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The
Isles of Shoals, a cluster of nine islands located several miles off
the seacoast of New Hampshire, were described by Robert Thayer Sterling
in Maine Lighthouses and the Men Who Keep Them as
"a low lying group apparently composed of masses of tumbled granite
bleached white by the unceasing beating of the storm king and the glare
of the blazing sun."
The islands were frequented by European fishermen
for years before Capt. John Smith explored them in 1614. Smith named
the islands "Smith's Isles" after himself.
According to some accounts, fishermen named the
islands after their resemblance to a school, or shoal, of fish. Others
say the name originated beacuse of the "shoaling," or schooling, of
fish, especially mackerel and herring, around them.
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The area remained an important fishing center for
centuries. The first lighthouse in the Isles of Shoals was established
on White Island in 1821. It was a stone tower, later encased with wood
and shingled.
The lighthouse's original characteristic was
unusually patriotic, with red, white, and blue flashes. The blue flash
was soon discontinued because of its poor visibility.
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I received the following message from Joe Kenick Jr. in July 2011: My
now 101-year-old Mom has taught us that a White Island light keeper in
the 1830s was William Randall. His wife, Eliza G. Randall, died there
at age 40 in September 1836 leaving him with a very young baby. I'm
told he rowed her body over to Star and wrote in his journal, "There
isn't enough dirt on White Island to bury a mackerel." She is buried
next to one of the young Caswell women and has head and foot stones
that match several of the Caswell ones.
Mr.
Randall turned his infant son over to his (or Eliza's, I'm vague on
this) sister who was married into the Waldron family. That baby, known
as Benjamin Franklin Waldron became the father of Mina Waldron Frost
Fifield, who became the mother of my Mom, Pualine Fifield Kenick.
Whenever
I visit the Shoals I visit her grave, bring flowers and pray there.
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In 1838, this was nearly one of the first American
lighthouses to have a Fresnel lens installed, but it was decided that
the tower was too low for a satisfactory test of the lens. A new
lantern and lighting apparatus were installed in 1841.
During the following year, engineer I.W.P. Lewis
inspected the station and reported, "The whole construction of the
apparatus bears the mark of rude workmanship." The lamps and reflectors
weren't replaced by a more efficient Fresnel lens until 1855.
In 1839, Thomas Laighton (1805-1866) became
keeper. He and his brother Joseph had bought three of the islands in
the Isles of Shoals including the largest, Hog (later known as
Appledore), and Smuttynose.
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The first
White Island Lighthouse, circa late 1850s
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U.S. Coast
Guard photo
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Thomas Laighton was a former postmaster and
representative to the New Hampshire legislature, and he had recently
lost a run for selectman in Portsmouth. Laighton and his wife, Eliza,
moved to White Island with their two children, Oscar and Celia. In 1841
a baby, Cedric, was born to the Laightons at the lighthouse.
Laighton's daughter, Celia, later gained
widespread fame as Celia Thaxter, poet and author.
In her book, Among the Isles of Shoals,
she described the family's arrival at White Island:
It was at sunset in autumn that we were
set ashore on that loneliest, lovely rock, where the lighthouse looked
down on us like some tall, black-capped giant, and filled me with awe
and wonder. At its base a few goats were grouped on the rock, standing
out against the red sky as I looked up at them...
Some one began to light the lamps in
the tower. Rich red and golden, they swung around in mid-air;
everything was strange and fascinating and new.
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Celia
(Laighton) Thaxter
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She wrote about an evening visit to the water's edge:
High above, the lighthouse rays streamed out
into the humid dark, and the cottage windows were ruddy from the glow
within. I felt so much a part of the Lord's universe, I was no more
afraid of the dark than the wave or the winds.
Storms frequently swept over White Island. One
particularly severe gale struck in 1839 when Celia was four years old,
washing away henhouses and forcing her father to bring the family's cow
into the kitchen. During the storm the brig Pocahontas
was wrecked on a nearby sandbar and all aboard perished. The memory of
this incident inspired Celia Thaxter's poem, "The Wreck of the
Pocahontas," which read, in part:
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- I lit the lamps in the
lighthouse tower,
- For the sun dropped down and the day
was dead.
- They shone like a glorious clustered
flower,
- Ten golden and five red.
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- Like all the demons loosed at last,
- Whistling and shrieking, wild and wide,
- The mad wind raged, while strong and
fast
- Rolled in the rising tide.
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- The thick storm seemed to break apart
- To show us, staggering to her grave,
- The fated brig. We had no heart
- To look, for naught could save.
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Many visitors came to White Island in the summers while
the Laightons lived there. The visitors included Richard Henry Dana,
author of Two Years Before the Mast.
In times of rough weather, the residents of White Island
were frequently cut off from the mainland. A pilot boat brought mail
and supplies every week or ten days. Once a year Eliza Laighton
traveled to Portsmouth to buy materials to make clothing for her
family. A few times a year the lighthouse inspector would come,
bringing oil for the lamps and other supplies, sometimes including a
barrel of pork.
Celia's brother, Oscar Laighton, wrote about his
childhood on White Island in his book, Ninety Years at the
Isles of Shoals:
Many people have said, 'You must have been
very lonely at the Light.' They did not know that where our mother
dwelt there was happiness also. I am sure no family was ever more
united and contented than the Laightons on White Island. As a young girl, Celia
learned to help her father light the lamps and polish the reflectors
and lantern glass. The Laightons eventually moved to the much larger
island of Appledore, where they operated a hotel for many years. The
hotel's guests included Longfellow, Emerson, and Whittier. Levi Thaxter
tutored the Laighton children; he and Celia eventually married. The
author Nathaniel Hawthorne visited White Island with Celia Thaxter's
husband, Levi Thaxter, on September 9, 1852. The keeper at the time was
L. H. D. Shepard. Hawthorne's description of the visit appears in his American Note-Books:
Mr.
Thaxter rowed me this morning, in his dory, to White Island, on which
is the lighthouse. There was scarcely a breath of air, and a perfectly
calm sea; an intensely hot sunshine, with a little haze, so that the
horizon was indistinct. Here and there sail-boats sleeping on the
water, or moving almost imperceptibly over it. The lighthouse island
would be difficult of access in a rough sea, the shore being so rocky.
On landing, we found the keeper peeling his harvest of onions, which he
had gathered prematurely, because the insects were eating them. His
little patch of garden seemed to be a strange kind of soil, as like
marine mud as anything; but he had a fair crop of marrow squashes,
though injured, as he said, by the last storm; and there were cabbages
and a few turnips. I recollect no other garden vegetables. The grass
grows pretty luxuriantly, and looked very green where there was any
soil; but he kept no cow, nor even a pig nor a hen. His house stands
close by the garden,--a small stone building, with peaked roof, and
whitewashed. The lighthouse stands on a ledge of rock, with a gulley
between, and there is a long covered way, triangular in shape,
connecting his residence with it. We ascended into the lantern, which
is eighty-seven feet high. It is a revolving light, with several great
illuminators of copper silvered, and colored lamp-glasses. Looking
downward, we had the island displayed as on a chart, with its little
bays, its isthmus of shingly beach connecting two parts of the island,
and overflowed at high tide; its sunken rocks about it, indicated by
the swell, or slightly breaking surf. The keeper of the light-house was
formerly a writing-master. He has a sneaking kind of look, and does not
bear a very high character among his neighbors. Since he kept the
light, he has lost two wives--the first a young creature whom he used
to leave alone upon this desolate rock, and the gloom and terror of the
situation were probably the cause of her death.
The second wife, experiencing the
same kind of treatment, ran away from him, and returned to her friends.
He pretends to be religious, but drinks. About a year ago he attempted
to row out alone from Portsmouth. There was a head wind and head tide,
and he would have inevitably drifted out to sea, if Mr. Thaxter had not
saved him.
While
we were standing in his garden-patch, I heard a woman's voice inside
the dwelling, but know not whose it was. |
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A new 58-foot brick lighthouse tower was built on
White Island in 1859. The new tower was fitted with a second-order
Fresnel lens.
A duplex keeper's house built in 1878 was removed
by the Coast Guard in the 1950s.
There was an amazing rescue one winter in the
mid-1800s at White Island Light.
John Bragg Downs was temporarily acting as keeper,
with a friend as his assistant. The two men were at the lighthouse when
a severe blizzard hit, with blinding snow and heavy seas covering the
island. One night, much to their shock, there was a knock at the door.
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White Island
Light c. 1870s
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When they opened the door, the men discovered a
lone sailor, dressed in tattered rags and bleeding from many wounds.
The man had somehow come ashore from a brig wrecked on the rocks.
After a great deal of effort, Downs ventured out
on a ledge and managed to get a line to the rest of the crew on the
vessel. He then tied the line around himself. Downs wedged himself into
a crevice, and every man managed to get ashore from the sinking ship.
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The
lighthouse station's kitchen, circa 1950.
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From The
Shoreliner, September 1950.
Right:
1930 Notice to Mariners concerning a chnage in the light characteristic. |
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Douglas
Larrabee was the officer in charge in the early 1950s |
Coast Guard keepers John Parks and Bill Cannon in 1950
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The fog bell at White Island was replaced by a
new bell and striking machinery in 1906. This was replaced later by a
powerful air siren.
After the Coast Guard took over at White
Island, three men were assigned to the station. Harold Roberts was one
of the crewmen in 1956-58. He later wrote the following:
During the winter of 1956, we
were experiencing one of those rare days
at the Isles of Shoals when the sun was shining and the sea was
placid, but it was still bitter cold. I decided to take the small
double ended peapod dinghy we used to get on and off the island and row
around to the back of the island get close to the seals that often lay
on the rocks sunning themselves on such days. This day there was a
larger number of seals lying on the rocks and I hoped I could get close
to them with arousing them.
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U.S.
Coast Guard photo
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As I rowed around the back side
of the island about 200 yards out I suddenly heard a roaring noise to
my right. A huge wave, a groundswell about 20 feet high, was coming
right at me. I swung the bow of the boat into the wave but not fast
enough to prevent the boat from being overturned and me being dumped
into the ocean.
The water was
bitter cold and I was clothed with heavy foul weather gear including
heavy robber boots. The weight of my boots filling with water pulled me
down and prevented me from using my legs to kick myself to the surface.
Judging from the pressure in my ears I must have sank at least 15 feet
before I started slowly rising to the surface. The air trapped in my
jacket saved me from being pulled down to the bottom. As soon as I
broke surface I started to sink again. My hands were so
frozen I could not unclasp the boots that were preventing me from
swimming. I knew I was in grave danger of drowning. In desperation and
fear called out to God to save me. A moment later, the capsized dingy
suddenly appeared right next to me. I was able to hold on to the boat
to stay afloat. My next and most immediate problem was the cold. I was
freezing to death. I was aware that a man can't stay alive very long
exposed to those conditions. The other problem was I was several
hundred yards off the island and no one knew I was in trouble. Charlie
Martian and I were alone on the island and he was unaware of my
predicament.
I must have fallen
asleep from the cold and was not aware that the boat with me clinging
half conscious to the side had drifted to the island and a gentle swell
pushed us into the rocks. I had enough strength to climb up out of the
water and make my way to the keeper’s house. Charley Martian was in the
kitchen when I came in the door. I must looked frozen which I was.
Charlie got blankets for me to help me recover my body heat.
To this day I
believe it was divine intervention that saved my life on that bitter
cold winter day on the Isles of Shoals.
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Kevin Murphy was one of the Coast Guard keepers
1982-83. In an email in
August 2009, he wrote, "While I have no horrific storm stories to tell,
we certainly had our
share of storms and there where times we would get stuck out on the
island for a month because we couldn’t get the dory off the island.
Occasionally we had to be air lifted off the island which I thought
was kind of fun!"
Murphy says he enjoyed his time on the island and
he's happy to see that local people are working for the preservation of
the light station's buildings.
Glenn Young of York, Maine, was a machinery
technician when he was in the Coast Guard. He was stationed on the
island during a memorable storm in March 1984. As 35-foot waves crashed
against the lighthouse and keeper's house, the crewmen calmly watched
TV.
About once an hour, Young went to check the light.
To do so he had to go through an enclosed wooden walkway between the
house and tower. Waves were washing right over the walkway and water
was pouring through the cracks, so Young had to wait for the waves to
recede before running the length of the walkway. The storm did much
damage at the station and deposited a 3 1/2-ton boulder on the
helicopter pad.
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The boat ramp and peapod boat in
the 1950s
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Rick Bennett and Kevin Madison were among the last
Coast Guardsmen at White Island. In the summer, the men would visit the
inhabitants of the other islands nearby. Storms sometimes made it very
difficult for the crew to land at White Island. Kevin Madison says that although the 1986
automation of White Island Light was sad in a way, it was also very
interesting. The Coast Guard crew spent three months working with a
civilian crew from Portland on the automation process. After the automation, the Coast Guard keepers were
removed. A couple of years later, the huge Fresnel lens was replaced by
aerobeacons. The present VRB-25 optic is solar-powered. Hurricane Bob and the ferocious "Perfect Storm" of
October 1991 washed away the walkway from the tower to the house, as
well as the old fog signal tower.
This video was shot by
one of the Coast Guard lighthouse keepers during the blizzard of
February 6-7, 1978. It was probably shot from the keeper's house. You
can see a storage shed being moved around by the waves that are
reaching far up onto the island. Courtesy of Sue Reynolds, The
Lighthouse Kids.
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Members
of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire conducting a tern count on
Seavey Island
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In 1993, White Island became the property of the
State of New Hampshire. The keeper's house has been used in recent
years by personnel of the Audubon Society of New
Hampshire, who have implemented a tern
restoration project on adjacent Seavey Island.
Over the years, the lighthouse tower developed
major cracks in its exterior, mostly on the northeast side that bears
the brunt of storms.
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The good news is that seventh grade students in
North Hampton, New Hampshire, along with a teacher, Sue Reynolds, have
worked to save the lighthouse. You can see the website of the "Lighthouse
Kids" here.
On April 30, 2003, Senator
Judd Gregg of New Hampshire announced that a matching grant of $250,000
in federal funds from the Save America's Treasures program was awarded
for the restoration of the White Island Lighthouse.
On June 22, 2005, the Lighthouse Kids
presented New Hampshire Governor John Lynch with a check for $110,000.
In accepting the check, the state authorized the Division of Parks and
Recreation to expend the money for conservation and restoration of the
White Island Light Station.
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Some
of the cracks on the tower's exterior in 2002
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Some of the
"Lighthouse Kids" on a trip to White Island, June 20, 2002
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The check represented
money the Lighthouse Kids raised through corporate and private
fundraising, foundation grants and merchandise sales. It was combined
with a portion of the $250,000 Save America's Treasures grant and state
funds to allow a full restoration of the tower and a partial
restoration of the keeper's house.
The work was done during the summer of 2005 by Ricci Construction of
Portsmouth, NH, J. B. Leslie Company of South Berwick, Maine, and F. A.
Gray Company of Portsmouth. |
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The Lighthouse Kids measured the cracks in
the lighthouse on October 10, 2002
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Local businesses pitched in to help the
Kids
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The Lighthouse
Kids in downtown Portsmouth, NH, April 8, 2005
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The keeper's house was reroofed and painted, and
rotting woodwork was replaced. The renovations stopped water leaks that
had plagued the house in recent years.
More than 1,000 bricks were replaced in the tower
during the 2005 restoration. The brick courses were strengthened with
the addition of stainless steel ties, and the entire tower received a
protective layer of stucco. The glass block windows in the tower were
replaced by windows that are more like the original ones.
A northeast storm in mid-April 2007 did much
damage on the island. The walkway was demolished, and the solar panels
for the light were swept away.
In early 2008, the rotating VRB-25 optic that had
been in use at White Island for several years was replaced by a solar-powered VLB-44
light emitting diode unit (LED).
The walkway between the tower and house was rebuilt using FEMA funds in the summer of 2011.
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An aerial view of
Star Island with White Island in the background.
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The lighthouse in June 2007, after the covered
walkway was demolished by a storm in April
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- The walkway between the tower and house was being reconstructed when this photo was taken in September 2011.
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- 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.) - William Randall (c. 1830s?); Joseph
L. Locke (c.1831-1839); Thomas Laighton (1839-1846); Ben Whaling
(employee of Thomas Laighton, c.1839-1846); Fabius Becker
(c.1846-1849?); L. H. D. Shepard (1849-1855); Richard G. Haley
(1855-1861); Otis F. Haley (assistant, 1859-1861); John Bragg Downs (c.
1850, temporary keeper); Alfred J. Leavitt (1861-1866); Jonathan
Godfrey (assistant, 1861-1863); Alonzo D. Berry (assistant, 1863-1864);
Albert S. Perkins (assistant, 1864-1866); John E. Hoyt (assistant,
1866-1867); Alonzo Wise (1866-1869); George Balch (assistant,
1867-1868); John L. Allen (assistant, 1867-1868); Wiliam H. White
(assistant, 1868-1869); Frank A. Otis (assistant, 1868-1870); Joshua
Bickford (1869); Jonathan W. Berry (1869-1874); Abram Mathes (?)
(assistant, 1869-1871); Thomas J. Varrell (assistant, 1870); George
Chaplin (assistant, 1871); ? Gray (assistant, 1870); ? A. Yeaton
(assistant, 1872); Parsons (?) Locke (assistant, 1872-1873); Charles H.
Ramsdell (second assistant, 1873); Franklin R. Bragden (assistant,
1874-1876); Israel P. Miller (1874-1876); Edwin J. Hobbs (1876-1880);
Alden W. P. White (assistant, 1876-1877, 1880); David R. Grogan (1880-1894);
James Burke (1894-1912); Elias Tarlton, Jr. (assistant, 1884-1890);
Thomas H. Barber (assistant, 1890-1891); Walter S. Amee (assistant,
1893); John Scannell (assistant, 1893-1894); John A. Hall (assistant,
1894-1896); Wallace S. Chase (assistant, 1897); William M. Brooks
(assistant, 1897); Gordon A. Sullivan (assistant, 1909-1912); Alvah
Robinson (assistant, c. 1914?); Edwin A. Pettegrow (c. early 1920s);
Albert Staples (1926-1930); Charles U. Gardner (Coast Guard relief
keeper, c, 1942-1943) ; Douglas Larrabee (c. 1950); Bill Cannon (Coast
Guard, c. 1948-1950); John Parks (Coast Guard, c, 1948-1950); Charles
Martin (c. 1956-1958); Harold Roberts (c. 1956-1958); Anthony Cherico
(c. 1956-1958); Allan Petersen (USCG Officer in Charge, 1961-1962); BM1
Ira Machon (Coast Guard Officer in Charge, c. 1965-1966); ? Gordon,
USCG (1968-1970); Bruce Blanchard (Coast Guard EN2, 1968-70); Bob
Larson (Coast Guard, 1972-1974); Ron Tinkham (Coast Guard, 1972-1974);
John C. Waterman (Coast Guard, c. 1977-1978); PO1 Rick Loster, USCG
Officer in Charge (8/1983-6/1984); FN Kevin Murphy (Coast Guard,
1982-1983); PO3 Joel Wood (Coast Guard, c. 1983); Jeff Jones,
(Coast Guard, c. 1983); Scott Powell, (Coast Guard, c. 1983); Glenn
Young (Coast Guard, c. 1984); Rick Bennett, (Coast Guard, c. 1986);
Kevin Madison, (Coast Guard, c. 1986)
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