Lamps unto my Fleet

by

John Lockwood

The first European visitors to the Atlantic shores of America came in small sailing vessels of wood. By our standards today, their ships were hardly more than large fishing boats. It must have taken considerable courage to launch oneself out upon the Atlantic in the old days, out of sight of land. Storms could be raging just over the horizon, pack ice might block your path, unfriendly winds might blow you off course into seas that lie off your charts. Indeed, an inspection of Lloyd's List in England shows hundreds of British ships -- just British alone -- lost in every single year in the 19th century. Things were just as bad in earlier centuries, except that there were fewer ships. The loss of life resulting from these casualties was appalling. We would never accept such losses today. Commerical casulaties occur so rarely now that the loss of a commercial aircraft in India makes headlines worldwide, but for the roughly four hundred-year period of European exploration, emigration, and mercantile expansion, thousands of people lost their lives every year on the high seas. That was the price of sailing out to sea in times before modern weather forecasting gave warning of trouble ahead and before radio gave opportunity for send appeals for help. Many ships sailed off from European ports bound for the New World, Africa, or the Orient and were never heard from again.

The first explorers of the American coasts had the additional problem of dealing with unfamiliar shorelines. It was not only storms that caused lost ships but the very great danger of running aground on shoals or piling up on offshore rocks. Either mishap could destroy a vessel and kill its crew as surely as a hurricane could send a boat to Davy Jone's Locker. Imagine, if you will, the knot of fear that gripped the vitals of the crewmen of a vessel that found itself fast upon a sandbar at high tide off the American coast in the early 17th century. There was no way to notify home of your predicament, no outpost of civilization nearby, almost no chance of encountering a passing vessel. Beyond the breakers on the coast, if you could see the coast at all, was a vast green forest, as dense as any in Germany or Poland, that stretched deep into the continent. So deep did it stretch that none knew its extent. Therein dwelt wolves, bears, lions and other great beasts, poisonous snakes and plants, and naked savages whose behavior and attitude was certain only to be unpredictable. There were old reports of the Americas from the Spanish explorers -- dockyard rumors -- of burning deserts and mighty mountain ranges far inland, and of crazed heathens who built vast stone temples and practiced human sacrifice to propitiate the demons they worshipped.

The mariner's nightmare was the 'lee shore' -- a shore toward which the wind was blowing -- where one's vessel could be beached and pounded to pieces by the surf. In the days of sail, that was a more common fate than racking up on offshore rocks. To mark these dangers, the erecting of warning lights ashore had long been practiced by the seafarers of the Old World -- even of the ancient world. In fact, two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were lighthouses of imposing stature. The Colossus of Rhodes in ancient Greece was said to straddle the channel of that busy seaport, its enormous feet planted on two points of land enclosing the harbor. No one believes this today, the brittle weight of stone would not allow such a construction. It must have stood beside the harbor entrance. The Colossus was also said to hold a torch in its hand, which would make the giant a lighthouse. Another of the seven Wonders was unquestionably a lighthouse. This was the Pharos of Alexandria. It was 450 feet tall and held a fire at the top which was constantly attended by slaves. It shone from the shore out into the Mediterranean, signaling to mariners far out to sea, a pillar of flame by night, a pillar of smoke by day.

In the old days, the few shore lights naturally visible through the black of night or the murk of fog were of little help to the mariner. To aid navigation, unmistakable signal lights had to be employed. These might be nothing more than large fires tended on the beach, but the most efficient were Pharos-like towers on top of which a bright lamp was placed -- a lighthouse. The taller the lighthouse the further offshore it could be discerned. The same could of course be said for the brightness of the light. Probably the most famous European lighthouse is the Eddystone Light off Plymouth, England. It was built in 1697 and was a remarkable achievement. It rests atop a large stone and has withstood the pounding of the waves for three hundred years. It is probable that it was this lighthouse that Charles Dickens had in mind when he wrote in A Christmas Carol:

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.

The New World, too, needed these lamps to guide or warn away from danger the fleet of ships that Europe began to send forth to the western shores in the years after Columbus. New England and Cape Cod were the first settling point of North America and the New England shoreline, with its points and shoals was particularly difficult to navigate.

Bartholomew Gosnold left what is now Provincetown Harbor on Cape Cod's bayside in the Spring of 1602 to explore the ocean shoreline beyond Race Point. He had just named the Cape after the great catches of Cod that his seamen had taken in the Bay, probably over what is now called the Stellwagen Bank. At one point, he noted in his log a dangerous shallows off the barrier beach at present day Eastham. He called the shoal Tucker's Terror. This was the Ile Nauset, a point of shallow water that by our time has utterly eroded away. It was typical of the problems encountered when negotiating the waters about Cape Cod and the Islands. The Cape's many shoals, offshore rocks, and points make it a headache for mariners. Constant vigilance is needed to avoid disaster when plying the coast here. It is not surprising that early on in the Colonial history of America, lighthouses were erected about the Cape to protect and guide ships and their precious cargo.

The first lighthouse in America was Boston Light in the harbor of that city, but the second lighthouse is said to be Brant Point Light

There are two other lights on Nantucket. Nantucket Light, also known as Great Point Light is remote and inaccessible except by a long hike. It can be easily seen from offshore as one approaches the island. It is a blinking white light on a point of land far to the port side of the boat. With a range of ten miles, it can be seen at night from the beaches or docks of Nantucket town. By day, one can make it out from the steeple of the Old North Church on Centre Street with binoculars when the weather is clear. Through the eyepieces, one sees a tall, almost featureless tower, its whitewashed exterior blinding white in the sun. It stands alone amid silent breakers and windblown beach grass on a low spit of land that is ever in danger of being cut off from the main part of the island by the restless sea. Originally, the keeper had to make a seven mile trek to the light along the beach to tend to it, but today, like all lighthouses, it is automated.

By bicycle or car some seven miles from Nantucket Town is the small community of Siasconset (or S'conset, as it is often pronounced). Siasconset is a town of fabulously expensive houses. Although a few residents are native islanders (I know of at least one), it is primarily a summer community for those landlubbers rich enough to afford its off-the-scale real estate prices. Here one encounters the impressive sea escarpment where Nantucket faces the open Atlantic. This is the only barrier beach on Cape Cod and the Islands that does face the open ocean, the rest all face toward either embayments or toward sounds. Sankaty Head Light sits atop this fast eroding scarp.

The Sankaty (the accent is on the first syllable) headland is quite high. Standing at the light, to look inland is to look downhill. One can make out the golf course in the distance, the flags in front of its club house fluttering briskly in the inevitable wind. There are a few opulent beach "cottages" along the road as one approaches the lighthouse, but the lighthouse itself is isolated. The sea cliff on which it stands is fragile and dangerous. The visitor is kept from it by a rather unpicturesque chainlink fence. There is no keeper's house, a fact true of all three lighthouses on Nantucket. There is serenity here, but not silence. It is the quietude of a solitary lighthouse sitting high atop a sea bluff, the distant thunder of the breakers far below and the whistle of the almost constant wind through the chainlink fence its only company.

As one returns from Nantucket into Hyannis Harbor, the South Hyannis Light is seen on the property of a well-to-do resident. This short light is no longer in use as a lighthouse. The lantern room has been converted into a sort of observation deck for use by the owner. Another extinct light is the Monomoy Point Light at the south end of Monomoy Island in Chatham. This light was for a long time surrounded by a small fishing village. The fishing turned sour and the village depopulated about 1850 or so, but the light kept working until 1923. The Stonehorse Lightship has taken the place of the Monomoy Point Light.

The island of Monomoy was a peninsula until 1958 when a storm surge burst the waters of Nantucket Sound through it, chopping off the southern portion of the land from the long barrier beach of the Outer Cape which faces the Gulf of Maine from Chatham to Provincetown. Today, the old peninsula is further divided into two islands: the North Monomoy Island, within swimming distance of the mainland, is made up in a good part from salt marshes, and South Monomoy Island, much larger, with several fresh water ponds and all the beach one could wish for. Together, they stretch out from Chatham far into Nantucket Sound. Flat, sandy, and covered with a wavy carpet of beach grass, the Monomoy Islands are today unpopulated by man. Together, they constitute a National Wildlife Preserve. The rebuilt keeper's house of the old Monomoy Point Lighthouse serves as a sleep-over camp for the preserve's few visitors. Monomoy is a true seashore Eden. It is cut off from the Cape with its hordes of lumpy-white bathing-suited tourists and their romping, whining, bellowing children. There, the Monomoy Point Light stands its silent and unblinking watch over a peaceful domain of softly hissing grass, sand and sea, basking seals, visiting ducks, cawing gulls and terns, nesting plovers, a few rabbits, and scurrying, burrowing field mice.

The South Hyannis Light is not the only privately owned former lighthouse on the Cape. The Bass River Light is in private hands. Associated with The Bass River Inn, it is still illuminated by its owner during the tourist season. Also private is Sandy Neck Light which was decommissioned in 1921. Sandy Neck itself is a sort of Cape within the Cape.

It is a long point of reed-tufted sand dunes facing Cape Cod Bay and dividing the bay from Barnstable Harbor. There are several beach houses there, built along a sandy road. The last house on the road is the former keepers' house for the light. The house faces Barnstable Harbor and next to it stands the old tower. Only vehicles under special permit are to use this road, so the lighthouse is not easily accessible. It can be seen from across Barnstable Harbor at the Mattakeese wharf from which fishing boats and whale watch vessels depart. The lantern is capped and the Sandy Neck Light no longer shines. Lighted buoys in the harbor do its work today.

The Nobska Point Light, on the other hand is a real, working light. It stands on a promontory 90 feet above the water on Nobska Point, Woods Hole, Town of Falmouth. From this point, one can see Martha's Vineyard and Naushon Island. Naushon is the largest and nearest of the Elizabeth Island chain which stretches southwestward from the southwesternmost point of Cape Cod, dividing the waters of Vineyard Sound from Buzzards Bay. This is a heavily traveled area. Buzzards Bay is the southern gateway to the Cape Cod Canal, a most important commercial waterway. The channel from Buzzards Bay to Vineyard Sound is the path to Providence, New York City, the open ocean, Europe, and the World. The metal-clad tower of Nobska Light is painted a workmanlike white, it flashes a white light to the horizon 16 miles away every six seconds. At the same pace, in deference to more modern maritime custom, it has a radio beacon broadcasting at 291 kHz the letters "NP" -- Nobska Point. There is also a deafening foghorn which was blasting away twice every half minute on the dreary day I was there to take this picture of myself before the lighthouse.

Martha's Vineyard, just across from Nobska Point, has five lighthouses built upon it, all of them still working. Gay Head Light, a red brick tower with an enormous lantern room, marks out the eastern end of the approach to Vineyard Sound, the western end is marked by the Cuttyhunk Light. Cuttyhunk is another of the Elizabeths, the last in the chain. The remaining Vineyard lights are Cape Poge Light, on the famous Chappaquidick Island; Edgartown Light; and the two lights marking the entrance to Vineyard Haven, the West Chop and the East Chop lights. Edgartown Light flashes red and sits almost in the water. The Cape Poge Light looks like Great Point Light on Nantucket -- a solitary whitewash tower poised at the edge of nowhere.

Nobska Light is far to the mainland side of the Cape, but it does not qualify geographically as the "first" lighthouse on Cape Cod. If the Cape is taken to begin after one crosses either the Sagamore or Bourne Bridge, as most people consider today, then the first lighthouse on the Cape is Wing's Neck Light in Pocasset, Town of Bourne.

This light was discontinued in 1946 and is today privately owned. So the Nobska Light is the first active light on Cape Cod, geograhically from the landward. At the other end of the Cape is Long Point Light in Provincetown. Standing at the veriest tip of Cape Cod, it guards the entrance to Provincetown Harbor. It is one of three P'town lighthouses, all of them active. The other two are Wood End Light and Race Point Light. The Wood End Light is almost indistinguishable from Long Point Light. Both are simple wood towers with solar panels charging the batteries which power their flashing white lights. Wood End is just up the beach from Long Point. Both lights are remote and difficult to reach from land. They are best seen from the water. The same is true for Race Point Light. This lighthouse is separated from P'town by Hatches Harbor, a saltwater lake of sorts. The path to town circumvents this barrier and then traverses over dunes and beach grass to a road that leads into Provincetown. Race Point Light has a keeper's house for company, unlike the other two P'town lighthouses.

Race Point is the end of the oceanside of the Cape, the Wood End and Long Point Lights, down the beach bit farther, are facing Cape Cod Bay. They are the only active Cape lights that face the bay. It was not always so, Sandy Neck Light, as previously discussed, was once active at the mouth of Barnstable Harbor. There was also a light at Mayo Beach athwart Wellfleet Harbor. This light was decommissioned in 1922 after about eighty-five years of service. The keeper's house was sold to a private party who had the tower razed for some reason around 1940. How often I have dined on breakfast at the Bookstore Restaurant and Bomb Shelter Cafe on Kendrick Avenue along Wellfleet Harbor and then sat out on one of the benches along Mayo Beach next to the old keeper's house, letting the warmth of the recently consumed coffee, bacon and eggs fend off the chill morning breeze coming off the water. For years, the house slowly weathered until it was much in need of repair. Had I the funds, I would have bought it and started the renovation work myself. Fortunately, there are others with more resources than I. The last few years have seen this fine example of Lighthouse Service architecture restored beautifully in dazzling white and deep green trim. [note: August 2000, the Mayo Beach Keeper's House is listed for sale. Asking price: $895,000.00]

Another extinct bayside lighthouse was that on the now eroded away Billingsgate Island in the Bay itself. This light disappeared with island in 1942. A keeper there, Herman Dill, was one of two Cape Cod lighthouse keepers to die on duty. The other was Albert Gifford of the Wing's Neck Light, who died in 1908 during a storm that was buffeting the Cape, possibly of heart failure brought on by overwork and stress caused by the storm. In the old days, keepers had to stay up all night in storms to ring the fog bell every thirty seconds or so. Dill of Billingsgate Island died two days after a bad late winter storm in 1876. He was found dead in his drifting boat in the bay. He probably was trying to reach the mainland to seek medical attention.

The very first lighthouse erected on the Cape was the Highland Light in Truro, on the oceanside. It warns vessels of the Peaked Hill Bars, a shoal of considerable danger. This light is sometimes called the Cape Cod Light, recognizing its place as the first lighthouse erected on the Cape.

With its gray-shingled keeper's house sitting atop the Truro headland, it is an impressive sight to see. In 1995, encroaching seas threatened it and it was moved back from the very brink of the sea cliff on which it stands watch. Down the beach a few miles is Nauset Heights. This area once boasted three lighthouses, the so-called "Three Sisters of Nauset". These were three identical towers of wood arranged in a row atop the marine escarpment that faces the ocean there. Lighthouses have what is called a "characteristic". That is, something to distinguish them from other lights. This may be the color of the light, the frequency or cluster of the flashes, or a combination of these factors. Lighthouses are also painted a variety of colors and patterns so that they can be distinguished by day as well. The characteristic of the three sisters was, of course, three lights. This differed from the Highland Light downcape a bit which had a single light, and the Chatham Light upcape a ways, which had two lights. Eventually, this triple light arrangement was abandoned as not cost-effective. The three sisters were sold off, two being incorporated into a house inland, and the other remaining as part of a beach house called The Beacon which sat for many years atop the scarp. They were reunited during the 1980's and now sit in a clearing in the woods behind our beach house.

The three sisters were replaced by one of the two Chatham Lighthouses, which was moved to Nauset in 1923. For years after, its characteristic carried a reminder of the three Sisters, flashing three times in rapid succession, followed by an interval of darkness until the lamp rotated about again (it currently flashes white and red, the same colors with which the tower is painted, alternately).

I always enjoyed sitting at night, listening to the sea, on an Adirondack chair in front of our beach house which is hidden away in the woods at Nauset Heights. The sound of the surf crushing itself to hissing pieces on the beach a few hundred yards away always is more distinct at night. I sat there one night with my father, who lit a cigar, watching the triple flash of Nauset Light play on the tree tops about our house. At one point, my father inhaled on the cigar causing its red tip to glow brightly. This, combined with the flashing ghost of the Three Sisters, illumined a pair of eyes low to the ground in the dark of the dirt road that ran to a dead end in front of us at the woods. I could barely make out a body attached to those eyes which were advancing on us confidently. The body was dark -- very dark, black -- but it featured a broad and unmistakable band of white. "Dad", I whispered, "skunk". Dad slowly turned his head in the direction I had indicated. "E," whispered Father, "Gad". We then fell prudently silent. The skunk advanced and strode boldly beneath my father's chair. Liking the relative protection offered by this, Mr. Skunk lay down like a cat. We remained still, Dad and I. The skunk didn't smell bad. Skunks don't smell bad, they make you smell bad. Dad sat unmoving with his arm cocked, holding the cigar until the lengthening ash dimmed the red light at its end. How long would the damned skunk stay? I started counting the flashes of the Nauset Light 1-2-3 ten second pause, 4-5-6 pause, 7-8-9 pause, etc. At 79-80-81 pause, the skunk got bored, got up, and sauntered off into the woods. Dad flicked off the ash at the end of the cigar and took a drag. Then another. "Nice night", I said as Nauset Light beamed thrice overhead. We then sat quietly together, listening to the Atlantic waves breaking in the night. "Lost ships," said Dad, "it sounds like someone saying 'lost ships' over and over."

The ocean rolled on, "lost ships, lost ships," the latter word drawn out softly at the end. "Lost ships, lost ships, lost ships", again and again refrained the sea as if it had assumed the spirit voice of some long dead sailor who had washed up on a lee shore for want of a lighthouse to guide him to safety.

FIN

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4 June 2000