Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, May 5, 1914, Page 10

all of his light- beacons and other aids to navigation, the resulting illum- ination would send a brilliant band of light completely around the world. other government on earth main- such an elaborate lighthouse serv- dce the United States. Consider that the coast line of the United States and its DPossessions is nearly 49,000 miles long— almost twice the “circumference of the earth—and you will understand why. And still Uncle Sam does not do full justice to those who go down to the mea in ships. The cry comes from the Florida reefs and from the tortuous channels of Alaska for “more Hghts that lives may be saved; it Gomes from every quarter of the coun- try where there are navigable waters, the use of which is increasing. iy tains * * * The government of the Philippine Is- lands maintains its own lighthouse eStab- lishment, the Panama Canal Zone has its alds to navigation as a part of canal ad- ministration, but all the remainder of the coast line of the possessions of the United States s protected by the bureau of lighthouses of the Department of Com- merce. This remaining coast line is 46,328 miles fong. There is included in this mileage the 4,020 miles of American shore on the great lakes and 5,478 miles of interlor and coastal rivers that need protection. Near- 1y 5000 lighthouses, lightships, fixed lighted beacons, gas buoys end float lghts are maintained on this water front- age. In addition there are more than 8,800 unlighted aids, such as fog signals, submarine signals, buoys and daymarks kept up, L 7 the bureau. A smart little navy of forty-five vessels, ealled lighthouse tenders, is supported to look after these. And the total cost of the whole service to Uncle Sam hereto- fore has not exceeded $6,000,000 a year, the construction of new tenders, light houses, works of various sort, Included. This year the bureau is asking Congress to apfropriate about $1,000,000 more, about $2,000,000 of the total amount to be expended in new work. At $6,000,000 a year the per capita cost to the people of the United States. estimating the present population at 100,000,000, is 6 cents. Only an actuary of powerful imagination can calculate the return in lives and property saved. Five thousand five hundred men #£nd women—for there are a few woman life keepers—make up the personnel of this pieturesque and highly efficient lighthouse service. Most of these are actually with the lights and beacons; only 211 are in the executive. engineering and clerical forces. It isn't a service topheavy with #irecting heads. Of light keepers there are 1,733; 1,570 care for the little post 1ights one finds on rivers, lakes and bays; 1516 are on the lightships and light- house tenders, and 489 are in the con- struction and repair force. * * * At the head of the bureau of light- houses is George R. Putnam, long trained in the work, who is known as commis- sioner, with George S. Conway as assist- ant commissioner. Both are distinguished civil engineers, members of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Just now the bureau is making up the record of the winter's work along its far- flung beacon line. It is a record of trag- edy, heroism, heart-wrenching tales of suf- fering and devotion to duty. Every win- ter it is the same, the only variation being names and localities and minor de- tails. Uncle Sam’s lighthouse and light- ship men are those who, to save life, court death in many forms. Arduous, Jonely, strenuous lives they live, but lives lighted frequently by opportunity to do $reat service to humanity. . The winter that closed so recently was not a particularly disastrous one, as win- ters go, but it had its meed of woe, death and suffering. The greatest tragedy was that which befell light vessel No. 82, the station of which is_thirteen miles southwest from ffalo harbor, north entrance, N. Y. ring the severe storm of November 8, nd 10 last the ship was sunk and the six men on board drowned. Their names, written in the bureau’s long list of those who died at their posts, were Hugh M. Williams, master; Andrew Leaby, mate; Charles W. Butler, engineer; Cornelius Leahy, assistant engineer; William Jen- sen, seaman, and Peter Mackey. cook. In that same storm two other iightshins on the great lakes were dragged from their moorings and great damage was done to them and to lighthouses. * * * Late in November another storm swept the Pacific coast and did widespread dam- age to the lightships and lighthouses. | Famous Tillamook Rock light, on the Oregon coast, fifteen miles south of the mouth of the Columbia, and known all over the world as one of the most sea- swept lights in existence, suffered partic- ularly. One hundred and thirty-two feet above Sea levél is the giant lens of this light. Nevertheless, whipped by the wind, the waves rose still higher and for more than fourteen hours pounded their tons ©of water against the topmost part of the tower. The first great wave smashed in the panes of the light, and thereafter literally millions of gallons of water were poured into the top of the tower, drenching the whole place and endanger- ing the lives of the keepers. fn a storm in an earlier year a mass of eoncrete weighing half a ton was lifted from its resting place, eighty-eight feet above the sea. and thrown over the fence in the Keeper's yard at this light station. Some ' thirty-five vears ago, when the erection of the Tillamook light was begun, the foreman of the work was drowned the first day of operation in trying to get ashore. Baptized in blood. Tillamook has a savage record. : October, 1912, like November, produced a fearful storm about Till mook. For seven weeks the keepers were completely isolated, the light tender not daring to approach because of the surly sea. The light was smashed and the fog signal, whose horns are ninety-five feet above sea level, was put out of com- misgion by being filled with stones thrown Into them by the waves. f Thirteen miles off Cape Hatteras. N, C., marking a reef upon which a number of unsuccessful attempts have been made 1o erect a lighthouse, is moored Diamond shoal light vessel No. 71, in one of the most dangerous and exposed positions on which any ald to navigation is main- tained. The lest few years have been adventurous ones for this ship. B ERE Uncle Sam to string at regular intervals along the line of the equator Qa— O A CoraL. Reer shook her up. Various minor storms dis- turbed the vessel'y equanimity not at all, but in the storm of: February 14 of this year ‘the elements went after her hard. L. Swanberg, master of the vessel, and draw your own conclusions as to the comfort or living on a light “I respectfully repoct to ou day yesterday and all last night we had the heaviest southeast gale that I have experienced here. About midnight was breaking all over the ship. came over and carried awa windleaders on the port side! one went over, but the forward we man- aged to save. She broke in the two after engine room skylights and broke off the after part of the forward railing on port side, but we managed to keep on the station and the light and fog siznals go- ing all night. Everything that we are able to will be put in order. All is well on_board.” Columbia wiver light wvessel No. S8, stationed near the entrance to the Colum- bia river and off the Oregon coast, a station of many storms and great danger, seems to ‘get rather more than her share of bad weather, judging by the records in the Tighthouse bureau. The chief engi- neer of this ship, by the way, is Michael O’'Rourke, the same Michael O’Rourke who has figured, without disguise of name, in a series of popular fiction stories written about the work of the lighthouse service. O'Rourke is the same philoso- sophical, witty character in real life that he Is pictured 4n fiction. n reporting on the storm of January last the master of th: VF‘SOII"!E: r’ :iscf:ged h;w the seas that oard smashed his pilot h away conside P honas o of the ship, from the deck, One sea the two 2 e arried rable of the superstructure tore the bridge binnacie flooded Mickey O'Rourke's engine room, cut Seaman C. Ca about the head with bits of fiving. gla from a broken lantern and washed Sea- man H. K. Hansen away with the wreck 9f fhe wheelhouze. Hansen grabbed the by tog Boit e Vel himse[r,was starti s]:, overboard and * * X In the record of the previous year—fiscal year 1913—the crew of this Columbia lightship gets notice for having to light vessel part of crew of steamship Daisy Freeman, which had stranded.” That was a hazardous and heroic bit of Jork. taking oft In 2 high sea men from vhich was be o 8 ship which Was being pounded to pleces _The same lightship crew also is men- tioned for the care it took of the survivors of the wreck of the steamship Rosecrans and the crew of the Port Adams life- saving station, all of whom took refuge on the lightship and were cared for until weather permitted them to get ashore The Rosecrans was wrecked off the Co- lumbia river bar in a storm of extr; dinary fury. The Port Adams lifesavers went te her rescue, but could not make their way back through the cross se They and those who were reseued f river rought were gathered in those mariners, Capt. .Kenney and 2 O'Rourke. While this was going or lighthouse tender Kanzanita risked the roughness of the bar—windswept until it was almost bare in places—and rushed to the Rosecrans. She stood by, but the lifesavers had got the survivors off by that time. Cape Lookout shoals light vessel, off the coast of North Caroling, has had almost river ship. July 25 five of her crew in on. the boat and all five men were drowned. In the gale of February 24 the ship was dragged from her anchorage and for four days she made a desperate f the wind and waves to keep ne station. So thick was the weathe: it was impossible to see more than position ard finally got back there. = * * The annals of the lighthouse service are full of tales of heroism. Not a month passes but finds a number of these re- corded. The bureaw’s annual report for the fiscal vear ending June 30, 1913, con- tains, in terse, official language, reports of ninety-two of these cases. Since that date almost as many more have been placed on the records. Here is one that is_typical: the crew having died before reaching it . Mass. dramatic in the very curtness of - % i 1n January, 1912, a schooner ran into the ship in a fog—collisions with light #hips in ‘thick wéather are not Infre- quent—and. smashed her up badly. In Beptember, 1913, a storm dragged her @early & mile from her moorings, and phrasing: “Rescued two persons Lake Erie. by Treasury Department.” Here are the bones of a story of dra- matic human interest: Henty R. Bevry, keeper; . Alfred L. Cornell, first assistant second as- keeper; Royal G. Petersen, Read this portion of the report of Charles that_all she the after as much wild adventure as the Columbia her whaleboat were attempting to put the mail from the lightship aboard the steam- er City of Atlanta while a high sea was | The steamer ran down and crushed keep within a few miles of her proper | They were given food and dry clothing and taken care of until the morning of the 1ith, when the tender Anemone ar- rived and took them to Vinevard Haven, Here is the official statement in regard to the case of Robert Allen, keeper of the Presque Isle pierhead light station, Pa., its who were about to drown while bathing in Life saving medal awarded MBRERO KEY.LIGHT sistant keeper, and Peter Anderson, la- borer, at Pilot Island light station, W towed to light station motor boat carry- ing United States mail which had been frozen in ice ten miles from station; also rescued three men from rowboat who were in search of the mail boal” And then, quite casually, the report adds: teported that keepers and crew were seventy-two hours without sleep.” Many miles north of Tillamook, on the Pacific, is another sea-swebt lighthouse at Cape Flattery, lighting the entrance to the straits of Juan de Fuca and Puget sound. John M. Cowan is keeper here, and has been for a generation. His wife and family live with him, the children's playground be the . broad platform, above the sea, about the living quar- of the light. But the raging, un- acific Pacific took its toll of Cowan for robbing it of its prey of mariners. Twice its winds have snatched from the plat- form a Cowan child, tossed it Tnto the bolling sea and drowned it. Still Cowan stays. The lure of the service is on him. = * * There afe tragedies a-plenty in the his- of the beacons of the sea. There was > one at Sand Tsland light, at the en- trance to Mobile bay, Alabama. The hur- |ricane of September, 1906, which swept |the gulf coast, washed away the entire ;s It left the wreck of a tower, but was all. A keeper and his wife d. The second keeper happened to shore and was saved. inots Ledge light was erected In 1848 a reef off Boston harbor that had ters | | be M on used many a wreck. Built on wrought- ron pil this open-work, iron-frame structure survived several storms, but the gale of April 17, 1851, razed it and scat- tered its parts to the four winds. The 1two keepers who were in it at the time S WL P NN B AP P PRGSO MRS BRI FU G, <X T2 TIGHT VESSEL ONIRYING PANSHOALS N. were never seen again. In 18 Minots Ledge light was begun, and was completed five years later. Each-stone was dovetailed into the other in curious fashion: every part made to bear the maximum of strain. It ranks among the difficult lighthouse engineerin; the world. ouse keepers, crews of light ships of lighthouse tenders,. it may have been gathered from the foregoing, give much of their time to succoring mariners in distress and to saving life and property. The tremendous increase in the number of motor boats and small pleasure craft in recent years has added to the chances for giving help. In every month in recent years reports come in of men of the service rescuing yachting and motor boating parties that were confront- ing death. Now come the airships to glve further chances to the lighthouse service to help the distressed. The aeroplane and the hydroplane, in their habitual unexpected dashes from the are growing fond of dropping Into the sea in the vicinity of a light station. That betokens discretion. The sea offers a much nicer cushion for a defective aeroplane and its crew than the hard earth. William H. Nash, second assistant keep- er of Wind Point lighe station, Wisconsin, has the distinction of being the first of the service to salve an airship. Last Fourth of July the hydroplane Fire Fly suddenly quit flying over Lake Michigan. Nash went out in a small boat and res- cued the unsuccessful flier, and with the assistanee of the professional life-savers towed his craft ashore. * * * July 25 the navy's hydroplane C-1 dropped wth two surprised voung officer into Chesapeake bay off the Point Look- out light station, Maryland. Keeper Thom- as Jefferson went out, removed officers g works of |' SPIRE. OF. from the water and towed their machine to safety. In the early days of the American set- tlement, the colonies established light- houses. The general court of Massachu- tts in 1713 heard from one of its com- mittees that the proposal to erect a light- hou t the entrance of Boston harbor “will be of general public benefit and service and is worthy to be encouraged,” and that the want of such a lighthouse “has been a great discouragement to tion by the loss of lives and estates several of his majesty’s subjects.” thwith the lighthouse was built. asfew vears later, the first fog 1 'in America, a cannon, also_was ablished beside the lighthouse. Thir- teen lighthouses were in_existence when the federal government was established, and these were ceded in 1780 by the several states to that government. The idea that aids to navigation are of “gen- eral public benefit and service” has mot been questioned since that time. Hence bureau of today. et Y SRR~ CHURCH, CHARLESTON.S C./ ] SED AS A LIGHTHOUSE. Small though the pay of a keeper or of a member of the crew of a lightship is, the employes rarely leave the service. Records of thirty and forty years of continuous employment are not unusual In fact, this is one of the problems of the bureau. Scores of keepers of ad- vanced age, but still vigorous, are borne on the rolls. There is no retirement pro- vision for them. Their only fault is their gray hair and the fear in the execu- tive offices that some day, perhaps, they will not be equal to the calls on them. No one as yet has failed to make good, but still some time one might. True, no keeper Is left alone In a lighthouse; al- ways there is assistance; nevertheless the service must take no unnecessary chances. But is it fair to turn a faithful tender of the lights adrift in his old age? It is a problem the bureau is trying to solve. Six hundred dollars a year is the maxi- mum salary paid to a lighthouse keeper. Still, there are advantages over the man on the lightship. The keepers, save in | Secretary of the State De- partment believes a man and his wife should divide their joys. “For then.” says he, “they mul- tiply.” In this con- Bryan i 1 yards. Battling every moment of the| 5 5 time agalpst wind and tide, the ship, 1"::120:1[ r; relates heavily powered as she is, managed to t ollowing anee- dote: “One night a man went home from a function quite late. When he reached the front door his wife upbraided him severely. ““Well, you see, my dear, he replied, ‘as T didn’t have you wita me I enjoved myself only half as much: and ‘therefore I had to stay twice as long.’ " Spoke Right Out. “January 13, 1914, at 1:30 a.m., five men A man with the from the disabled schooner John Paul nerve and the were taken on board relief light vessel “pep” to ravish No. 9, on station at Cross Rip, Mass.. un. P ot der command of Richard E. B. Rhillips, g9y foont- “Uhaie master. Owing to the extreme cold the Joe Cannon his men were in a heipless condition when time-honored seat taken on board the light v oné of in the House of Representatives—a feat of daring ac- complished in the political cyclone of 1012 Ly Frank T. O'Hair — isn't the kind to sit modest- ly silent fn the courtroom when he thinks the judge isn't giving him a square deal. In such anhappy situation Representa- tive O"Hair once found himself while try- ing a case in Chicago. The city judge, thinking the young attorney a hayseed lawyer from the back blocks, treated him with scapt consideration. On reaching the point where patience was no longer virtuous—which isn’t very far from the kick-off—young O'Hair stopped short in the trial and, frowning upon the judge, our honor, you think I'm a rube. a hayseed: but you're mistaken. I'm no rube. Down in the part of the country 1 come from they think I'm just gbout the best lawyer in that neck of the woods. I'm of the same opinjon, and, if yowil simply give me a falr show, it on't be long before yowil agree with The court gasped, wavering an imstant on the verge of a commitment for con- tempt. But a second glance into:the face of the young lawyer showed him- there was no triffing there. Throughout the rest of the trial young O'Hair got atten- tion—and his client a verdict at the close. “Coming and Going.” The greatness of “little old New York™ is often the subject of Repre- sentative Fess of Ohio, following anecdote recently tos illus- trate the rapidity with ' which things move there. “A countryman,” €aid he, “clung to a lighting post in New York at one of the busiest cor- ners. After he had been standing there for several minutes a man walked up to him and asked what he was doing.” “L am waiting for this crowd to get by,” answered the countryman. He told the| “this “Why,” /laughed the stranger, crowd is here all the time.” “Well, then,” said the countryman, “I might as well try go get across the streef y “He made a dart and kad reached the middle of the street when the gong of a trolley car stopped him. He turned to 20 in the opposite direction, when the car on the other track stopped him. He turned toward the right, but was con- fronted by an automobile.. He turned to the left and a motor cycle passed him. airingly he looked above him and an ted train shot over his head. In desperation he dropped into a manhole— and the subway train ran over him.” Poor Democrats! R_e p e sentative W.TAT Watson ™ of Virginia is a new member, but comes to Congress with the reputation of being one of the fairest and kindest judges that ever wore ermine. He presided over the famous Henry Clay Beattle trial in a manner Which won for him admiration over the . entire country. / is a typical Virginian In Mr. his soft manner and burring speech. And Watson he is typicaily democratic. But the judge numbers among his constituents many colored bfothers who have a strong lean- ing to the opposite party. One day Mr. Watson was being shaved, which, of course, meant learning all of the barber's religious and*pelitical prin- ciples. He attacked the democratic party, which Watson ardently defended. “Well, 1 tells you, jedge,” said the col- ored brother at last, as if clinching the matter, “you all democrats mought have enough sense to run a little place like Virginia, but you ain’t got enough to spread around in running the whele coun- oy s Playing Hunches. “The prospects for my renomina- tion and election look very bright,” remarked Repre- sentative Anthony of Leavenworth, Kan., recently. “So I guess I'll be left at home next time.” “Yes, home." ed: “that's what I mean. learned that politics the more likely a thing is to hap- pen the more liable it is not to. “For Instance? Why, T'll do for one. myself, I guess. When 1 ran for mayor of Leavenworth in 1903 my prospects were left at he repeat- Just I've in as #lack as a tarball In a negro’s pocket at midnight—and I was triumphantly elected! “The next time I ran for office a rose- at> pink suffused the whole political hori- zon. 1 could prove my vietory as co clusively as a problem in Euclid; it didn seem doubtful enough to furnish one good thrill—and the other fellow won in a walk! “When I ran for Congress this last time 1 was leading a forlorn hope: just run- ning to keep the party organization up, S0 to speak. Remembering the past, however. 1 made arrangements for a cou. ple of years' absence in Washington—and here 1 am “Next time? Well. things look mighi bright, so—'" and Mr. Anthony conclud- ed with ‘an expressive shrug shoulders. of the most dangerous spots, can have their familfes -with them: they get well bulit and decently furnished homes free; they have the use of the land about the light- houses, where .there is any land, to culti- vate a_garden and on which to keep cows and chickens, and they have the deep sea in which to fish and eke out their fare; and also they get 30 cents a day commutation of rations. But the man aboard the lightship fares mnwaf‘fleheoowduyln-pmn that ramps and charges and drags at its moorings most of the time. Then. t00, in-fog he is always liable to waken out of a sound sleep to find that a mis- guided steamer has poked her noss through the side of his home and jostl him ipto the salt and icy ocean. Many a stout lghtship has been mishandled manper. "‘l‘l.l Yiew of ‘all this the lightship man is a bit better paid. Then, too, he is &2 Jowed ninety days legve every year. B does not take this all at once DU spreads it along in reliefs. nghthou-: Xeepers are allowed seventy-two days year leave. They also take itm * * * . Some of the lighthouses on the greal lakes are abandoned during the winter. the lakes being frozen, there is no as, s hannels are navigation, but where the cl open.they are maintained. -frame type of light- in svidence on (hedl-‘l‘::!:‘: . Bullt on coral, it is not advi IS irect masonry. 80 they are supported by iron piles forced a:outs;::h ::re; == 1 rock or- sand. :.‘Y;e."f:;l.':n'o‘n feet_above the sea, is t:he tallest of these. The keepers' gquar s are within the structure, thirty-seven the r. ‘eslf lz‘ll of &cle Sam’s lighthous in Guam are perhaps the most western. but while nominally under l"w house service they are intrusted (ov e care o the naval authorities that gove: ~ Guam. Next in point of distance com! the lights in the Hl:llll‘ne,‘lel::g‘s. 1"['.hhexy ced in the mnin - ?\ro:u:mbdr[:(rlc'_ The Makapuu Pmn: light in those islands carries the ]mesd lens in the “service. It is eight 1{1‘?‘5 threc-quarter feet in diameter. nis lighthouse and fog signal station : -5 completed about five years ago at a cos of_$60.000. k v e Hawaifan lighthouses are for e ot trom the Pacific coast. they are by no means so-distant from neigh- genuinely isolated as those . tA Cape Sarichef. in the n Islands, almost over to Aleulio? Asia, is a lighthouse where the keepers get mail only once in five s. m"x"g(eh tallest- lighthouse in the country is the barber pole one at Capt Hatteras, on the coast of North Carolina. 1t is 200 feet -high. .., A light must be that helght in order' to bé seen from the deck of 3 vessel twenty nautical miles away, %o sharp Ts the cufvatvre of the earth. Cape Mendocino, on the coast of Cali- fornia, has the highest light, it being in a twenty-foot high house, the fioor of h is 402 feet above water. e most expensive lighthouse Uncle Sam_ever undertook to build was that on St _George's veef, six miles off the California coast. It cost $712.000. For days the .workmen Would have to lay oft and abbard their vessel, it ‘The openwor] house is mach in ev! those heing impossible” to. ashore even by the .c'nna rigged from ship to shore for the- purose. -~ ¢ | 3 t g * » Poesibly the most curlous lighthouse in the-country is in Charleston, S. C. The stately, spire of. St Philips’ Church is used for the purpose; its lamp being = two that in “Mne form a range for ::llgfln' the harbor, the other being on historic Fort Sumter. £ Oll, yatious sorts of gas and electricity form thé" iNuminmants in the lighthouses and other lights to aid navigation., but chiefly ol is used, on the double ground of cheapness and practicability. More than 600,000 gallons of kerosene oil are burned @ year in the light stations of the: country. . Electricity is used only where it. can be bought cheap from some nearby plant. The most notable electric lighted Nghthouse in the servics is the famous one at Navesink, on_the high- lands south of New York, and this, too, ie the most powerful. It has about ©0,000.000, candlepower and its beam has e cen In the sky at a distance of miles. B the majority of lights, wicks are used in regular lamps, but for the more important ones an oll vapor lamp is used and this intensifies the light won- rtully. - e das under compression is used in many buoy lights, but acetylene gas is coming into more and more general use. This s used precisely as in an automo- bile's lights. The statement has been widely' printed. that acetylene-lighted buoys, seif-lighting and seif-darkening, are in use, but this is not a fact. An ingenious invention has been devised by which the rays of the suri operate & vaive, which shuts off the light in the daytime and permits it to come on at night, but as yet the service has not found it adaptable to buoya. el