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Maine writer (and former lighthouse
keeper) C. L. Knight once described Saddleback Ledge Light Station,
one of the most remote and barren of all Maine lighthouse locations:
Saddleback pokes its way up though the water quite precipitously
for 25 to 30 feet -- a rock shaped something like its name and
just large enough for the station it supports. Against it the
sea rages on all sides.
Saddleback
Ledge is a wave-swept granite outcropping at the southern entrance to
East Penobscot Bay (also known as Isle au Haut Bay), approximately four
miles from the southeastern corner of Vinalhaven to the west and three
miles from the southwestern coast of Isle au Haut to the east. In 1836, the ship Royal Tar,
carrying circus performers and animals, caught fire and sank near the
ledge. In March of the following year, Congress appropriated $5,000 for
a lighthouse on Saddleback Ledge. | 
- U.S. Coast Guard photo
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After
some debate about the location, Capt. Joseph Smith, captain of a U.S.
revenue cutter, reaffirmed the ledge as the best site for a lighthouse
in the vicinity: There
is no light between Matinicus & Bakers Island, a distance of about
forty miles. In viewing the coast about the Isle au Haut & the
Islands in the Penobscot bay, the necessity of a light-house in that
vicinity, as a guide to vessels through the eastern channel is very
apparent . . . & Saddleback ledge is decidedly the best location. The noted architect and engineer Alexander Parris (1780–1852) designed
the tower. Parris is best remembered for designing Boston’s Quincy
Market, the executive mansion of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and
various buildings at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Construction
was carried out in 1838–39. Another $10,000 was appropriated for the
project in July 1838; the total cost of $15,000 made this an expensive
lighthouse for its time. The lighthouse is a 43-foot-tall conical
granite tower with an octagonal wrought wrought-iron lantern. The
original lighting apparatus consisted of 10 lamps with 14-inch
reflectors showing a fixed white light. The height of the light was
described as 63 feet above mean high water in 1943, but current light
lists put it at 52 feet.
Right: Alexander Parris |  |
The high expense of the tower appears to have been justified.
Engineer I. W. P. Lewis, highly critical of many lighthouses
in his 1843 report to Congress, called it "the most economical
and durable structure that came under my observation." He
pointed out, however, that there was "no convenience for
collecting fresh water, nor any means of securing the boat --
both important omissions."
In the early days, the four-room keeper's quarters were inside
the tower. An attached wooden building was added later, sometime
before 1868. The lower floor of the building was a boathouse,
and two rooms for keepers were located on the second floor. Incredibly,
before the attached building, the upper part of the tower was
home for many years not only to the keepers themselves but their
families as well.
The first keeper was Watson Y. Hopkins, a Maine native. Hopkins moved into the lighthouse with his pregnant
wife, Abigail, and seven children: 19-year-old John, 17-year-old
Martha, 14-year-old Winslow, 11-year-old Smith, eight-year-old
Henry, five-year-old Sally, and two-year-old Maria.The
large family was crowded into living quarters inside the lighthouse
tower that consisted of a living room with a cooking stove, two
bedrooms, and a cellar. Hopkins painted a dismal
picture of the living conditions at the lighthouse for I. W.
P. Lewis's 1843 report:
I was appointed keeper of this light, December, 1839, upon
a salary of $450. I live with my family in the tower, which is
the only building on the ledge. The tower is in good repair,
excepting a leak in the deck on the east side, and the want of
any ventilator to the kitchen smoke pipe. I am obliged to bring
my water from shore, a distance of seven miles.
There are two tanks, made of pine wood, placed in the cellar,
one of which is tight and the other leaky. The lantern leaks
on the east side, and sweats badly when shut close[d]. We are
badly off for room to stow wood and provisions. I have been allowed
a boat, but she is entirely unfit for this place, being nothing
more than a small dory. I am obliged to pay freight on my supplies,
on account of not having a suitable sail boat to bring them with
myself.
My family consists of nine persons. There is a living room
and two chambers in the tower, besides a cellar. The copper spout
carried round the tower to catch rain water has been so injured
by the surf, that it is no longer of any use. The iron railing,
which was secured to the rock around the tower, has been all
swept away; also, the privy, which was carried away the first
storm after its erection. The windows all leak in storms, the
shutters having no rebates in the stone work. The fastenings
of all the shutters are iron, and have corroded away.
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In September 1843, Abigail Hopkins gave birth to a baby girl
at the station. A week later, a boat came to the ledge to take
the mother and daughter to the mainland. During the transfer
to the boat, the baby was dropped briefly into the icy waves.
She was quickly plucked out of the water before any serious harm
was done. The girl, Margaret Roberts Hopkins, later married William
Kitteridge, a Civil War veteran. She lived to the age of 86 as one of Vinalhaven’s most beloved citizens.
When Keeper Watson Y. Hopkins left the Lighthouse Service,
he bought land and built a home on Arey's Neck in Vinalhaven,
within sight of Saddleback Ledge.
A painting of Hopkins (right) hung for years in a home in
Vinalhaven. A descendant of Keeper Hopkins, Margo Burns, is trying
to locate the original painting and would appreciate any information
concerning its whereabouts. (You can email Ms. Burns at margo@ogram.org.) |
Keeper Watson Y. Hopkins
Courtesy of Margo Burns |
 | Like Boon Island and Mount Desert Rock, Saddleback Ledge has
absolutely no soil. As they did at those other remote stations,
the keepers at Saddleback Ledge brought soil from the mainland
each spring and planted a few vegetables and flowers. The soil
would inevitably be swept away by winter storms.
Legend has it that one keeper went to get supplies from the
mainland, leaving his 15-year-old son alone at Saddleback Ledge.
The seas grew stormy, and it was three weeks before the keeper
was able to return to the ledge. His son was exhausted, but he
had managed to keep the light burning every night. |
An 1850 inspection revealed that a winter storm had exposed
the base of the lighthouse to the seas. The local lighthouse
superintendent wrote:
I consider it a very dangerous place to live in, in its
present condition. . . . Immediate attention should be paid to
this establishment, as it is an important light-house. I would
take the liberty to recommend a new lantern and lighting apparatus.
Some improvements followed, including the installation of
a new lantern and a fifth-order Fresnel lens in 1855. A pyramidal
skeletal fog bell tower was added in 1887. For
some years, the cramped quarters at Saddleback Ledge were home to a
principal keeper and two assistant keepers. Life at remote, waveswept
light stations was difficult at best, and the keepers didn't always get
along. | 
- U.S. Coast Guard photo
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In 1874, the first assistant keeper, Nathaniel Bowden, assaulted
the principal keeper, James H. Orcutt, and pointed a loaded revolver at
his head. Needless to say, Bowden's light keeping career was soon ended.
It was extremely difficult to land at Saddleback Ledge. In
1885, a derrick with a swinging arm was added. The arm held a
bosun's chair on a hoist. This method of getting keepers and
visitors on and off the rock was used for many years. An 1896 article in Scribner's described the visit of
the lighthouse supply ship Armeria to Saddleback Ledge: Saddleback Ledge, as was seen last summer, was a bare rock
absolutely devoid of vegetation, save for three sickly pea-vines,
two hills of potatoes, and a dozen spears of oats, which, with
a longing to look at something green, the keeper had coaxed into
life in his trash heap, though with the certain knowledge that
the first heavy gale would sweep them away.
At this station the rocks rise so abruptly, and the break
of the sea upon them is so constant, that an anchor is dropped
over the stern of the freightboat, a line from her bows is made
fast ashore by the light-keepers, and, as she lies thus, moored
in tossing white waters, within a few feet of the sullen coast,
her cargo is transferred to the Ledge by means of a stout iron
derrick, securely planted in the solid rock high above her.
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June Dudley
Watts, daughter of Keeper Leonard Bosworth Dudley, told Cheryl
Shelton-Roberts, author of the book Lighthouse Families, that
she was always relieved to be in her father's strong arms after
the hair-raising ride in the bosun's chair. Historian Edward Rowe Snow wrote in the 1940s:
It is a never-to-be-forgotten experience to be swung around
and landed from the rocking deck of a small craft onto the hard
rocky ledge, and those of us who have had that sensation do not
forget it in a hurry. Left: A visitor being hoisted ashore at
Saddleback Ledge. Courtesy of Vinalhaven Historical
Society. -
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In the 1930s, Keeper W. W. Wells reported hoisting 42 visitors
ashore in a single summer day. Robert Thayer Sterling interviewed
Keeper Wells for his 1935 book, Maine Lighthouses and the
Men Who Keep Them. Wells described a rough day in January
1925 when his dory capsized:
Had it not been for a local fisherman I would have gone
to Davy Jones' locker. I... was trying to make a landing when
a mountainous sea rushed in from the ocean, overturning my boat
and sending me flying into the water. Why, it turned me upside
down faster than you can say 'Jack Robinson.' I was just about
to give up when George Wells, a local lobsterman, came along
. . . and hauled me out of the water.
By the 1920s, Saddleback Ledge had become a "stag"
station attended by male keepers only. Wells went on to
describe life at the remote station:
Winter we all hate the most, beginning when the summer
guests have gone and the hotels on shore are closed. This means
we will have to bank up the old station, get some good reading
matter and snuggle down for a long period of isolation.
The weirdest experience I have had since being in the service
was the bombardment we got on a February night away back in 1927,
when to my surprise I picked up 124 sea birds around the tower.
There were ducks and drakes. Some were alive, but most were dead.
Just when I thought the cannonading had ceased, one big
sea drake struck the plate glass in the tower lantern and came
through without asking for a transfer. When he struck he broke
up the works. Before he stopped he put out the light and broke
prisms out of the lens. The bird weighed 10 pounds.
Wells was first assistant keeper at the time of this incident.
The principal keeper, Andrew Dennett, was ashore taking a vacation.
According to a newspaper story, the two assistants on duty "worked
feverishly, disregarding their own safety, until the damages
had been repaired and the beacon was again sending its welcome
message across the water." According to the article, 30 sea birds were found alive around the base of the tower. The
surviving birds were placed in the boathouse overnight and they
"went on their way next morning with satisfied honkings."
The damage to the lens was reportedly visible years later. 
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division, Historic American Buildings Survey, Reproduction Number
HABS,ME,7-ROCLA.V,1-1. James Replogle, photographer, July 1960.
| Wells also described the destruction done by a particularly
bad storm in January 1933:
The storm struck in the dead of night, the wind blew a
sixty mile gale. With it came the seas. They struck plentiful
and hard. I did not even dare to peak out the door to see what
was doing... One tremendous sea that boarded us seemed to shake
us like a tablecloth. I thought it was going to clean up the
works. Why it didn't I haven't been able to fathom out. When
daylight came and the storm subsided we ventured out to look
things over. Things were certainly a mess. Over 128 feet of our
boat slip was torn up... and the cement breakwater built around
the light to protect it, broken through in several places...
It threw a 140 gallon oil tank and one boathouse door upon the
winch hoist and put that out of commission... Take it altogether,
it was a hummer and did lots of damage.
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Benjamin
E. Stewart was an assistant keeper in the 1930s. His daughter, Aleta
Stewart Buotte, recalled those days in emails in April 2011:
Once
in a while during the summer I went back to the light with my dad. When
it was a little rough I would wrap my arms around his legs. I was so
afraid he would fall overboard. I had lost my mother, so he was
mother and dad to me. The boat was what they called a peapod. I have
great memories of my time there.
When
we arrived at the light he would put me in a chair that was on a boom
and swing me on the ledge and he'd be there to get me. I would want to
fish off the rocks so my dad would tie a rope on me and the boom. One
time I got myself untied and snuck up in back of the house and climbed
the ladder to the bell house. My dad went to check on me and i was
gone. I heard him calling and in a panic. Then he heard me giggling, so
I said, "Dad, here I am." I never came so close to getting a good
paddling.
Jerry
Lawrence, who was assigned to Saddleback Ledge as a 19-year-old Coast
Guardsman in 1946, recalled the experience in a 1991 article in Down East magazine.
At the time, the crewmen spent five weeks at the station followed by a
week off, with; two men were on duty at all times. In times of poor
visibility, the mechanism that sounded the fog bell still had to be
wound every hour.
During lonely times, Lawrence sometimes called
the local telephone operator just to hear the sound of another voice.
“How about meeting me on the dock?” he’d ask. “I’ll be right there,
honey,” the operator would reply, but she knew he couldn’t get ashore.
The two never met, but Lawrence sometimes carried on long conversations
with the sympathetic operator.
The keeper in charge of the
station was Alamander Alley, a “strict by-the-booker,” according to
Lawrence. Dishwashing and dusting always took priority over duck
hunting, to Lawrence’s annoyance. But Alley kept the station shipshape,
and he was a fine cook. “The officers who came to inspect the
lighthouse probably came more for his cooking than anything else,”
according to Lawrence. A big meal would be topped off with sponge cake
and coffee, and little inspecting was done after that.
Much of the crew’s entertainment was provided by a radio, and Queen for a Day
was a favorite program. The show urged listeners to send in stories
about worthy women, who were honored with prizes. The crew at
Saddleback Ledge sent information on Flora Ames, the woman in
Vinalhaven who washed all their clothes by hand. The letter was read on
the air, and Flora won a brand-new washing machine.
It was
always a challenge to find ways to get enough exercise. Lawrence once
tried to go for a stroll on the uneven granite ledge, which leading led
to a stumble and a sprained wrist. “I told him to be more careful and
stay on the lawn and sidewalks more,” Alley joked.
Another ferocious storm in March 1947 almost washed away the attached
wooden building. The same storm sent the hand-wound fog bell into the
ocean, never to be seen again. “We were all relieved when the bell
tower washed away and the Coast Guard installed a bell buoy,” Lawrence
later recalled. Alley was willing to make repairs to the station
himself, but his search for tools didn’t turn up “as much as a monkey
wrench,” according to a letter he wrote to the Maine Coast Fisherman.
Albert F. “Bug” Osgood, a native of Vinalhaven, was the keeper from
1948 to 1951. Osgood, a civilian, supervised the Coast Guard crew.
After Osgood was transferred to the peaceful, close-to-shore station at
Curtis Island in Camden, he reported, “It gets rougher in the wash dish
out there [Saddleback Ledge] than it does around here. My wife has to
throw water on the windows so I can sleep.”
During a period of
rough seas following a storm on November 25, 1951, three
keepers—including Osgood and Giffin—were stranded for weeks at the
station with, their food and water supplies running low. The storm had
badly damaged the attached wooden building and the derrick, and it had
also disrupted telephone communications. A Coast Guard plane dropped a
walkie-talkie to the keepers, and the Coast Guard tug Snohomish
eventually got through with supplies on December 14.
Right:
A Coast Guard keeper greets visitors to the lighthouse, circa early
1960s. Photo by Arthur Griffin, courtesy of Dorothy Bicknell. |  |
The
light was automated in late 1954; the last crew consisted of Thomas
Maddock, Thomas Sampson, and Donald Plain. The Fresnel lens was
replaced by a modern optic, and the light continued as an automatic aid
to navigation. The characteristic is now a white flash every 6
seconds., with and an An automated horn producesing a single blast
every 10 seconds.
Keepers: (This
list is a work in progress. If you have any information on the keepers
of this lighthouse, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at nelights@gmail.com.
Anyone copying this list onto another web site does so at their own
risk, as the list is always subject to updates and corrections.) Watson Y. Hopkins (1839-1849); Lemuel
Greene (1849); Jonathan Burgess (1849-1850); James S. Williams
(1850); Reuben Freeman (185?); Willard C. Higgins (185?-1857);
Benjamin Higgins (1858-1859); Daniel Leland (1859-1861); Charles
F. Norton (assistant 1858?, keeper 1864-1865); Jeremiah Douglas
(1861 and 1865-1871); John Hopkins (1861); George Smith (1862-1864);
E. L. Douglas (assistant, 1865); Charles E. Snow (assistant,
1871-1873); James H. Orcutt (1871-1886); Albion Blodgett (assistant
1872); Charles A. Gott, (assistant 1874-1881); Nathaniel Bowden
(second assistant, 1880, first assistant 1881-1884); Jacob J.
Lord (second assistant, 1881-1882); Eben Hale (second assistant
1882-1883); Thomas H. Orcutt (second assistant 1883-1884, first
assistant 1884-1886); Roscoe Lopaus, assistant (c. 1890); Levi
Farnham, assistant (c. 1890); Herbert C. Richardson, assistant
(c. 1890); William H. Thompson, assistant (c. 1890), Will C.
Tapley (c. 1890); Charles E. B. Stanley, assistant (c. 1890);
Fred W. Morong, Jr. (c. 1890); Charles W. Thurston, assistant
(c. 1890); George W. Blodgett (second assistant 1884-1886, first
assistant 1886, keeper 1886-1898); Edward K. Tapley (second assistant,
1886); Fred J. Rich (1898-1902); Henry C. Neal (1902-1907); Jerome
C. Brawn (1907-1909); Charles A. Burke, assistant (1902-1905);
Marmal R. Newman, assistant (1905, 1908); Thomas L. Godfrey,
assistant (1903); Edward E. Dyer, assistant (1906); Raymond D.
Randall, assistant (1906-1907); James V. Calderwood (1908); Willie
W. Corbett, assistant (1908-1910); Leo Allen, assistant (1910-1912);
Fred T. Robinson, assistant (1912); Vurney L. King (1910-1912);
Andrew Bennett (1914-1925); W. W. Wells (c. 1920s -1930s); Leonard
Bosworth Dudley (1920-1923); Edward Howell (assistant, c. 1920s);
Alamander Alley (c. 1920s -1947); Benjamin E. Stewart (assistant, c. 1930s); Harold (Tom) Jones (Coast Guard,
c. 1943-1945); Albert F. "Bug" Osgood (1948-1951);
Edward Giffin (Coast Guard, c. 1949-51); Gordon P. Eaton (Coast
Guard, 1952); Thomas Maddock (Coast Guard, ?-1954); Thomas Sampson
(Coast Guard, ?-1954); Donald Plain (Coast Guard, ?-1954).
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