Whenever keepers are located at stations where the cost of carriage exceeds the cost of fuel and rations, they are furnished at the expense of the Government. This applies to the keeper of the lighthouse on a big rock near Cape Ann. No sea-going vessel can come within a quarter of a mile of his home, and it is impossible for a loaded boat to reach his abiding-place in safety. The coal he uses is shipped in bags from Boston to as near the lighthouse as the vessel can approach. The bags are then loaded into small boats and taken to the edge of the shoal water, inside of which it is dangerous to enter. From the boats the bags are carried ashore on the backs of the crew, who wade through the shoals, clamber up the rocks with their burdens and empty the coal in the lighthouse bin. Coal is worth thirty dollars a ton at Cape Ann lighthouse. The keeper's other bulky supplies are delivered in the same manner as his coal.
A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
At all the lighthouses built on rocks and ledges the keepers have to be supplied with fresh water from the mainland, that collected from rains in cisterns and tanks being generally insufficient for their needs. Each lighthouse keeper is supplied by the Government with a well-selected library of fifty volumes. There are five hundred and fifty of these libraries, and they are continually kept moving from station to station, the inspector, when he makes his quarterly visit, bringing a fresh library, and taking the old one with him, to his next stopping-place.
Captain Oliver Brooks, now living in honored and well-earned retirement, besides being for thirty years keeper of the great light on Faulkner's Island, five miles off the Connecticut coast in Long Island Sound, was also one of the most remarkable men ever connected with the lighthouse service. He had been a sea captain before he became a lighthouse keeper and was a man of signal mechanical skill and marked inventive genius. His knowledge of electricity, and of light and sound was thorough and exact, and the results of many of his experiments, adopted by the Lighthouse Board, have contributed greatly to the improvement of the service. All the apparatus with which he conducted his experiments was constructed by him in a little workshop he had fitted up in the lighthouse tower.
But his fondness for the theoretical never caused him to neglect in the slightest detail the practical side of his work, and he was, indeed, a model keeper. Faulkner's Island lies directly in the path of all vessels passing either in or out of the Sound, and its light is one of the most important ones on our coasts, but there has not been a night in more than a hundred years that it has not flashed out its warning to sailors. The island was a barren and desolate spot when Captain Brooks settled there, but he and his family turned it into a paradise. All of his large family of boys and girls were born there, and there grew up to sturdy manhood and splendid womanhood. One daughter was an authority on ornithology; another, a gifted water-color artist, and every one of the children was a skilled musician, their family concerts, in which not less than five different instruments were brought into play, being treats to hear. All of the children had noble records as life-savers, and many were the men, women and children they saved from death in the treacherous waters surrounding their island home. It was not until his youngest child had left the island that the captain gave up his place as keeper to spend his last days on shore.
Even better known than Captain Brooks is the keeper of Lime Rock light in Newport harbor. Should you chance to be in Newport on some pleasant summer afternoon, walk out on the long wharf that runs from the mainland into the west side of the harbor, and when you have reached its end, wave your handkerchief toward the lighthouse opposite. Soon a woman will appear in the door of the tall gray tower, and running down to the boat moored to the stone wall, step into it, take the oars, and with graceful yet powerful strokes, pull rapidly toward the wharf. As she approaches her erect back and evident strength give the impression of youth, but as she turns the boat about to receive you for a visit to the lighthouse you discover to your surprise that she is a woman of middle age.
Your hostess is Ida Lewis, keeper of Lime Rock light and famous as the American Grace Darling, a modest and kindly hearted heroine, whose skill and daring have saved nearly as many lives as there are years in her own. In fact, it was due in part to her record as a life-saver, that she was given the place she now fills. Besides attending to her duties as keeper, there are other cares that keep her busy; she is a careful housewife, keeps abreast of current literature; and is a devoted churchwoman, spending her Sundays on shore whenever possible. To her credit, no light in her district is as regularly or perfectly attended to, nor does any other gain from the inspector so high a report as Lime Rock light.
There are several other women light-keepers, but none of them has ever had to face an experience as trying as that which a few years ago befell the wife of Angus Campbell, keeper of the light on Great Bird Rock, a lonely islet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the farthest beacon to the harbors of Nova Scotia. When the late fall comes and the tardy fishermen hasten away to the mainland, the gulf turns to ice and hems the rock in with a clutch that only the returning summer can loosen. There, in the autumn of 1896, Angus Campbell took his newly wedded wife to share his loneliness. During the winter James Duncan and George Bryson, two of Campbell's friends, journeyed to Great Bird Rock to remain until spring. They were professional seal hunters, and a great many seals play around on the ice and rocks at the foot of the big cliff.