid as terra firma.

By permission of the Lighthouse Literature Mission.

A LIGHTHOUSE ON THE GREAT LAKES IN THE GRIP OF WINTER.

This tower marks the Racine Reef in 20 feet of water near the entrance to Racine Harbour on the west coast of Lake Michigan.

In the spring this armour cracks and breaks up like glass shattered with a hammer. It then becomes the sport of the currents, which in many places sweep and swirl with enormous force round the headlands and spits projecting into the lake. This action sets the ice moving in stately majesty, but crushing everything that rears in its way, or piling and breaking against the obstruction. Ice-shoves, ice-jams, and ice-runs, are the three forces against which the engineer has to contend, and at places his efforts are so puny as to be useless. The ice, if it collects across one of the outlets so as to form a massive dam reaching to the lake-bed, immediately causes the level of the lake to rise; and when at last the barrage breaks, then the water is released in a mad rush.

Lighthouse building on the Great Lakes demands the highest skill, incalculable ingenuity, and the soundest of design and workmanship. Consequently, some of the guardian lights distributed around these shores, such as Spectacle Reef, the Rock of Ages, Colchester, and Red Rock lighthouses, are striking evidences of the engineer’s handiwork. Of course, where the land presses in on either hand, transforming the waterway into a kind of canal, or where the shore is free from submerged obstructions, the type of lighthouse on either shore follows the wooden frame dwelling with a low tower, as it is completely adequate for the purpose.

The one erection, however, which commands the greatest attention is the Spectacle Reef light, which has been called the Eddystone, or Minot’s Ledge, of the Lakes. In its way it was quite as bold an undertaking as either of these far-famed works, and in some respects was far more difficult to carry out, although the builder was spared the capriciousness and extreme restlessness of tidal waters. Spectacle Reef lighthouse rears its tapering head from a particularly dangerous reef in an awkward corner of Lake Huron, where commences the Strait of Mackinac, leading to Lake Michigan. The spot is dangerous, because it is covered by about 7 feet of water; awkward, because it occurs about ten and a half miles off the nearest land, which is Bois Blanc Island. The reef in reality comprises two shoals, which lie in such relation to one another as to suggest a pair of spectacles—hence the name. As it is exposed to 170 miles of open sea on one side, when these waters are roused the rollers hammer on the reef with terrible violence, while at times the currents skirl by at a velocity of two or three miles per hour, and the ice in its movement grinds, piles, and grates itself upon the reef in impotent fury. When this ice is forced forward with the push exerted by the currents, the pressure is tremendous and the force wellnigh irresistible.