|
Libby Island is at the entrance
to Machias Bay, scene of the American Revolution's first naval
battle. Libby is actually two islands connected by a sandbar,
with a total area of 120 acres. The island had been farmed since
about 1760. A wooden lighthouse may have been erected as early
as 1817, but a new tower was built at the south end of Libby
Island by the federal government in 1822, along with a 1 1/2-story
wood-frame keeper's house. The first rubblestone tower fell down
a few months after it was built due to shoddy construction; it
was quickly rebuilt.
- Libby Island Light in the 19th century
- U.S. Coast Guard photo
In 1842, Stearns, formerly at Owls Head Light, offered a harsh
picture of the light station for I. W. P. Lewis's important report
to Congress on the Lighthouse Establishment:
On my taking possession of this place, I found the establishment
in a ruinous condition. The lantern of the light-house was very
dirty; I scraped off its floor three buckets of broken glass,
clay, &c . . . There were, and still are, fifty panes of
glass broken in the lantern . . . The lantern shakes very much
in a gale of wind . . .
The roof of the tower is a pavement of soapstone, which
leaks at every joint. The tower was built in the autumn of 1823,
and in April following tumbled down. The present tower was immediately
after erected. The mortar used in its erection was so bad, that
the tower has nearly fallen down a second time . . .
The dwelling-house I occupy is built of brick . . . It
is entirely out of repair and in a very uncomfortable state .
. .
The tower's original lamps were replaced by a fourth-order
Fresnel lens in 1855. A new lantern and deck were installed in
1876.
| Libby Island is among the foggiest locations
on the Maine coast. A fog bell gave way to a Daboll fog trumpet
housed in a building erected in 1884. Before the addition of
the fog bell, Libby Island had a single keeper. The bell required
an assistant keeper, so the Lighthouse Board eventually built
two new houses for the keepers and their families. In 1918, the
fog signal was sounded for a total of 1,906 hours, the most of
any Maine station. |
 |
- This U.S. Coast Guard photo shows
the lighthouse and fog signal building
|
Despite the lighthouse and fog signal, the treacherous waters
continued to claim vessels. In December 1878, the schooner Caledonia
ran into the ledges near Libby Island. The captain, a deckhand,
and the steward were killed.
Only two passengers on the vessel survived to be rescued from
the rigging by a volunteer lifesaving crew.
|
In a September 1892 storm, Captain John Brown of the Nova
Scotia vessel Princeport tried to take shelter in Machias
Bay and ran into the bar connecting the two Libby Islands. The
ship immediately began to break apart as the crew huddled on
the bow. The keepers from Libby Island arrived and rescued the
men, who probably would have been dead minutes later.
Henry M. Cuskley became keeper of Libby Island Light in 1903.
He later described the 1906 wreck of the three-masted schooner
Ella G. Ells to historian Edward Rowe Snow. All hands
on the schooner were lost except the captain, who drifted ashore
on the roof of the ship's cabin.
Hervey Wass became keeper at Libby Island in 1919. His son
Philmore Wass wrote a book about his years on the island called
Lighthouse
in My Life. This delightful book provides a detailed
record of life on an offshore lighthouse station. During this
period there were as many as 20 people living at Libby among
the families of the keeper and two assistants.
Many different games, including baseball, were played on the
island. One of Phil Wass's favorite games was called "Grass
is Poison." In this game the children had to walk around
the perimeter of the island without touching any grass. This
necessitated a climb down a 50-foot cliff near the lighthouse,
without the knowledge of the parents, of course.
Phil Wass's sister, Hazel, was taught to play piano by the
keeper's wife at their previous station, Whitehead Light, and
Keeper Wass bought a piano for Libby Island. Music could often
be heard drifting from the island. Hazel Wass once gathered the
children on Libby Island and put on a musical revue.
In his book, Phil Wass described his feelings of awe regarding
the lighthouse inspector, Royal Luther. Young Phil sometimes
confused the concepts of God and Luther in his young mind; they
were both all-powerful figures to the lighthouse families. Inspector
Luther would arrive unannounced on the Lighthouse Tender Hibiscus,
and the children would tag along as he met with Keeper Wass and
toured the station. The buildings were always in perfect order,
with the entire family pitching in to make the place sparkle.
Young Phil's job was to polish the brass in the keeper's house.
At the age of 14, Phil Wass was assigned the duty of collecting
information for Robert Thayer Sterling, who was writing his book,
Lighthouses of the Maine Coast and the Men Who Keep Them.
Phil explored the attic and discovered a box of old records,
including accounts of many shipwrecks. Later all these records
went to the Lighthouse Service office in Portland.
The families at Libby Island supplemented their diet by catching
fish and lobster. Cranberries grew in abundance on the island;
blueberries and raspberries were available on nearby islands.
The keepers also kept a cow and chickens for milk and eggs.
- Jasper L. Cheney, an assistant keeper
and later head keeper, lived on Libby Island with his family
from 1933 to 1949. He is seen here with his wife Tryphena, son
Roland and daughter Ella in the 1930s. Courtesy of Ella Cheney
Robinson and Jeff Robinson.
|
In 1933, Jasper L. Cheney arrived as an assistant keeper under
Hervey Wass. His daughter Ella remembered in a 2003 interview
that a swimming hole was created by the men, who dynamited some
ledges so that each incoming tide filled the hole with salt water.
"The sun would warm the cold seawater so we could swim in
it. It was a place where young and old all spent lots of hours
cooling off and getting tanned."
"The men worked very hard on the island," recalled
Ella. "Every building was kept in A-1 shape always. Painting
was an endless job both inside and out. The foghorn and light
were gone over every day to make sure they were in perfect order.
It's odd, but when the foghorn was running at night and stopped
because it ran out of fuel, all three keepers would awaken and
be there in a matter of minutes."
|
|
A 1939 article by Richard Hallett in Technology Review
described a visit of the lighthouse tender Ilex to Libby
Island soon after a winter storm:
Libby Island showed the mark of the storm. The wooden breakwater
was stove in. The boathouse, high up on this high-shouldered
island, was half a ruin. . . . Even now seas dropped aboard the
west end of the island with a noise like a cartload of lumber
being upset; and when we neared the slips, we saw that one of
them . . . had been booted clean away.
Libby Island's . . . high crags were hung with massive
icicles, and the wagon tracks leading to the light were lumpy
with brine ice. Even the trees were sheathed in ice to the last
twig and looked half winterkilled. Lobster traps were blown all
over the place.
|
 |
|
Libby Island Light after a snowstorm |
|
- U.S. Coast Guard
-
- U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chris Ledwith
|
In 1974, the Fresnel lens was removed and the lighthouse was
automated. Most of the buildings except the lighthouse tower
and fog signal building have been destroyed over the years. Under
the Maine Lights Program, the lighthouse was turned over to the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1998.
The Coast Guard completed an overhaul of the tower in the
summer of 2000, including the conversion of the light to solar
power. As part of the restoration the tower was returned to its
original unpainted look. The lighthouse can be seen distantly
from the mainland but is best viewed by private boat.
|
-
| The
fourth-order Fresnel lens from Libby Island, manufactured by the
Macbeth Glass Company in Pitssburgh, Pennsylvania, is now at the Maine
Lighthouse Museum in Rockland. |  |
- The solar array at the left now provides
power for the light
- U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chris Ledwith
- Keepers: John McKellar (1822-?); Isaac Sterns
(1842-1846); Matthew Kellar (1846-1850 and 1853-1860); John Grant
(1850-1853); James W. Foster (1860-1871); John C. Ames (1871-1877);
Charles A. Drisko (1877-1883); William H. Drisko (1883-1885);
A. M. Drisko (1885-1891); Danford O. French (1891-1895); Fred
W.Morong (1895-1898, also 1910); Bela W. Proctor (first assistant,
1894-?); Roscoe G. Johnson (second assistant 1894-?, head keeper
1898-1903); Henry M. Cuskley (1903-1912); Charles A. Kenney (1905-1912);
Hervey H. Wass (1919-1940), Justin Foss (first assistant, 1919-1932);
George Woodward (second assistant, ?-1923); Everett Mitchell
(second assistant, c. 1920s); Bernard Small (second assistant,
c. 1920s); James McCloud (second assistant, c. 1930s); John Beal
(second assistant, c. 1930s); Gleason W. Colbeth (first assistant,
1932-1945), Jasper L. Cheney (assistant 1933-1940, principal
keeper 1940-1949), Gene Watts (Coast Guard, 1949), Bill Bybee
(Coast Guard, 1949-1950), Robert W. Brooks (Coast Guard Fireman
First Class, c. 1950-1951); Frank Dernoga (Coast Guard, c. 1952-1954);
Roger Lee Drinkwater (Coast Guard, c. 1958), SN George Morrison
(Coast Guard, 1963); EN2 Larry Smith (Coast Guard, c. 1963);
Harold Allen (Coast Guard, c. 1965-1966), Richard "Gary"
Craig (Coast Guard, 1966-1967); Donald Costantino (Coast Guard,
1968-1969), Alan (Skip) Skidmore (Coast Guard, 1969-1972), Jay
Novegrod (Coast Guard, c. 1969-1972)
|
