What was it Really Like to Be a Lighthouse Keeper?

for anyone sitting in gridlock traffic on the way to a soul crushing job surrounded by other humans Ning on all day about their TPS reports as you try to internalize the pointlessness of everything because we're all going to die and everything we've ever said or done will be forgotten someday you may Subway find yourself daydreaming about the life of a Lighthouse Keeper kicking back enjoying the sounds of the ocean waves and similar to you with your current job periodically checking that the light is still on but you know the one in the lighthouse instead of the ever dimming one in your soul and otherwise enjoy peace and quiet in a stress reducing environment but does this bear any resemblance to what it was actually like to be a lighthous keeper just what do such individuals get up to throughout their days and nights historically and also in modern times well put on your gashes and Rain Slicker prepare to go positively straight jacket mad and let's dive into it All Shall We to begin with what exactly life looked like for a Lighthouse Keeper varied throughout history as you might expect with the earliest known lighthous likee facilities popping up possibly as far back as 2000 BC and tari India better documented lighthouses emerg starting around the 5ifth century BC in Greece and perhaps most famously of all the 3r century BC's Lighthouse of Alexandria or one of the so-called seven wonders of the ancient world and for a Time the tallest structure ever built at somewhere in the ballpark of 118 M or just shy 400 ft however as we don't really know what they specifically got up to in these early lighthousekeeping jobs or even exactly how they maintain their Flames or the like other than people were definitely in charge of keeping the Flames flaming at given times we can't really say much here other than to note these early lighthouses seemed more purposed to Mark the entrance of ports rather than to warn ships of reefs or other such things that might cause them to be forgotten quicker than had they not found themselves on a sinking ship and pressing KN to figure out how to breathe underwater however fast forward a couple of thousand years to the so-called golden age of lighthousekeeping and things get a lot more interesting and better documented unsurprisingly with the rise of mass international trade as the Nations and Merchants of the world began sending ships all over the globe a pressing need for beacons both for navigational purposes and to help avoid areas dangerous to ships became extremely apparent and so it was that lighthouses began lighting up more than Willie Nelson all over the place along common trade ports and routes though not without some hiccups in the beginning as for some of the hiccups as you can probably imagine given the massive power of the ocean to assert dominance over things made by man designing buildings that could withstand even the day-to-day rigers of being rice on the ocean less alone needing to weather the weather wasn't easy in many locations such as a rather famous example of the Lighthouse at the edstone rocks in the English Channel the first attempt at a lighthouse there was secured on a rock via 12 giant iron Stans but it lasted only 4 years before a storm in 1703 ripped it and its Keepers from its foothold washing away all traces of the structure and them from history six years later John rard managed to design a brick and concrete core structure with wood on the outside that managed to last a few decades before it was also destroyed in a storm and its Keepers likewise forgotten for all time finally John smen designed a new tower Lighthouse completed in 1759 that lasted over a century and introduced a number of innovations that became common in Lighthouse design including using a type of lime concrete That Could set while immersed in the ocean use of marble Dows and dovetail joints to help hold the stone blocks together and tapering the thickness of the structure inwards as it rose up to help reduce the wave impact Force engineer Robert Stevenson or would later build on these ideas as well as add some of his own that would proliferate throughout the world of Lighthouse Construction in the late 19th century including incorporating a rotating light and alternating colors of our unique shuttering system to allow people to distinguish which Lighthouse they were seeing based on the light signature in any event Beyond considering what a given lighthouse in a given location might have to deal with in terms of such abuse that was totally from the lighthouse falling down the stairs and not because of his Oceanic partner's violent temper and general salty personality the height of the lighthouse was also a great consideration to the curvature of the earth so-called scientists would have you believe is a thing when in truth everybody who anybody knows that there is an ice wall surrounding the outermost parts of Earth that keeps the oceans contained with this wall unfortunately nearly impossible to reach o to the fact that NASA and their lizard overlords are closely guarding it right also helping to keep up the spherical Earth RS were Lighthouse Builders throughout history who claimed that they had to use various calculations to determine the height of a given liouse given the typical vessel of the region with larger ships needing more warning of a given danger or the like speaking of visibility this now brings us to the most important element of all in the structure the light itself which has evolved massively over time the earliest more modern ligh houses that emerged after Medieval Times tended to use candle illuminance wood or coal as their light source in the late 18th century improvements were made via special oil burning lamps in particular the Argan lamp which helped create more steady and critically mostly smokeless flame via the way it controlled air flow as its fuel things like whale Olive or vegetable oil became the standed for lighthouses for almost a century starting in the late 18th century until one John Richardson wigam came up with a much brighter Gas Lamp which when it was first installed in the Bailey lighthouse in haad in 1865 was about four times brighter than its predecessor oil lamps and upgraded version he put in three years later for whatever it's worth according to fame scientist John Tindle was about 13 times brighter than any other light on Earth at the time going back to before wigam gas all of these other light sources however even with reflectors trying to direct direct the light were not actually terribly bright and could be easily masked by various common weather conditions at distances that' otherwise be visible at by approaching ships enter French physicist Augustine fresnal in the early 19th century with the biggest leap of all in Lighthouse lighting technology the full details of how his various lens designs actually work is beyond the scope of today's video but you can check out one of our main authors here Jill messier's video on the subject the fral lens the the invention that saved a thousand ships on his great Channel own devices but in a vastly oversimplified nutshell fresnel's lens comprised of numerous pieces of specially cut glass that would surround the light source and direct the captured light in the specific Direction they wanted it seeing an initial almost three to fourfold increase in brightness of the same light source for reference here with an open flame light only about 6% of the light is projected in the horizontal Direction you want for this application in a lighthouse but with the early Fresno lens designs this was bumped to about 20% and with further refinement of the lens apparatuses ultimately all the way up to an astonishing 83% wasting only 177% of the light produced of course electric lights came to replace the burning type and in more modern times the LED variety has trumped all for its reliability possible brightness and ability to get rid of any moving Parts via the ability to pulse on and off in any direction and in different colors with simple computer controllers and programming and this will finally brings us to the Lighthouse Keeper who while on the surface it may seem like they just have one job keeping the lighthouse going this isn't correct at all this was just the most visible job and there was an awful lot that went into just that so what was the daily life of a Lighthouse Keeper like for starters in the early going of the golden age of Lighthouse keeping Keepers tended to either work alone or if they had a family their family would help out in their duties in some cases it would even become a generational Family Affair such as the famed not family of Lighthouse keep in Britain whose family began tending a lighthouse in Kent in 1730 and didn't stop tending some Lighthouse until 1906 but diving into the nuts and bolts of it all contrary to popular perception while there are exceptions at some locations the Lighthouse Keeper often had separate living quarters from the lighthouse itself and historically at least these homes were generally big enough to accommodate an entire family as by nature of the job the lighthouse attended to not really be able to venture far from the lighthouse not even for vacation in many cases 36 65 days a year the light had to be kept burning and if foggy out fogor blowing or explosive charges set off at intervals as to a given Li housekeeper schedule this was historically entirely up to them as long as they did those two tasks of lighting and blowing as needed this was not as simple as you might think however for example the 1858 edition of Lighthouse Keeper guidelines in the US was 87 pages long and included 131 tasks that needed to be done regularly to maintain the light of a fresnal lens apparatus alone things like keeping the window glass clean polishing the optic apparatus and maintaining the rotating apparatus for example potentially winding up the clock-like mechanism used to rotate the lights once that became a thing for reference these rotating systems used something of a grandfather clock s mechanism of Weights that extended down the center of the lighthouse and needed to be rewound multiple times per day then there was maintaining any other buildings on the ground like their home quarters Etc this was all a bit more difficult than in most areas as anyone who's ever lived next to the the ocean knows both from how quickly molden Moss can overtake everything to how quickly paint battered by the Sea can wash away the paint part was eventually considered extremely important owing to colors and patterns on the lighthouse being used to help Sailors identify which Lighthouse they were seeing as well as helping it stand out on the horizon or the lighthouse is backdrop in daylight James F Sheridan who was a boy when his father was maintaining the Sagat talk light in the early 20th century writes of this things that I remember mostly about his duties were there seemed to always be a paintbrush in his hand the government put great stock in painting they painted and they repainted and they painted until paint usually built up so it had so many coats there was no sharp edges at all anymore not such a thing as a sharp edge in any corner of a piece of wood it always had a curved Edge something off all of this with regards to the tower 20th century Lighthouse Keeper Maxwell gz would elaborate in slightly more modern times we had two big air compressors in the engine room that was for the fog horn and then there were three generators and a big bang of batteries so all those Machinery had to be serviced and oil had to be changed constantly plus if anybody knows living around the water that painting and deterioration of the buildings around the water is more so than inlands plus the light had to be maintained well that all had to be polished and kept right up to oh boy oh every day there was a man up there who had to check it out to make sure that the light operated properly and that the lens was clean and all the brass you had a lot of work on the inside the tower it seemed like it was forever in need of attention inside because of the condensation moving on from there the keepers also had to be extremely self-sufficient given they often lived in remote locations and left attend the lighthouse for long stretches of time without any outside human contact and limited supplies unsurprisingly where possible they tended to try and grow their own food to supplement their supplies though in many locations being right next to the Salty Sea and or otherwise on a giant rock wasn't exactly an ideal location for a garden to get around the issue in these types of locations they'd often bring in good soil from the mainland and make smaller container gardens on all of this late 19th century Lighthouse Keeper William Norgate writes in a letter to a friend of his new profession having to do everything that wants doing ourselves it is surprisingly what I have had to put my hand to I had a lot to learn but it is the variety of work that keeps it from getting monotonous it is half sailor half Bushman with all sorts of Trades mixed with it Williams also States in his logs receiving supplies and mail approximately once a month by passing ships and occasional visits to the mainland for himself and his family in his case there was another family on the islands he and his wife lived on but he also writes it is very lonely for Lizzie for although we live close to one another she scarely ever sees or speaks to anyone but myself of course there is no fear of quarreling being like this but I think she carries it too far the boss's people seem very nice but a much like herself likes to keep at home then there was logging everything which typically being government jobs over time became more and more of a Time suck logging use of resources ships passing weather daily activities Etc but there's more the Lighthouse Keeper was also expected to keep an eye out for any ships in distress and entertain any visitors who came by not exactly always a comfortable thing on the latter given these were often complete Stranges and you were otherwise devoid of any way to call for AG should they not be friendly all while endlessly trudging up and down the sometimes many flights of stairs of the lighthouse carrying needed resources to maintain the light which for reference when using coal as a burning Source could include carrying upwards of a ton of coal per day to the top going back to the bit about design the lighthouse itself would have some sort of lantern room at the top of the structure then classically a service room below where the fuel and other such supplies would be kept this is also sometimes called the watch room as it is where a Lighthouse Keeper might stay for extended periods to keep watch to save from having to go up and down all the stairs all night there would also often be a platform outside of the room to facilitate cleaning of the windows of the lantern room from the outside as well going back to the lantern room and the service room being right below it stocked with fuel the job of the lious keeper was not just to keep the CL going but also make sure it didn't get out of hand with ligh houses occasionally burning down totally being a thing such as in 1755 at the Ed of stone rocks where one Henry Hall was tending to the light when the roof of the tower somehow caught fire in the process dripping molten lead onto poor Hall's head and body and some of it getting into his mouth and down his throat and he eventually died 12 days after the event the Physicians examining his body reportedly finding 200 g of lead in his stomach speaking of things that could kill you in lighthousekeeping there was also always the risk of storms or well as just generally getting to and from your Lighthouse For example consider the case of the first Lighthouse ever built in what is now the United States located in Boston Harbor Massachusetts on Brewster Islands which first lit up in 1716 George Worthy Lake was assigned as the Lighthouse Keeper there but in 1718 after attending a sermon in town he his wife Anne and their daughter Ruth as well as their servant George Cutler a friend named John edge and a slave named Shadwell were rowing back to the islands when their canoe capsized and all their hopes and dreams promptly died becoming microb and fish feces just two weeks later Robert Saunders John Chamberlain and a Man simply called bradic were tasked with the maintaining of the light but on their own trip to the islands their boat also capsized with chamberling and bradock both likewise becoming fish and micro feces we can only assume Robert Sanders's response to this was something to the effect of there can only be one incidentally this particular Lighthouse was also the lost to be staffed in the United States until one Sally snowman after a couple of decades maintaining it retired on De the 30th 2023 at the Agee of 72 though noteworthy most of her job at this stage of the game was simply to be there to entertain any visitors to the historic Lighthouse going back to the dangers of it all we come to the madness as to what caused it and the common idea of mad as a Lighthouse Keeper which was very much akin to the notion of mad as a Hatter it's generally thought that there were several contributing factors from often extreme isolation regular Interruption of proper sleep patterns which is astoundingly detrimental to all manner of Health factors including Mental Health see our video What's the best way to get great sleep according to science monotony of the job to eventually regular exposure to Mercury as for the Mercury once it was found that the rotating apparatuses functioned vastly more efficiently with much less need for winding if floated on a pool of mercury instead of something like a chariot wheel or under a bearing system this became very common as one lighthous keeper hand or blur states of one of the issues with this the waves do run up the side of the lighthouse and the Mercury trough will be vibrated so much that the Mercury will Splash out so then you have to go up there with a dust pan and brush cleaning up the Mercury you put it in a jar and then clean it you put it in a shammy leather hold it over a container then squeeze the leather hard as you can and the Mercury will go through the pores of the leather but the dirt will stay behind needless to say regularly handling and potentially breathing in Mercury Vapors isn't exactly conductive to one's mental health as is referenced in the aformentioned phrase mad as a Hatter the leading theory as the origin of that phrase is that it refers to a genuine condition that began a flicting certain hat makers in the 17th century called Mad Hatter syndrome or Hatters Shakes as the underlying cause of Mad Hatter syndrome in the 17th century in France expensive hats made of Bel began being produced using mercury nitrate hat makers rarely wore any kind of safety equipment or protective clothing back then and often worked in cramped extremely poorly ventilated workspaces because of this invariably they were exposed to dangerous amounts of mercury Vapors during their day-to-day lives culminating in prevalent mercury poisoning among those in the industry the symptoms of mercury poisoning are numerous and in many cases extremely severe affecting the heart brain lungs kidneys and in some cases the immune system among other things most pertinent to the topic at hand neurological symptoms associated with mercury poisoning can include but are not limited to abnormal Sensations in the limbs muscle Tremors erratic mood changes and mental deterioration the behavior of those afflicted by mercury poisoning is usually typified by anxiety extreme timidness and a general desire to remain un observed usually responding with anger or irritability if this wish is ignored while Lighthouse Keepers had much better ventilated spaces than hat makers handling such Mercury regularly is generally thought to have contributed to occasional bouts of odd behavior and Madness among Keepers for example at at our lighthouse in 1897 near naranga set Pier the Lighthouse Keeper showed up at the pier bleeding from a wound in the back where he had been stabbed he explained his assistant had gone mad and attacked him with a butcher's knife and then chased after him as he fled to their boat upon investigation at the Lighthouse the next day they found the assistant still alive and otherwise physically well but apparently dancing around crazily while he chucked stuff into the ocean in another case in the mid 19th century the fipb main Lighthouse Keeper apparently bought his wife a piano to help Entertainer but she allegedly kept playing the same song over and over again and he finally snapped whether the same song over and over again part of the story is correct or just part of the legend that's risen up around the event he did ultimately destroy the piano and directly there thereafter ended the existence of his wife and himself in another instance lighthous keeper William Brown stationed at balonus island in British Columbia began sending bizarre Telegraph messages one day and his wife Maggie said he likewise began behaving erratically and violently around the same time because of this he was committed to an asylum in 1905 there he seemed to recover his senses and was sent back to the lighthouse only to once again seemed to go mad and was once again this time in 1906 committed to the Asylum then we come once again again to the aformentioned extreme isolation at many Lighthouse locations especially in cases where a given Lighthouse Keeper was all by their Lonesome with no family to talk to or assist them in their duties on this lonel and the mental health side of that Lighthouse Keeper Mary Ryan's 1870s log entries illustrate it well getting progressively more depressing when she took over the lighthouse from her deceased husband she writes so doll this place is killing me winds blowing violently or a little later nothing but Gloom without and within and later this is all gloom and darkness finally after about 7 years alone at the Lighthouse another was appointed in her place and she was free to leave on all this The Stave off Madness and boredom in 1876 in the US it became practice to send a few dozen books in wooden cases to each of the lighthouses in America and within 3 years there were almost 500 such box libraries around which would be exchanged every 3 months for a different create of books from a different lighthouse we should also probably mention Beyond lighthouses there were also light chips with with similar issues and often a reported extreme loneliness of their crew for example one wailing ship captain would write of the Nara Shaw's light ship the loneliest thing he had ever seen at Sea was to quote a polar bear floating on a piece of ice in the Arctic Ocean the next loneliest object was the South Shore light ship these ships had many of the same issues you'd find at a fixed Lighthouse location but on top of it having to deal with the sea a lot more directly like the constant pitching of the boat to sum things up on this side of things as Illustrated in Wolf's novel to the lighthouse she writes how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time and possibly more in Stormy Weather upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn and to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week and then a dreadful storm coming and the windows covered with spray and birds dashed against the lamp and the whole place rocking and not to be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea and speaking of being swept out the sea and yet more dangerous of being a Lighthouse Keeper in 1900 a replacement keeper arrived at e Moore off the coast of Scotland to find all three Keepers on the island mysteriously gone their logs showed they had experienced an extreme storm where not just waves but winds were too severe to stand in the replacement keeper also noted he found damage to the building and equipment from waves up to 33 M or about 100 ft above the normal sea level what exactly happened to the men isn't known but it's generally thought they must have left the tower for some purpose during the storm and in so doing been swept out to sea on this note storms were yet another danger one out to contend with as a keeper and they sometimes were evacuated during such but getting them out was often a major ordeal given you know the approaching storms and lack of satellite weather or things like that thus historically many simply had to endure and hope the engineers who built their structure had made things sturdy enough to withstand the ocean's rage moving on from all these sorts of tasks dangers and psychological factors of being a Lighthouse Keeper we now come to the rescues with as alluded to a part of the lighthous Keeper's job to keep an eye out for ships or people in distress and if possible to assist them although as you might imagine this also tended to be another way Lighthouse Keepers would sometimes get themselves killed one of the more famous individuals on the rescuing front was one Ida Lewis dubbed in the late 19th century the bravest woman in America Lewis was the daughter of the lighthous Keeper at Lime Rock in RH islands and made her first rescue while just 12 years old doing so in a small rowboat she otherwise used to Ferry her siblings to and from the mainland for school and to get needed supplies on this first rescue she observed four men whose boat had capsized and quickly rode out to save them in another instance in March of 1869 Two Soldiers and a 14-year-old boy had their boat caps eyes in icy waters when Ida's mother saw this she called for Ida who was suffering from a cold at the time but nonetheless ran to her boat without bothering to put on a coat or anything of the sort and rode out to them managing to rescue the Two Soldiers though the boy aboard died in The Frigid Waters for her services on this rescue the soldiers raised some £218 that's about $5,000 today from their fellow soldiers at Fort Adams to give her an appreciation for delaying their inevitable Eternal sleep helping to ensure their end came not via the comfortable and quick Embrace of hypothermia and water inhalation but a slow and steady decline as their mental and physical faculties fade in time and body ACH set in with it all combined eventually resulting in the finally praying for an end to the pointless rigers of life in another rescue of a couple of soldiers in 1881 that had fallen through the ice she reportedly grabbed a clothes line to bring with her when she rode out as close as she could get to them and pulled them to safety with their line for this one she became the first woman to be granted the gold life- saving medal from the US government in total she is credited for saving a minimum around a couple of dozen people in her time at the Lighthouse though she never logged her rescues and it's thought there were probably many more that didn't make the news however of the ones that did make the papers she did receive some criticism for this with one individual writing to her that it was unladylike for a woman to row a boat to which Ida Turley responded none but a donkey would consider it unfeminine to save lives Ida was eventually further rewarded for her work by not only being appointed a Lighthouse Keeper after her father and mother died but also becoming at the time of her appointment the highest paid Keeper in America with the increas in pay from what is typical being to quote in consideration of the remarkable services in the saving of lives eventually Lime Rock was also renamed Idol Lewis Rock and the lighthouse on it bore her name in but in all of this needless to say life as a Lighthouse Keeper wasn't super awesome but I mean the pay's got to be good right well as illustrated by the United States his first official Lighthouse Keeper appointed by George Washington Henry long not so much with a salary of just $300 annually or about $8,000 today although of course free accommodations and use of the grounds that came with it long had previously been a ship pilot working at Cape feir River and it was generally thought he could supplement his income by are continuing to Pilot ships in the day as well as take advantage of the fishing in the region with the lighthouse functioning as something of a side gig I mean how hard is it to keep a light going after all however Longs complains he could not officiate as a pilot when the lighthouse claims the whole of his attention all these advantages are now entirely lost to your petitioner by his living on an island where he has not the privilege of raising stock of any kind nor even vegetables from the proprietor of the island Benjamin Smith if the soil would admit thereof and that fish oysters are too great a distance from the island for him to attempt to procure he thus petitioned for an increase in his salary which was granted though not up to his request but at least a Small Bump to $333 33 annually as for his specific Lighthouse it was an oil burning one that required him to Traverse the six long flights of stairs several times per day carrying oil to fill pan lamps containing some 48 wicks in need of regular trimming and as you might imagine had a tendency to smudge the glass panes of the lighthouse and required him to scrub them clean regular L again this was something he had to do 365 days per year regardless of WEA and regardless of his personal health to add insult to Ultimate injury long met his end when his son-in-law who had come to live on the island with his two children after his wife Elizabeth died accidentally shot long while hunting for food for the family one night on October the 16th 1806 after this Rebecca Long Henry's wife took to maintaining the lighthouse and after a few months she was recommended for the position permanently by Customs collector Timothy Bloodworth however when the proposal was submitted to then president Thomas Jefferson for approval that this time Lighthouse Keepers were all presidentially assigned given the importance of the job to National Commerce Jefferson would write the appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared nor am I and she was denied the position she was already doing it wouldn't be until two decades later the President John Quincy Adams would throw such biases out and appoint the first federally appointed female Lighthouse Keeper Rebeca flery to assume her husband's role as Keeper of the Sand Key in the Florida Keys after his death although it should be noted that if you really dig in there was another a few years before remembered only as Mrs Edward Shoemaker who took over for her husband upon his death in 1826 though whether she was federally appointed by Adams isn't clear and she only held the position for 6 months it should also be noted that the first ever female us Keeper of the light was one Hannah Thomas who was given the job of Lighthouse Keeper at gnet point in Massachusetts starting in 1776 after her husband John died of small poox while serving as both keeper and Tra aous soldier in the Continental Army in the Rebellion against the rightful ruler of America King George III she continued in the role until 1786 when she hired someone else to do the job one Nathaniel Burgess who after a few years was officially appointed to the Post in any event noteworthy after Rebecca F's appointments women would be regularly appointed as Lighthouse Keepers over the next few decades comprising about one in 20 Lighthouse Keeper appointments in the United States in almost always cases where the husband died and his wife and potentially children had been helping him maintain the light anyway she was almost always deemed suitable and generally rubber stamped for the job if she wanted it speaking once again of lighthousekeeping during the Golden Age of the profession being something of a family affair and given their isolation a little better to do Lighthouse Keepers and their families also tended to grow at the lighthous with for example one John Malone and his wife Julia Manning the menajer island light in the late 19th century and her giving birth to a whopping 12 babies at the Lighthouse 11 of whom survived of course in slightly more modern times it was determined that it would be beneficial to the functioning of the entire system for the Lighthouse Keeper to have official assistance whether he or she had a family there or not which helped both with the workload and also staving off loneliness although getting along with such continually could be monotonous as well but as one 20th century Lighthouse Keeper Gordon Med cwood note of this and his life as a keeper living in such close confines meant that a good relationship with the other two keepers was important it was like a marriage if you fell out you couldn't go off and sulk for long because they would be cooking your dinner later on we became experts at cards and board games over the years I knitted did crossstitch and embroidered it was the centerfold for crossstitch magazine a few years ago we all read a lot and some of us wrote short stories and poems I always enjoyed writing so I was thrilled when the association of Lighthouse Keepers asked me to write a research document for their archives on completion it was snapped up by a publisher and turned into a new book called an Illuminating experience he also notes of the rescue side that he had a number of occasions for this for example in one such quote I was Manning the South stack in angle SE and two young boys ran to us for help their climbing instructor had fallen down a cliff face I climbed down the 80ft drop and held on to him for 45 minutes while we waited for the Rescue Team by the time they came we were up to our chests in water the helicopter pulled us up one at a time there is not much you can say to Cal a man in that situation you just try and quiet his screams he was ultimately retired however after almost four decades as a Lighthouse Keeper in 1998 as automation gradually began to see the profession of the keeper go the way the dodo and that brings us to the Ultra Modern profession of Lighthouse Keeper which is still a profession in some regions though as alluded to it's increasingly rare for example the United States currently just has under a thousand lighthouses Still Standing but over half of them are no longer maintained or active as to why not with the Advent of GPS and all manner of other Advanced navigational tools lighthouses have become somewhat less needed though still considered useful by a similar ilk of individuals who adhere to V navigation when flying is a fun way to find your way around presumably needing to Hitch up their covered wagons to run to the store because they don't want to let those valuable horse riding and wagon hitching skills be forgotten in case the cars stop working or something like that that said there is still considered some value to certain Lighthouse locations but most of these have been automated in the last few decades thanks to extremely reliable LED lamps with no moving parts needed as well as solar and Battery setups and the ability to remotely monitor all facets of what's going on at the Lighthouse that said as Illustrated in great depth the Lighthouse Keeper isn't just there to keep the light going but also to maintain the facility watch out for emergencies and lend Aid give an eye on the ground for weather Etc not to mention that some of these lighthouses are something of historic sight so having someone there to continue to maintain them and perform the other functions has been deemed valuable by some Nations such as Canada who still maintains about 50 crude lighthouses with typically two people per location plus relief Keepers who fill in as needed for example with weather while elements of the weather monitoring can be automated and satellite weather data is amazing these days as well as any pilot or sea captain can tell you human eyes on site are still invaluable especially when the weather starts to get marginal but may or may not still be fine enough for a given flight or boating scenario it's just often unclear based on the automated weather collecting data as one such Canadian Lighthouse Keeper notes weather reporting is really what we do a lot of now we do occasionally get calls from airports planes and helicopters who want a 100% up-to-date account of what the weather is actually like as for emergencies he States lighthouses are placed in locations that are pretty dangerous for Mariners accidents still happen and while you don't get a lot of huge ships running arounds there are still smaller commercial and pleasure boats who overturn and sink each year and their lives are just as important as a 100 lives on a larger boat having someone in these remote locations means there is always someone on hand in case there is an emergency in a particular area even if there is an issue somewhere that is not right at the station a lot of times search and rescue will use the station as a converging point when arriving to an area or if they need somewhere to go while an operation is in effect on that note while classically Lighthouse Keepers had a bit of a stereotype of getting drunk half the time that's not entirely accurate and in fact all the way back in 1852 in the US Lighthouse Keepers were subject to immediate dismissal if they ever either allowed the light to go out or were found to be drunk and nothing much has changed in modern times there in other words while you can drink you cannot ever do it in any sort of excess that would compromise your mental acuity and ability to respond to any situation as part of your duties which must be attended to 24/7 going back to the light itself he also notes at his lighthouse quote it has been changed once in 10 years on this station everything is solar powered and it comes on and turns off on its own you have to paint the tower itself more often than you have to do anything with the actual light anymore as for his schedule he States currently I awake at 3:00 a.m. go outside and monitor the weather check to make sure the light is still on and then report the weather over the radio telephone I do this again at 6:00 a.m. and at 9:00 a.m. also at 600 I have to check and record temperatures for environment Canada 10: to 3 is work time where we do different tasks on the island painting lawn mowing General upkeep and whatnot after 3 is my own free time where I can do what I wish and I usually go to bed by 7 or so this would be 7 days a week no weekends I do forgo the 10 to three work bit on the weekends though the other keeper would be responsible for more reports at 12: 3 6 and at 9: at night he also states that as in more historic lighthousekeeping just about everything gets logged and that it is government work so there is a ton of paperwork that goes with the job as for pay in modern times this can vary from $ 30 to $6,000 a year this doesn't sound like a lot given the hours you work but you also don't really have any bills given you live a lighthouse for free and you don't really have much of any way of spending money especially in the more remote locations as for time away from the lighthouse it depends with some stations on a rotational cycle of something like about a month on a month off with a cut in pay on the month off part but mostly you get no such time off or even holidays and are expected to do your thing Health permitting 365 days per year with the exception of vacation time which starts at about 3 weeks and can build up over the years to even a couple of months per year however you cannot take any vacation on a whim needing to be scheduled well in advance upwards of 6 to 12 months preferable so that a relief keeper can be scheduled to rotate in as for the process of getting such a job if you apply and hard you start as a relief worker and can be assigned to a number of different stations when a full-time keeper needs to leave their station for whatever reason like health issues vacation or training or something like that you could expect to remain in this role even for years bouncing around from Station to Station before a permanent spot opens up where you can then remain potentially for your whole career unless a better location opens up and you'd like to apply for that as you might imagine the locations on some mainlands where the town near and Road access and the like are generally the highest prized and if you're wondering you can have visitors as long as it's not disrupting your duties or anything on the site but given the remote location in many of these lighthous say it's sometimes non-trivial and quite expensive for people to come and visit you as for groceries and other such supplies again this varies by location but for most where there is no Road access or the like he States you find a place that will deliver to your head office and then once a month you place an order with whomever and then have it delivered by a certain date once all the keepers of a particular area there are four stations in my area have their orders in everything gets packed onto a helicopter and then taken out to each station of course as ever weather can be a bit temperamental and so he States you generally want to order a week or two extra supplies just in case WEA delays the helicopter or ship from being able to get to you and deliver what you need to not die of starvation in the end while often romanticized the life of a Lighthouse Keeper historically wasn't exactly relaxing or conductive for a positive mental health from the isolation contending with extreme weather and natural forces your entire livelihood based on being able to keep a light going through 165 days per year low pay grueling never-ending labor the list goes on and on on the whole while there are some who would love such an isolated and routine lifestyle most of us are probably going to be happier with our 5 days a week nto five star jobs that we Ed to be out to by pointless things in our equally pointless lives which will sooner than we think end as well as the lives of all humans in one way or another and beyond that our entire planet will ultimately be consumed by the sun near the peak of its red giant phase with even our chemical remains going to find their own and living inside a Forgotten Dead star just one of trillions in a vast cold and forgetful universe which will one day itself go all lights out thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 112,873

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, life of a lighthouse keeper, bc lighthouse keeper, lighthouse keeper, life of a light keeper, west coast lighthouses, british columbia lighthouses, the lighthouse, entrance island lighthouse, life of a keeper, light keeper, bc lighthouses, lighthouse, lighthouses, lighthouses in bc, lightkeeper, lighthouses in canada

Id: YA3fYDbWb1Y

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2024