When the Light Failed at Carysfort
The United States Lighthouse Establishment organized by Thornton Jenkins, Rear-Admiral, United States Navy, had built many important lighthouses upon the coast of the States. The appropriations admitted the lighting of the dangerous coral banks of the Florida Reef, which rose from the blue Gulf Stream many miles offshore and stretched away from Cape Florida to Tortugas.
From Fowey Rocks to Sand Key the high, long-legged towers, built of iron piling driven into the rock and braced with rods, rose above the shoal water, and at night their huge lenses flashed forth a warning gleam for twenty miles or more over the sea.
Carysfort was the second from the beginning the reef: a tall iron structure, the lantern or lens mounted atop of a wooden house built upon the platform at the end of the piling.
Inside of the house were the two bedrooms of the keepers, the oil-room, storerooms, and kitchen. Large tanks of iron held hundreds of gallons of water caught from the roof.
Outside the structure the platform extended six feet clear all around, making a comfortable porch or piazza, with a high rail which hung out over the sea at a height of about a hundred feet.
A long iron ladder extended from a trap-door in the flooring to the sea below, stopping at a landing about half-way, where the keepers had a small woodpile, a flower-bed, and a few things which would stand exposure to the weather. At the sides of the platform above were davits, on which the two whale-boats hung.
Altogether, the little house and platform offered some inducements to men who were not particular about being alone for a long time.
It was many miles to the nearest land, clear out of sight from even the top of the tower; and to those who lived there it was like being at sea upon a small vessel which neither pitched nor rolled in a seaway, nor yet changed position in any manner. It was almost like living in mid-air.
It was a healthy life for the keepers. No germs of any known disease ever reached the distant lighthouse, and no sickness had ever occurred there.