Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  It was several days before the story of the rescue became public knowledge. On September 15, the local paper, the Berwick & Kelso Warder, carried a brief mention. Shortly after this, Mr. Scafe, a local citizen of Bamburgh, wrote to the Duke of Northumberland to draw his attention to the brave actions of William Darling and his daughter and enclosed a short report of the rescue, which was signed by two of the survivors, John Tulloch and Daniel Donovan. The duke sent his secretary to investigate, and the Darlings were interviewed. Evidently much impressed by his secretary’s report, the duke wrote to the Royal Humane Society (of which he was president) and to the master of Trinity House. Things now began to gather pace. The Times published an account of the rescue that elevated Grace Darling to the level of a national heroine:

  It is impossible to speak in adequate terms of the unparalleled bravery and disinterestedness shown by Mr. Darling and his truly heroic daughter, especially so with regard to the latter. . . . Is there in the whole field of history, or fiction, even one instance of female heroism to compare with this?

  The editor of the Berwick & Kelso Warder realized that there was a bigger story than he had first thought and sent a group of reporters to the Longstone lighthouse to get a firsthand interview with the Darling family. The reporters noted, “When we spoke of her noble and heroic conduct, she slightly blushed and appeared anxious to avoid the notice to which it exposed her; she smiled at our praise but said nothing in reply.”

  During the next four years, Grace Darling had to face the sort of adulation that in more recent times is experienced by film stars and royalty. The Longstone lighthouse became a tourist attraction, and during the summer of 1839, steamboat excursions from nearby harbors brought a continual stream of curious visitors. So many portrait painters were dispatched to capture likenesses of Grace and her father that William Darling complained that they were preventing them from carrying out their lighthouse duties. Letters and gifts (mostly Bibles and religious tracts) poured in, and Grace was asked for locks of her hair. She and her mother were constantly having to tidy up the lighthouse and entertain visitors. So demanding was the pressure that the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland stepped in to protect her from the demands of the public. Grace and her father were invited to visit them at Alnwick Castle in December 1838, and following the visit, it was agreed that the duke would become her guardian.

  However, the momentum continued. Panoramas based on the story of the rescue were shown at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle and at the Sunderland Theatre. A play called The Wreck at Sea was specially written and performed at the Adelphi Theatre in London. Wordsworth was one of several poets who were inspired to write poems in praise of Grace Darling’s feat. There was also recognition from official sources. The Royal Humane Society agreed unanimously that Grace and her father should be awarded the highest honor they could bestow, the Honorary Gold Medallion. The citation for Grace referred to her “singular intrepidity, presence of mind and Humanity,” which urged her “to expose her life in a small Boat to the impending danger of a heavy Gale of wind and tremendous Sea, in her intense desire to save nine of the sufferers who were wrecked. . . .” 7 She also received silver medals from the Humane Societies of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Leith.

  But it gradually became apparent that Grace was not well. She was suffering from a persistent cough, and her family was so concerned that they took her ashore. She spent the summer of 1842 staying with her sister Thomasin in Bamburgh. The Duke of Northumberland sent his doctor to see her, and the duchess paid her a visit. Her father then moved her to the cottage under the walls of Bamburgh Castle where her grandparents had lived and where she had spent her earliest years. There she died on October 20, 1842, at the age of twenty-six in the bed in which she had been born.

  Her death only fueled the interest in her, because she now had attained that special attraction reserved for celebrities who die young. As the story circulated, it concentrated increasingly on the role of Grace at the expense of her father. One version of the story (which helped to create the legend and will still be found today in many children’s books and encyclopedias) told how Grace woke her father when she heard cries of help coming from the wreck and in vain implored the assembled boatmen to make one effort to rescue the drowning people. (As we know, the boatmen did not arrive until after the survivors had been rescued.) According to this story, her father was so moved by her tears of pity that he exclaimed that the girl must have her way and agreed to launch the boat. The two of them rowed out into the storm and rescued all the people gathered on the rock. This version did not mention the second trip made by William Darling.

  The Darling family did their best to set the record straight. Grace herself pointed out in a letter, “I was very anxious, and did render every assistance that lay in my power, but my father was equally so and needed not to be urged by me, being experienced in such things and knowing what could be done.” 8 And her sister Thomasin, who published an account based on family papers and also edited William Darling’s journal, made it clear that “portions of the popular romancing story of William Darling’s deferring to his daughter’s entreaties, and so forth, are pure invention.”

  One reason for the extraordinary popularity of the Grace Darling story was that it was so unusual. Just as women were not expected to become sailors or fishermen, so they were not expected to play an active part in the lighthouse service. Only men were permitted to become official keepers of lighthouses in Britain. Wives and children were able to live in shore-based lights, but offshore lights on rocks or small islands were generally all-male preserves. In America, things were rather different. Male keepers were always in the majority, but a surprising number of women received official appointments to lighthouses and were in many cases in sole charge of the operation of the lights. The women who were appointed were usually related to men who had been keepers, and their salaries were invariably lower than what the men received for the same duties. When Betty Humphrey retired in 1880 after serving as keeper of Monhegan Island light in Maine for eighteen years, her annual salary was $700, $100 less than her husband had earned at his death. 9 But at least the U.S. Lighthouse Service recognized that women were capable of carrying out the job.

  In some respects the running of a lighthouse required the sorts of skills traditionally carried out by men: the painting and upkeep of the exterior of the light tower, the repairs to the building and its machinery, the trips to and fro in a heavy boat, and the loading and unloading of supplies. But the most essential job, which was tending the light itself, could be carried out by a woman just as well as by a man, and indeed there was a historical precedent going back to biblical times for the care of lamps to be a female task.

  The oil-burning lights that were common in the nineteenth century needed constant attention. Many of them required filling with oil at sundown and again at midnight. In very cold weather, the whale oil that was used tended to congeal, and it was necessary to warm it up on the kitchen stove to enable it to function properly. After lighting the lamp or lamps at sunset, the keeper must trim the wicks at regular intervals: In summer this might need doing only once, around midnight, but in the long winter nights, it was necessary to trim the wicks around ten o’clock at night and again around two in the morning. The light must then be extinguished at sunrise. Women keepers tended to be particularly conscientious about ensuring that the light was functioning properly. Ida Lewis had her bed positioned so she could see the light and trained herself to wake every half hour to check that the lamp was burning.

  During the day, the keeper was kept busy on a continuous round of cleaning and polishing. The prism lens must be kept spotlessly clean and polished, and carbon from the burning lamp must be cleaned off the reflectors. And any moving parts must be kept oiled and polished. Whenever sea fog or mist appeared in the vicinity of the lighthouse, the keeper must sound the necessary fog signals until it cleared away. Few of the nineteenth-century lighthouses had any form of automatic fog signal, and in m
any cases, the keeper was required to ring a bell. Clara Maddocks, keeper of the Owl’s Head light in Maine, reported that in any one year she might spend some 2,000 hours ringing the bell. Juliet Nichols at the Angel Island lighthouse in San Francisco noted in her log that once she struck the bell by hand for twenty hours and thirty-five minutes, until the fog lifted.

  The first woman on record to have an official appointment as a lightkeeper in America was Hannah Thomas. She and her husband were responsible for looking after the twin lights that were built on their property at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1769. At first Mrs. Thomas assisted her husband, but when he died, she took over sole responsibility. In addition to looking after the lights, she raised a family, and when she retired around 1790, her younger son took over for her. This was a fairly typical arrangement, because the running of a lighthouse was often regarded as a family concern and in some respects was rather like running a farm or a family store. Everyone took a turn at domestic duties, as well as ensuring that the lights were lit and in good order and that a regular lookout was kept. The government, which was responsible for the Lighthouse Service, evidently recognized the benefits of this system, because it continued to appoint wives, provided they had sufficient experience. By 1851, no fewer than thirty wives had taken over as keepers on the death of their husbands.

  Abbie Burgess, who was one of America’s first lighthouse heroines, was born into a lighthouse family. Her father, Samuel Burgess, was appointed keeper of the twin lights at Matinicus Rock in Maine in 1853. His wife suffered from a long-standing illness that required constant medical attention, so Samuel took on additional work as a lobster fisherman to pay for medicine and doctor’s fees. When she was fourteen, Abbie began assisting her father with the lights, which left him free to spend more time with his lobster pots. She soon proved to be as capable at looking after the light as she was at tending her younger sisters and her pet chickens.

  In January 1856, a vicious winter gale howled across Penobscot Bay with such force that it shook the foundations of the old keeper’s house on Matinicus Rock. Samuel Burgess was twenty miles away on the mainland, where he had gone to stock up on supplies, and was unable to return to the lighthouse due to the violence of the storm. Abbie, who was then sixteen, found herself having to keep the lamps burning in both towers while looking after her sick mother and her frightened sisters. As the tide rose, the sea began to break over the rocky island and to wash every movable thing away. The old keeper’s house began to break up and to show every sign that it might collapse. Abbie moved her mother and sisters into the north tower, which was more sheltered from the wind, and then ran out to the chicken coop to rescue her pet hens. She later described why it was so important to her to save them:

  You know the hens were our only companions. Becoming convinced, as the gale increased, that unless they were brought into the house they would be lost, I said to my mother, “I must try to save them.” She advised me not to attempt it. The thought, however, of parting with them without an effort was not to be endured, so seizing a basket, I ran out a few yards after the rollers had passed and the sea fell a little, with the water knee deep, to the coop, and rescued all but one. 10

  The waves were now breaking over the lower section of the keeper’s house, and as the storm reached its height, the house crumpled and fell into the sea. For the next four weeks, the rough weather prevented any boat from coming out and landing on the island. During that time, Abbie continued to tend the lights and look after her family. Supplies were so low that they were largely dependent on the eggs from the chickens she had saved. “Though at times greatly exhausted by my labours, not once did the lights fail. Under God I was able to perform all my accustomed duties as well as my father’s.”

  When the Republicans were elected to power under Lincoln in 1860, Abbie’s father lost his job. Many lighthouse appointments were dependent on political contacts, and because Samuel Burgess did not have connections in the right places, he was replaced by John Grant, a staunch Republican. However, Abbie was allowed to stay on for a while to show the new keeper the workings of the lighthouse and explain the necessary routines. Grant brought with him his son, Isaac, who had been appointed assistant keeper. Abbie was now twenty-two and so impressed Isaac that within a few weeks of working alongside her, he proposed marriage. They were married the following year, and Abbie was appointed second assistant keeper. Since she had admirably performed all the duties of official keeper for many years, she must have felt the injustice of this, but at least she did not have to abandon lighthouse life. She brought up four children on the rock, and they continued to live there, as she and her sisters had done, until her husband was transferred to White Head lighthouse near Spruce Head, Maine, in 1872. When her husband died in 1875, she took over as official keeper, and according to the records, she continued as keeper until a year or so before her death in 1892 at the age of fifty-two. In her last letter, she looked back on her thirty-odd years of tending the lights and wrote, “I wonder if the care of the lighthouse will follow my soul after it has left this worn out body! If I ever have a gravestone, I would like it in the form of a lighthouse or beacon.” 11 She was buried in Spruce Head Cemetery, and fifty years after her death her wish was granted—a small lighthouse was placed on her grave.

  Katie Walker did not come from a lighthouse family and was horrified by the bleak situation of the lighthouse she ended up in, yet, like so many other lighthouse women, she showed an extraordinary devotion to looking after the light. She was a German immigrant and met Jacob Walker while she was waiting tables at the boardinghouse where he dined. Jacob was keeper of Sandy Hook light in New Jersey. He taught her English, fell in love with her, and persuaded her to marry him. The Sandy Hook light was situated on a promontory in a picturesque setting with a good road into town so that contact with friends and neighbors was easy. Unfortunately, in the 1870s Jacob was appointed to another lighthouse in a very different location. This was Robbins Reef light, a squat tower on a concrete platform on the west side of New York Bay’s main channel. The accommodations were cramped in the extreme. The kitchen and dining room were squashed into a circular extension built at the base of the tower, and there were two bedrooms above in the tower itself. The views of Staten Island and Brooklyn were no compensation for the rural life that Katie had begun to enjoy at Sandy Hook. She was so unhappy when they first arrived she thought she would be unable to stay; she later recalled, “When I first came to Robbins Reef, the sight of water, whichever way I looked, made me lonesome. I refused to unpack my trunks at first, but gradually, a little at a time, I unpacked. After a while they were all unpacked and I stayed on.” 12

  As so many women have done in similar situations, she decided she would have to make the best of it. She set about making the place as comfortable as possible. She helped her husband with his lighthouse duties, and she brought up their two children. When the children reached school age, she rowed them across to Staten Island every morning and collected them in the afternoon. In 1886, when the children had grown up and left home, Jacob fell ill and died of pneumonia. He was buried in a Staten Island cemetery. His last words to his wife were “Mind the light, Katie.” For several weeks, she debated whether to leave Robbins Reef, but she continued to look after the light and after a while decided to apply for the keeper’s post. She was under five feet tall, and the Lighthouse Board had doubts about her fitness for the job. However, she was obviously capable of handling the lighthouse boat and had shown herself able to manage the light and its machinery on her own, so they agreed to her appointment. They were well rewarded for their faith in her, because she continued to manage the light for the next thirty-five years, during which time she was responsible for more than fifty rescues in New York Harbor.

  It is curious how many of the American lighthouse women seemed to become strangely attached to the lonely but demanding pattern of life on their seabound rocks and islands. Instead of gratefully heading for the mainland and a cottage in
the country on the death of their fathers or husbands, they often made a deliberate choice to continue tending the lights, keeping a watch on passing ships, and rescuing people who got into trouble. None showed more dedication to the task than Ida Lewis, the most famous of all of America’s female lighthouse keepers. 13 Like Grace Darling, she became a heroine while still in her twenties, but unlike Grace Darling, Ida Lewis lived on to the age of sixty-nine and carried out a succession of rescues over a period of more than fifty years. Born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1842, she was the daughter of Captain Hosea Lewis, a coast pilot. In 1853, he was appointed keeper of Lime Rock light, which was on a small island in Newport Harbor less than half a mile from the shore. For several years, Captain Lewis and his family continued to live in Newport because the first light on Lime Rock was no more than a beacon with a shed alongside to provide some temporary shelter. In 1857, however, a solid four-square building with a low pitched roof was built on the island, and the family moved in.

  The traditional lighthouses of New England have inspired some memorable paintings by Edward Hopper and have been the subject of thousands of photographs. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials, and tend to be considerably more picturesque than most British lighthouses. Unhappily, Lime Rock light looked nothing like the usual picture most of us have of a lighthouse. There was no tower, and the light was simply incorporated into one side of the keeper’s house. On the seaward-facing side there was a narrow, square-sectioned column projecting slightly from the building with a three-sided window at the top containing the lamp.

  The interior of the lighthouse was as plain as the white-painted exterior. A Newport journalist visited the place when Ida Lewis had become famous and described the interior in some detail. On the ground floor there was a parlor, a hall, a dining room, and a kitchen. On the floor above were three bedrooms with a passageway leading to the lantern. The walls were bare, and “Ida’s own particular sanctum is fitted with a cheaply finished cottage set, only remarkable as exhibiting a rude painting of a sinking wreck upon the headboard of her couch.” 14 He noted that a sewing machine “and some little feminine nick-nacks complete the interior.” The best aspect of the house was the view from the upstairs windows. Ida’s room commanded a fine vista of the harbor looking toward the town.