lighthouses: where the sky meets the sea safely
TRANSCRIPT
Julia Bell
Historical Lenses and Scholar, 520, 15TW3
12 April 2015
Final Project Milestone Five: Final Project Research Paper
Lighthouses: Where the Sky Meets the Sea Safely
You will submit your Final Project Research Paper. It should be a complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final project. It should reflect the incorporation of feedback gained throughout thecourse.
Abstract
Paper Title: Lighthouses: Where the Sky Meets the Sea Safely
Author: Julia Bell
Organization: Historical Lenses and Scholar, History Department,
Southern New Hampshire University, College of On-line and
Continuing Education
Abstract: The contextual fragmentation of lighthouse history has
led to a misunderstanding and undervaluing of the role
lighthouses and their keepers played in establishing the United
States as a world leader. Lighthouse history has been relegated
to Americana iconography as highlighted in chain bookstores’
photojournalism shelves or lesser known and quite limited, their
military history section. While understandable, the gap in
lighthouse historiography cannot be blamed solely on the loss of
archival material. The gap stems from a conceptual
misunderstanding of several key components: lighthouse purpose,
locale, architecture, and construction material. Derogatory,
modern-day judgments of an eighteenth and nineteenth century
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lighthouse keeper have further added to the misconception.
However, through individuals’ separate research, the Department
of the Interior’s and U.S. Coast Guard’s preservation of maritime
heritage, and through the release and printing of government
records, lighthouse historiography exists at an academic level.
By uniting the separate contexts into an assembled
historiographical frame, a balance between cultural popularity
and academic historical significance can be achieved.
4
There are few historical subjects that exude history in the
way lighthouses manage to do. Its physical presence answers the
more obvious historical question of what its purpose was—to guide
ship captains away from danger and to highlight the safe passage
to traverse. Soon, after answering the question of purpose, many
new questions arise: geographically, what was occurring that a
lighthouse was built at a specific locale; commercially, what
cargo did the ship transport that necessitated constructing a
lighthouse; politically, the management of the lighthouse rests
with whom—the local citizenry, the state, or the federal
government; culturally, who will operate the lighthouse;
military, will the home front be exposed to enemy aggression;
technologically, how will the lighthouse operate; historically,
what will be its value after the lighthouse is an outmoded
building?
Such is the extent to which historians have examined
lighthouses through separate historical lenses that “the
balancing of objective presentation and subjective framing”1 is
lacking. Instead, lighthouses and their history seen by
1. Adam Budd, “Introduction to Part 1: The Historian’s Task,” in Modern Historiographer Reader: Western Sources, ed. Adam Budd (New York: Routledge, 2010), 3.
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historians only under the lens in which they chose to examine its
history has limited the role of lighthouses. Culminating the
lenses into a more unified examination, allows for the history of
lighthouses to become exponentially stronger, creating a more
cohesive, less fragmented history.
The lighthouses’ historical contexts propelled scholars to
employ a myriad of lenses to more thoroughly understand the
history of lighthouses. On 4 April 1789, Congress, barely a month
old, transferred lighthouses from state to federal control with
the Tonnage Act (HR-5). With a political lens, historians
delineated how lighthouses produced “the regulation of commerce
and promotion of public safety, two imperatives that concurrently
nurtured unity and sovereignty. As such, lighthouses were
important early instruments and manifestations of an expanding
federal authority and presence.”2 Since lighthouses performed a
key role in helping to formulate the American Republic,
historians viewed the lighthouses’ cultural role in conjunction
with a public history format promoted by the Department of the 2. Allen S. Miller, “‘The Lighthouse Top I See’: Lighthouses as
Instrument and Manifestations of State Building in the Early Republic,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 17, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 14, accessed 23 February 2015, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/stable/pdf/20839333.pdf?acceptTC=true.
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Interior’s National Park Service Maritime Heritage program and
the Bureau of Land Management. “…The waterfronts and shipyards
that propelled the construction of ships and facilitated trade
and fishing are also a significant part of the maritime cultural
landscape, as examples of the land-sea interface.”3 Local
historical societies participated in conjunction with the NPS to
preserve lighthouses within their community. These societies not
only helped preserve the lighthouse structures but also the
keepers’ history, of whom both men and women served as lighthouse
keepers.
Women, on average, comprised about five percent of the principal lighthouse keepers in the United States. These women represent a unique exception to the experience of the majority of working women during the Early Republic. They received equal pay to men, and some supervised lower-paid male assistants. They filledthese predominately male positions because lighthouse work had much in common with stereotypical woman’s work, they were most often related to the previous keeper, and they fit within cultural ideals of gender roles.4
3. Stefan Claesson, “The Value and Valuation of Maritime Cultural Heritage,” International Journal of Cultural Property 18, no. 1 (February 2011): 62, accessed 23 February 2015. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/docview/899273706?accountid=3783##.
4. Virginia Neal Thomas, “Woman’s Work: Female Lighthouse Keepers in the Early Republic, 1820- 1859,” Master’s thesis, Old Dominion University, December 2010: Abstract, accessed 24 February 2015, http://www.uscg.mil/history/articles/ThomasVNWomansWork.pdf.
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Regrettably, it is a women’s history lens that has been the least
covered by historians.
Historians, using an economic lens, demonstrated that
lighthouses made waters navigable and hazards avoidable, thus
providing trade to an area meaning the ships’ cargo could be
brought ashore safely. Therefore, primary, secondary, and
tertiary economic activities stimulated not only an area’s
commerce but also added tax dollars to the government’s coffers.
Additionally, historians illustrated how commerce was affected
when lighthouses were not built when needed. Both Elizabeth I and
James I, fearing for England’s national security, rejected the
construction of lighthouses. As a result, “…the cost of replacing
ships threatened the Crown purse and almost bankrupted many
shipowners.”5 Once technology and modernity relegated most
lighthouses’ functionality as obsolete, historians relied on a
cultural lens to safeguard the lighthouses’ existence.
By acknowledging the existence of ‘cultural capital’ and the interconnectedness of natural and human systems, government, resource managers, and the public can conceptualize cultural heritage as a product of human interaction with the natural environment; analyze
5. Ken Trethewey, “The Charter of Henry VIII,” in Pharology, accessed 23 February 2015, http://www.pharology.eu/TheCharterOfHenryVIII.html.
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the goods and services provided by cultural assets; encourage science and education activities contributingto the well-being of coastal communities; and support economic activities such as recreation, tourism, and growth in market economies such as real estate.6
Lighthouse historiography moved from a predominantly
economic lens to a cultural one as lighthouse construction and
function waned during the mid-to-late twentieth century.
Choosing the cultural context with which to view lighthouse
historiography accomplished two objectives. Initially, it
reiterated to a contemporary society, which relied upon satellite
technology and not lighthouses for navigating coastal waters, the
economic lens was still applicable but in different approaches.
Regarding lighthouses through “valuation tools and techniques can
help to addresses [sic] exactly what heritage is worthy of
protection, to whom it is significant, and how resources managers
can best develop and interpret that heritage for the public.”7
Secondly, the cultural lens stimulated the historiography into
many different facets. Historians demonstrated the process of
assessing disused but not outmoded properties, examined the
locales of lighthouses, studied architectural building principles
6. Claesson, 76. 7. Ibid., 75.
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and materials of lighthouses as well as the accompanying
buildings necessary for successful lighthouse operation, and the
lives of the people who served as keepers. Regrettably, the
predominance of the cultural lens pushed the historiography to
opacity and replaced it with a pop culture iconography obsession
in the form of fashionable coffee table books.
The predominance lighthouses possessed as a pop culture
photographic icon began to change, most notably with the National
Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. The NHLPA allowed
the National Park Service greater latitude to transfer
responsible ownership of a Federally-owned lighthouse.
Recognizing that the NPS budget could not maintain all of its
lighthouse properties and that the lighthouses needed maintaining
due to “the cultural, recreational, and educational value
associated with historic light station properties,”8 the NHLPA of
2000 provided a system to transfer the lighthouse properties “at
no cost to Federal agencies, State and local governments,
nonprofit corporations, educational agencies, and community
8. “National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000,” NPS Maritime Heritage Program, last modified 23 March 2015, accessed 26 March 2015, http://www.nps.gov/maritime/nhlpa/intro.htm.
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development organizations. These entities must agree to comply
with conditions set forth in the NHLPA and be financially able to
maintain the historic light station.”9 Creating a renewed
awareness of lighthouse history within the public domain,
including several articles in the Sunday newspaper magazine
Parade,10 stimulated historians to approach lighthouse
historiography in different contexts.
Not for the same purpose that Carl Becker challenged the
scientific school of history with his “Everyman His Own
Historian” lecture, but in the manner that “Everyman” challenged
historical relativism, lighthouse historiography needs to be
similarly challenged. The cultural lens has so dominated
lighthouse historiography that the lighthouse’s historical value
has been diminished, and why lighthouses provided an important
role in Americana cannot be answered easily. As Becker asked
historians to do, more than arrange facts by relying on their
9. Ibid. 10. “What People Earn,” Parade Magazine, May 2004, front cover featured
Sally Snowman, Keeper of the Boston Light, and NPS Secretary Gale Norton referenced the popularity of NHLPA and its feature in Parade Magazine in her 26 April 2005 National Park Service Press Release, http://www.nps.gov/news/release.htm?id=585.
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imaginations to construct history,11 lighthouse historiography
needs historical inventiveness to explain its history.
The United States Lighthouse Service was based upon the
French Lighthouse Service, because “the French Lighthouse Service
had long been considered the leader in technical innovation and
quality.”12 Philip Plisson, a world-famous photographer,
documented his hobby—the study of French lighthouses—through his
camera lens. What resulted was a pictorial and historical
documentation of all of France’s existing lighthouses, producing
comparisons of how European lighthouses were constructed, why
they were constructed, how and who operated them, and the manner
in which they were governed. Plisson’s study revealed similar
parallels to American lighthouses. Beyond Plisson’s personal
passion for lighthouse history, did cultural appreciation for
lighthouses exist outside the United States? According to
English author and journalist, cultural appreciation for
lighthouses did exist in Europe for very similar reasons. “But
the structures remain crucial coastal landmarks and in many cases
11. Budd, 3. 12. “Lighthouse Lamps through Time: Kerosene Burners,” United States
Lighthouse Society, accessed 7 April 2015, https://uslhs.org/lighthouse-lamps-through-time.
12
distinctive historic monuments and funds are therefore needed to
keep them in good condition.”13 How Europe raised those funds
differed significantly from the United States Department of
Interior’s goals, but the cultural objective paralleled one
another. “Now there are public organisations and private bodies
stretching from the US and Japan to Italy, France, Ireland,
Norway, Sweden and the Baltic states in short, any country with a
coastline pursuing similar rental programmes in a bid to raise
revenues.”14 Owing to the global similarities of lighthouses and
seeking to apply Becker’s inventiveness, future lighthouse
historiography also needs to undergo a cohesiveness that unites
the different lenses in the same temperament imperial history
employs, so that the study of lighthouse historiography provides
connexity over the longue durée.15
In celebrating its 75th anniversary, the United States
Department of Commerce published From Lighthouses to Laserbeams, and
while lighthouses are mentioned in the title and early on in the 13. Belinda Archer, “FT.com Site: The Height of Comfort,” Financial Times
Limited (5 April 2007): 1, accessed 23 February 2015, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/docview/228995708?pq-origsite=summon .
14. Archer, 1. 15. Linda Colley, “What is Imperial History Now?,” in What is History Now,
ed. David Cannadine (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2002), 134.
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celebratory work, they received little attention after the first
few pages. Helen Bowers, editor of several texts explaining
various state and federal governmental offices, programs, and
functions, detailed the 75-year history of the U.S. Commerce
Department. The economic and political lenses employed by Bowers
delineated how lighthouses assisted the federal government in
developing its commercial and industrial interests, as well as
the role lighthouses performed in creating Congress’ first civil
servant retirement program. In 1918, lighthouse keepers, under
the authority of the Department of Commerce, became the first
civil servants with an established retirement plan. Keepers who
were age 65 with 30 years of lighthouse service, received one-
fortieth of their average annual pay for the previous five years
with compulsory retirement mandated at age 70, regardless the
number of years served.16
Writing in 2010 when nonresidential construction declined by
nine percent regardless the steady number of government sites
undergoing groundbreaking, including the U.S. Coast Guard’s new
Washington, D.C. headquarters building, Allen S. Miller
16. Helen Bowers, From Lighthouses to Laserbeams: A History of the U.S. Department of Commerce, 1913-1988 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1988), 5.
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delineated in his article the extent to which lighthouses not
only occupied an economic context but a political context, as
well in the role of developing commerce for the fledgling United
States. After the ratification of the Constitution of the United
States, conceptions of what the American Republic should look
like were vague, at best. Similarly to Bowers, Miller stated
that lighthouses helped shape and form the Republic, but Miller
asserted that not only due to commerce and the states acquiescing
their control of lighthouses to the federal government, but
because of “the function, form, location, construction techniques
and materials, and operational technology of federal lighthouses
all bear the fingerprints of policymakers, because decisions
about those issues were as much a reflection of strategic
concerns about state building and commercial policy as they were
of environmental, economic, and operational factors.”17
Lighthouses signified a transition from state to federal power in
a distributed, less centralized and sovereign governmental role
that was stronger than the states’ relationship defined in the
17. Miller, 16, 18.
15
Articles of Confederation but not the autonomous power of a
monarchy.
Writing one year after the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill
of 2010, where value assessments on maritime cultural sites were
being generated to determine monetary damages caused by the oil
spill, Stefan Claesson’s work focused on determining the economic
value cultural sites generated long after the economic boom of
construction occurred. Sharing joint command of POW/MIA
Accounting at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor in Hickham, Hawaii,
Claesson detailed how evaluative tools can be employed to assess
the socioeconomic value of maritime cultural resources to
determine the costs and benefits of conserving cultural heritage
projects. Where Bowers and Miller portrayed the economic
benefits to the U.S. economy lighthouses generated at their
construction inception, Claesson showed how maintaining
lighthouse sites, even 50 years after their original operational
functions ceased, provided economic benefits due to their
cultural heritage. Claesson argued that “economic valuation
should not be interpreted to mean financial valuation…, nor
should economic assessments be viewed as a detraction in any way
16
from the social, cultural, or research qualities (or values) of a
cultural resource.”18 Unforeseen at the time of their inception,
lighthouses, as well as other cultural sites, possessed cultural
capital. “Specifically, cultural capital is ‘an asset that
embodies a store of cultural value, separable from whatever
economic value it might possess; in other inputs the asset gives
rise to a flow of goods and services over time which may also
have cultural value.”19 Attempting to put a monetary value on an
object whose measure rests in spiritual or symbolic value, for
example, could be accomplished through a system of broad and
numerous classifications. Some classifications possessed readily
understandable benefits, such as money visitors spent on food
while visiting a nearby lighthouse for the day. However, the
classification system extended to the less coherent, intrinsic
benefits, known as nonmarket value, as well. For example,
“although it is unlikely that any of us will ever visit the
deepwater shipwreck of Titanic, we might feel a sense of loss if
any such heritage site is destroyed. Cultural resources, in
18. Claesson, 63. 19. David Throsby and Ilde Rizzo, “Chapter 28: Cultural Heritage:
Economic Analysis and Public Policy,” Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture (2006): 3, quoted in Claesson, 63.
17
particular, retain a host of intrinsic historic, artistic,
social, spiritual, and symbolic qualities valued by society,
which are not readily observed in markets.”20
At about the time the U.S. experienced its first sharp
decline of the Gross Domestic Product in the 21st century,
roughly 2004, the Department of the Interior recognized that
within its many offices and bureaus they possessed stewardship
over too many sites, especially lighthouse properties. The NPS
desired to preserve the cultural role of lighthouses, especially
the intrinsic values, in their Maritime Heritage Program.
Employing sustainable development concepts and embodying
Claesson’s argument, the NPS Maritime Heritage Program recognized
the history they were conserving for current generations without
sacrificing future generations’ access to and appreciation for
lighthouses. “The high level of attention given to lighthouses…
was tied directly to [both the nation’s] need for commerce and
its desire to…instill confidence in ship captains as well as
foreign government, symbolically implying that the United States
20. Claesson, 67.
18
was a responsible world power worthy of due recognition.”21 In
an effort to alleviate their financial obligations necessitated
by these maritime heritage sites, the National Park Service
implemented their National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act
program on a large scale, moving beyond the two pilot years and
making fourteen lighthouses eligible for adoption in 2004.22
The Bureau of Land Management, also under the auspices of
the Department of the Interior, assisted in the NHLPA as well.
Whereas the NPS’s lighthouse focus was the cultural lens, the BLM
focused solely upon the lighthouses’ maritime context. In
Miller’s political lighthouse historiography, he noted that the
first lighthouses constructed by the American Republic were built
in similar fashion to that of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse (1764)
due to the ease in replicating its successful construction form,
cost, and building material availability.23 However, the BLM’s
maritime lens represented the change in lighthouse architecture.
21. “Historic Lighthouse Preservation Handbook,” NPS, accessed 25 March2015, www.nps.gov/maritime/handbook.htm, quoted in Miller, 17. Currently, the NPS’s “Historic Lighthouse Preservation Handbook” site is under construction.
22. “2004 NHLPA Program: Notices of Availability and Fact Sheets,” NPS Maritime Heritage Program, accessed 6 April 2015, http://www.nps.gov/maritime/nhlpa/noa/2004.htm.
23. Miller, 17-8.
19
Lighthouses needed to be identifiable in both daytime, “the
description of what a lighthouse looks like in the daytime is
called a ‘daymark,’” 24 and by their signal at night known as
their light signature or light characteristic or sound
characteristic, when fog or heavy cloud cover obscured the
visibility of a lighthouse. The daymark, light, and sound
characteristics were compiled into a reference book known as a
light list which was carried by mariners so they could navigate
the shores and know exactly where along the coast their ship was
located. The BLM’s maritime context presented two figures that
made understanding lighthouse construction fundamental. One was
the mathematics involved in determining the actual building
height of the lighthouse tower, as well as its geographic locale,
and the other was the graph of the six Fresnel lens orders that
emitted the light signature. Focal plane or light distance
depends upon several characteristics: the strength of the light,
the curvature of the earth, the light height above earth, and the
observer’s height.
24. “Information about Lighthouses and Light Stations,” Bureau of Land Management, accessed 25 March 2015, http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ca/pdf/bakersfield/pbls/data.Par.98621.File. dat/basic%20lighthouse%20information.pdf.
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Figure 1. H = height above sea level; D,d = distance, R = radius of the earth. “Information about Lighthouses and Light Stations,” Bureau of Land Management, accessed 25 March 2015, http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ca/pdf/bakersfield/pbls/data.Par.98621.File. dat/basic%20lighthouse%20information.pdf.
In addition to the tower height, the lenses emitting the lights,
which evolved from wood or coal bonfires to oils and then
kerosene and finally electricity, had to be of various sizes.
The Fresnel lens consisted of multiple prisms of glass and lenses
combined and arrayed together to collect, bend, reflect, and
redirect the light rays into a unified beam. Some lenses
produced stationary lights while other Fresnel lenses turned on a
360˚ rotating frame giving the impression that the light flashed.
“The smaller ones were used along bays and harbors. The larger
ones produced the brightest light and were used along the
seacoast, where the light had to be seen farther.”25
25. “Information about Lighthouses and Light Stations.”
21
Figure 2. Relative sizes of the six major Fresnel lens orders. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
order lenses in this figure are rotating, while the 5th and 6th orders are stationary. To the right of the 1st-4th orders are weights winding boxes which made the lens rotation possible. “Information about Lighthouses and Light Stations,” Bureau of LandManagement, accessed 25 March 2015, http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ca/pdf/bakersfield/pbls/data.Par.98621.File. dat/basic%20lighthouse%20information.pdf.
The rudimentary understanding the BLM presented by
highlighting the maritime functions lighthouses administered
characterized the significance of their geographical locations
only if the complex coastline geography could be appreciated.
National Geographic also understood the Department of Interior’s
need to preserve the lighthouse legacy, “one of the most
important and fascinating structures in maritime history,”26
26. Fred L. Israel, “Lighthouses,” in Lighthouses: Beacons of the Sea, eds. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Fred L. Israel (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000), x.
22
without severely straining its budget or sacrificing lighthouse
heritage. Relying on the former Commissioner of Lighthouses,
George R. Putnam, and knowing that it contained within its
archives the mappings of John La Gorce, National Geographic
published Lighthouses: Beacons of the Sea as part of its cultural and
geographical exploration series. La Gorce was an avid geographer
who worked at National Geographic for 54 years beginning as
assistant secretary in 1905 and retiring in 1957 as the second
president and editor of the magazine. Between 1914 and 1918, La
Gorce completed a detailed mapping and study of the 1,600 mile
U.S. Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico coastlines. In his
mapping, La Gorce understood the geographic phenomena present
along the shorelines, where guides were necessary, where harbors
could be accessed safely, where hazardous bottoms existed, how
erosion affected and altered the landscape, and how nature
behaved in such characteristics that created hazards for sailors.
Explaining the geography in a militaristic battle style actually
assisted in the understanding of exactly how harsh, unforgiving,
and unrelenting the coastline geography was. Coupling La Gorce’s
work with both the NPS and BLM studies further enhanced the
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lighthouses’ economic value through cultural capital by
demonstrating what hardships and ingenuity eighteenth and
nineteenth century builders understood about the inherent
economical values that lay in shipping safety. Sara Wermeil’s
seminal work of understanding lighthouse architecture portrayed
the resourcefulness and skill with which builders overcame the
geographical obstacles La Gorce mapped.
Unique to lighthouse research, as Wermeil’s work relied
heavily on archival records detailing the specific architectural
and engineering structure of lighthouses, existing and vanished,
Wermeil grouped the lighthouses into six constructional
categories—stone and brick towers (the most common and most often
selected construction material), cottage-style lighthouses
(tower, lantern, and dwelling integrated into one building),
cast-iron plate, or all-iron lighthouses, skeleton towers
(permanent iron structures built on water sites), lighthouses on
marine foundations (lighthouses built atop piers), and twentieth-
century materials—and arranged the text in chronological order
based upon the lighthouses’ construction materials. Initially,
lighthouse construction was to be replicable from one structure
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to another as a regulating economic benefit; however, Wermeil
documented that it was both geography and the lighthouses’
governing bodies that ultimately dictated a lighthouse’s
architecture. Specializing in the history of nineteenth century
building materials, specifically structural fire protection and
new construction materials, Wermeil’s work portrayed not only the
lighthouses themselves, but the secondary histories that
accompanied lighthouses—from port life to governance of
lighthouses, ship captains and their records to the keepers
ashore, all of which add to the cultural heritage the DOI sought
to preserve within their NHLPA.
Lighthouses were built to be used. We may see them as noble and picturesque, and many are of fine proportionsand excellent workmanship; but during their working lives, they were treated as utilitarian structures. Many were demolished or their associated structures—dwelling, oil houses, and so on—removed, once their service was no longer needed….The National Park Service, local governments, and private groups, such aslighthouse preservation and historical societies, have stepped up to preserve many of the old lighthouses, so these ‘steadfast, serene, immovable’ structures will exist to inspire future generations.27
27. Sara E. Wermeil, Lighthouses, 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 44.
25
Instrumental though lighthouses were to the establishment of
the United States, Wermeil also depicted the haphazardness with
which Congress grew the U.S. Lighthouse System. Congress,
reacting to constituents’ desires, appropriated the monies for
new lighthouses as well as deciding the structure’s style and
location, resulting in too many lighthouses needlessly
constructed in certain areas, where other, sparsely-populated
areas, desperately in need of navigational aid, received
nothing.28 In addition to the physical lighthouse architecture,
Wermeil analyzed the architecture and establishment of the Light-
House Board in 1852, lighthouse illumination, and to a brief
extent, lighthouse keepers. Prior to the Light-House Board,
Wermeil concluded that operating lighthouses under the Executive
Branch’s Department of the Treasury, with Congressional approval,
was a poor managerial system. “The problems with the lighthouse
service stemmed from Congress trying to build and maintain a
large lighthouse system on the cheap….A light’s poor performance
might be as much the result of the keeper’s neglect as of
deficiencies in the design of the apparatus or tower.”29
28. Ibid., 21. 29. Wermeil, 22-3.
26
George Putnam, the first commissioner of the U.S. Lighthouse
Service from 1901-1935, served in the Lighthouse Service for 45
years, beginning as a clerk in the Coast and Geodetic Survey and
retiring in 1935 after serving 25 years as commissioner. Under
Putnam’s leadership, the Service underwent modernization and
expansion, promoting the use of radio aids to increase the
Lighthouse Service’s effectiveness and efficiency in maritime
navigation. Putnam introduced a retirement system for Lighthouse
Service employees, as well as instigating annual leave and paid
sick leave benefits during his leadership. “Because of the
difficult life, keepers at isolated stations are granted shore
liberty and leave 72 days a year, and crews of light vessels 90
days a year.”30 Putnam also examined the U.S. Federal
government’s first Congressional acts—transferring control of
lighthouses to the federal government’s control and establishing
the U. S. Lighthouse Service—to assist with the government’s
economic endeavors to grow commerce by providing further
construction of lighthouses to illuminate approaches to major
30. George R. Putman, “Beacons of the Sea: Lighting the Coasts of the United States,” in Lighthouses: Beacons of the Sea, eds. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Fred L. Israel (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000), 4.
27
U.S. ports and safe passages within harbors. Lighthouse
construction was no longer based upon constituency demands but
instead on data employed by the U.S. Lighthouse Service who
determined the site and specific type of structure that was
constructed.31 Lastly, understanding that the quality of a
keeper was just as important to successfully operating and
maintaining a lighthouse, Putnam discussed the lightkeeper’s
livelihood and responsibilities as necessitated by the specific
type of lighthouse structure in which the keeper worked.
Each historian mentioned the lighthouse keeper in their
work, but presenting the keeper as the loci of their study versus
the lighthouse structures themselves proved less plentiful. Part
of that is owed to a fire which destroyed a large number of the
National Archives’ holdings, where many of lighthouse keepers’
journals had been reposited. Dennis Noble, retired U.S. Coast
Guard and former NPS park ranger and a U.S. Army historian,
Patricia Majher, editor of the Historical Society of Michigan’s
publication Michigan History and previous Assistant Director of the
Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame, and Virginia
31. Miller, 16.
28
Neal Thomas, who wrote her Master’s thesis about U.S. female
lighthouse keepers from 1820-1859, all authored works on U.S.
lighthouse keepers. While Majher and Thomas covered women
lighthouse keepers solely, each source detailed the harsh
environment, boredom, danger, and great personal risk all
lighthouse keepers faced.
Noble, fascinated by the people of the U.S. Lighthouse
Service, wrote to update works published prior to his,
particularly regarding lighthouse keepers, as he possessed
access, which others did not, to The Keeper’s Log, published by the
U.S. Lighthouse Society—a member organization that seeks to
preserve Lighthouse Service history. Like Wermeil, Noble noted
weaknesses with lighthouse service both prior to and early in the
Light-House Board’s inception. Studying the appointments of
keepers, Noble observed that similar to the concept that
constituency demand drove lighthouse construction, “collectors of
customs usually appointed keepers. The collectors owed their
positions to politicians and appointed applicants for lighthouse
keepers from the political party in power. Other politicians saw
the service as reward to cronies. If the political climate
29
changed, so did the collector,...and in all likelihood, so did
the keeper.”32 Not all keepers were terrible, but neither were
they all conscientious and concerned with the safety for others,
as evidenced by Thomas Jefferson’s 31 December 1806 letter
concurring with Col. Newton that the Cape Henry Lighthouse keeper
should be removed “for small degrees of remissness; which
calamities even these produce.”33 The U.S. Lighthouse Board’s
establishment in 1852 sought to remedy this problem, but
political appointments didn’t cease until Grover Cleveland’s
Executive Order – Civil Service Rules (6 May 1896) bound
lighthouse keepers as civil servants and to the rules thereof.34
Additional reforms instituted consisted of printed instructions
on lighthouse operation, how to administer the U.S. Lighthouse
Board, a rubric evaluating a keeper’s performance of duty, a
uniform for all male keepers, rigorous inspection routines, and
fair and swift enforcement of regulations.35 While women did not
32. Dennis L. Noble, “Keepers and Their Lonely World,” in Lighthouses & Keepers (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 87.
33. Putnam, 16. 34. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Grover Cleveland: Executive
Order – Civil Service Rules, May 6, 1896, Rule III, 2(a)” The American Presidency Project, accessed 7 April 2015, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=70805.
35. Noble, 88.
30
receive a uniform, they were not precluded from service.
“However, this employment of women did not spring from an
enlightened equal employment policy….The service merely took
advantage of the labor available at lights that was provided by
families. In the great amount of spare time at isolated
stations, women and children could learn the business of tending
a light. At times, it became almost a necessity.”36
Michigan’s waterways boasted the greatest number of
lighthouses constructed in any one state. In 2007, hired as the
assistant director/curator for the Michigan Women’s Historical
Center and Hall of Fame, Patricia Majher developed the exhibit of
Michigan’s female lighthouse keepers. From that exhibit, came
her work on the fifty female lighthouse keepers that served
Michigan’s maritime navigation. Women lighthouse keepers were
discussed by Putnam, Wermeil, and Noble, and while Wermeil and
Noble ecumenically devoted research and print to men and women
lighthouse keepers, Majher’s work centered solely on women
keepers. Virginia Neal Thomas’ Master’s Thesis at Old Dominion
University also focused solely on the study of women keepers.
36. Ibid., 109.
31
The all-female studies used social and women’s lenses to study
the role of women lighthouse keepers.
During the Early Republic, 1820-1859, the government
appointed fifty-three women as keepers,37 with the employment of
women keepers peaking during the 1870s throughout the nation;
however, their appointments began their continuing decline the
next decade.38 Neal observed that women were appointed as
keepers because the work correlated “to other occupations, such
as nursing and teaching, that opened to women because they were
seen as extensions of occupations where women took care of
others, which fit in with the gender norm.”39 Even though their
appointments complemented the stereotypical women’s work idea,
the Lighthouse Service expected the keeper to perform the duties
as the Service had laid out, regardless the keeper’s gender, with
the exception of painting the lighthouse tower. Since women were
given no uniform and wore clothing as dictated by the fashion
styles of the time—typically floor-length dresses and skirts and
high-heeled shoes—women keepers could not paint the lighthouse
37. Thomas, 10. 38. Patricia Majher, “Female Lighthouse Keepers: A Brief History,” in
Ladies of the Lights (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 7. 39. Thomas, 5.
32
tower since it required the females to work in conditions that
were unsuitable because they were unladylike.40 Otherwise, male
and female keepers had the same job expectations, received equal
wage compensation, and on the rare circumstances, women could
supervise men.41 Similar to the men who demonstrated noble and
heroic feats of bravery, Wermeil, Noble, and Putnam along with
Majher and Neal, narrated specific, but heroic, anecdotes
involving women lighthouse keepers. The hardships of a keeper’s
life, eloquently exhibited in Majher’s work via the women’s pre-
keeper and post-keeper photographs, knew no gender.
Under the direction of the U.S. Lighthouse Board, however, America’s keepers became a professional group that ranked among the best, if not the best, in the world….It is important, however, to realize that lighthouse keepers were ordinary men and women who stayed by their lights and did the best job they could do under trying circumstances. Some performed their duties nobly, others had feet of clay, but anyone whoseancestors came to this country by sea, or who went downto the sea in ships, and reached port safely owes theseordinary men and women a great debt.42
Regardless the scholarship subject, the political, economic,
cultural, maritime, social, architectural, and women’s history
40. Majher, 37. 41. Majher, 37 and Neal 46-7. 42. Noble, 117.
33
lenses presented a unique facet to lighthouse historiography,
multi-faceted as a 1st order Fresnel lens. However, unlike the
concentrating Fresnel lens altering light into a solitary and
substantial beam, the researcher must comb through the libraries
and archives and read the separate works individually to develop
a comprehensive knowledge of lighthouse historiography. The
connexity of imperial history, employing comparative history over
the longue durée, and paying heed to the multiple connections found
in lighthouse historiography, offers a discourse to unite these
separate studies into a more unadulterated historiography,
thereby alleviating the cultural lens the disproportionate
responsibility to chronicle why this past needs to remain a focal
point, deserving of preservation funding and attention, and
providing a more thorough understanding of the historiography as
well as improving the cultural history lens historiography
altogether.
34
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