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Updated: June 29, 2025
Of the other two light-keepers, one, named Henry Hall, had received injuries of a most serious nature; and his case is not a little extraordinary.
Winstanley, his work-people, his light-keepers, his boasted structure all had been swept away by the resistless fury of the winds and waves; and not only this, but a homeward-bound vessel, the ‘Winchelsea,’ deprived of the warning light that might have averted her fate, struck upon these rocks, and lost nearly her whole crew.
At Arbroath suitable buildings are erected for the light-keepers’ families, with each a piece of enclosed ground, and a seat in the parish-church.
I saw festoons of evergreen in token of Christmas, near at hand. I saluted the merrymakers, wishing them a "Merry Christmas." and could hear them say, "I wish you the same." From Cape Bundooro I passed by Cliff Island in Bass Strait, and exchanged signals with the light-keepers while the Spray worked up under the island. The wind howled that day while the sea broke over their rocky home.
The regulations do not prescribe that the keeper of a light shall hold himself ready to go to the assistance of castaways or of wrecked vessels; but, as a matter of fact, not a few of the most heroic rescues in the history of the coast have been performed by light-keepers. In the number of lives saved a woman Ida Lewis, the keeper of the Limerock Light in Newport Harbor leads all the rest.
When a boat could come near them after one of these storms, a letter was sent by Henry Edwards, one of the light-keepers, to the manager of the works acquainting him that they had had such bad weather, and that the sea ran over the house in such a manner, that for twelve days together they could not open the door of the lantern or any other. ‘The house did shake,’ says the poor light-keeper, ‘as if a man had been up in a great tree.
However this might be, the three light-keepers alone remained in the edifice, and when one of them, whose turn it was to watch, went into the lantern at about two o’clock in the morning to snuff the candles he found a dense smoke, and upon his opening the door of the lantern into the balcony, a flame instantly burst from the inside of the cupola.
At sight in open daylight of a doom so gloomy prophesied, but perhaps hoped against to the last, and now come the light-keepers must have fled howling, supposing them to have so long remained faithful to duty: for here was no one, and in the village very few.
This regulation afforded a seasonable relief to the light-keepers; for as soon as three were appointed to the service, a rule was made that in summer each man in his turn should be permitted to go on shore, and spend a month with his friends and acquaintance.
Light-keepers sometimes sit upon the gallery, and, looking along the pathway of light which shoots into the outer darkness over their heads, will see a few dark specks approaching them in this beam of radiance.
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