Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

CHAPTER THREE THE LIGHTKEEPERS

Life in a Lighthouse, Specifically Screwpile Lighthouses Screwpile lighthouses were charming, the scenery lovely, and the wages regular, but the lives of the lighthouse keepers were far from easy—or secure. Subject to strict regulations, transfers, and regular inspections, the lightkeepers also faced long shifts, hard labor, and solitary stretches of isolation. Rivers and bays were the interstates of their day and vitally important to both travel and commerce. It must have taken unique personalities to shoulder the responsibility for the safety of mariners and their watercraft on those waterways. Lightkeepers routinely maintained their stations, polishing lenses, tending equipment, and keeping the lighthouse spotless, painted, and shipshape. They were accountable, too, for the daily log that detailed the day’s work and occurrences, a record that had to be current, accurate, and ready for review.

lighthouse vessels. The development of the screwpile lighthouses, built over water rather than on land, required a new skill set of the keepers. The keepers’ living arrangements changed as well, with families often separated while the keeper was aboard the station. The Hooper Strait Lighthouse at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland, displays an example of the job descriptions prepared by the Lighthouse Board in 1859. The description specifies the keeper’s duties and the percentages of the day each task should require.

30% 25% 15% 10% 10% 10%

Standing watch, attending to light and fog bell

Painting

Handling boats

Maintenance: scrubbing, cleaning, polishing brass, filling lamps

Visiting minor lights nearby

On numerous occasions, lightkeepers put their own lives in jeopardy, braving storms to rescue mariners in peril or to stabilize their lighthouses when battered by high water, gale winds, or ice floes.

Record keeping, picking up mail and supplies

The lightkeepers’ obsolete—if winsome—nickname, “Wickies” (an archaic reference to trimming lamp wicks), certainly overlooked the complexities and hazards of a keeper’s life aboard a screwpile lighthouse. The keepers were expected to be jacks of-all-trades—competently self-sufficient. They were required to be literate and mathematically adept as well as versed in basic carpentry and mechanical skills. As early as 1835, the keepers faced job reviews—evaluations of their performance in meeting the requirements of their wide-ranging job description, as detailed by a Mr. S. Pleasonton of the U.S. Treasury Department.

As coastal and river traffic increased, so did the need for lighthouses, keepers, and

An anonymous lightkeeper (left) and Ida Lewis (right), lightkeeper at Lime Rock, Rhode Island, for 54 years; she was credited with saving 18 lives.

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